A gentler puzzle this week than last, with nothing to frighten the horses. 12ac was a real delight, and made us think for a while about the precision of wording needed in cryptic definitions. Another enjoyable outing, so our thanks to Quixote.
ACROSS
1. CAPRI (h)OLE this is a leap by a horse, but we got this from the SI rather than the definition
5. ADD LED
9. CARD I FF ff=very loud in musical notation
10. K A F TANS
11. LIED dd, and oddly I’d recently seen the musical definition in Chambers when flicking through it
12. SANDCASTLE cd: ‘Keep falling down as the water comes closer?’ Very nice. Deciding the wording for a clue like this must take a lot of judgement. ‘Keep getting washed away?’ or some such would be tempting to me
14. UNPASTEURISED (Putridness eau)*
16. EXPOSURE METER anagram of ‘supremo’ in ‘Exeter’.
20. IN G RAIN IN G ‘good first and last’ meaning place the ‘g’ either side of ‘rain in’
21. GAZ(e) A
23. erudITE MISEr
24. T(ERR)IER
25. N UTTER
26. F(RIGHT)EN ‘right’ is ‘completely’ in a phrase such as ‘he’s a right nutter’, for instance
DOWN
1. COCKLE dd didn’t know the weed definition, so this didn’t go in till late in the solve
2. PAR VEN U
3. choIR I Spotted
4. LIFE ASSURANCE (A clue fairness)* spent a while here thinking that ‘what’s spelt out in a policy’ might lead to an initialism such as APO, which is spelt out in ‘a policy’, but turned out this was overthinking it somewhat
6. DEF (LA) GRATE couldn’t think of the word here, having got stuck on ‘conflagrate’
7. LEAN-TOS (slate on)*
8. DES C ENDS
10. KIDDERMINSTER (drinkers I’d met)* whether the anagram fodder is appropriate for the place or not I couldn’t possibly say, having never visited
13. A POST A TI(S)E
15. REV IS I(O)N
17. PIGMEN T hadn’t heard of ‘pigmen’, but it’s pretty clear what they are likely to be…
18. REALIST (is alert)*
19. BAR REN(t)
22. D RUG
I’ll admit to finding this quite tough. 1ac/1dn completely beat me, so thanks for clearing those up.