Goodness! For me quite a struggle. I had to invoke an email friend (thanks Frank Yellin!) to resolve some spoonerisms towards the end. Since there are two types of clues, I found myself getting confused frequently and having to refer back to the preamble or to a couple of solved examples. Not to mention the fact that I had misread the instructions and thought that one-half had a spoonerism in the definition and the other in the wordplay.
Anyway, I’ve noted (solution) for the cases where the spoonerism is the solution and (definition) when the spoonerism is a definition of the solution.
Across
3 Bounder on the periphery deviously let port gas fish (10, 2 words) (solution) CA(TTLE PRO)D – “prattle cod”
10 Light crest was still turning gold, seized by dog (8) (solution) P(LAY,RO)OM – lay=was still, ro=rev(or=gold) in POM=dog. “ray plume”
11 Airs of bold Tyrolean singer will be seen to contain this (4) (definition) EANS – hidden – “bears of old” – obsolete “to give birth”
12 Holding college rite ruined college grass (5) (solution) RE(C)TI* – “tech rye”
13 Charles with part of fishing gear nearer old islet (6) (solution) CAR=Charles,NET – carnet is pronounced correctly I guess to rhyme with “narre cay” (narre=comparative of nigh and cay=island).
15 Brown fur hat crowning round head of Russian etc loosely (8) (solution) AT(TERC*)OP – “otter cap”=brown fur hat. crowning = ATOP.
18 The woman’s vessel to bake joint (7) (solution) HER,SHIP – “shirr hip”, to bake a joint.
19 Sources of wine full as ship put on power (6) (definition) P,AS,HMS – sources of “fine wool”
20 Tried duck the French coated in juice (5) (definition) SA(LE)P – “dried tuck”
21 As dams of yore mere’s mixed with tarn so it can form artesian (5) (definition) AINEE – “of female elders”, i.e. as dams of “more years.” Don’t see wordplay. From Frank: ARTESIAN + ONE = AINEE + TARN SO, but where does ONE come from unless “it” is ONE? Whoops! in my PDF to text conversion process the trailing “one” in the clue got lost. My fault for making my life hard. So indeed it’s a comp. anag. – thanks to Pelham for pointing this out.
23 Sore foe makes twelve hearts in a jiffy (6) (definition) T(H)RICE – “four so” – since 4 (four) x 3 (thrice) = 12
25 Conflagration (7) INFERNO – the competition word
28 Fat put in stores – fifty do reast badly (8) (solution) LODESTAR – “lard stow”.
30 Cup wretch knocked back – cause to empty Scotch (6) (solution) TAR,GUM=rev(mug,rat), “gar toom”=Scots cause and Scots empty
31 Inferior bit of ironstone? Cried ‘Fake!’ (5) (definition) POOR,I – “fried cake”
32 Set of steps with line left out where pegs were pinned (4) (definition) STI[l]E – sty=where “pigs were penned”
33 Describing some of kittens brings container when taking in a function (8) (definition) C(A,ROLE)AN – Describing some of “Britain’s kings”.
34 Fools trapped in tangle of reeds witness seizure (10) (solution) RE(ASSES)SED* – “See arrest”.
Down
1 Wages dropping? Beg quietly with very kind person around (10) (solution) S(PRAY,P)AINT – “pay spraint”. Spraint = “otter’s dung.”
2 What becomes evident as e.g. rare pot’s left in punt? (4) (definition) B(L)ET – “pear rot”
3 A cut deflected in Civil Service – one’s accustomed to parry darts (6) (definition) C(ACTU*)S – one’s accustomed to “arid parts” – one being our cactus.
4 Frost affecting woodland? Experiment with many sheets, we hear (7) (solution) TRI,REME=”tree rime”
5 Heat or charm that hurts after hypnotist’s ending (5) (definition) T,OUCH – “cheat or harm”
6 Digger carried weight, see, teaching boys and girls (6) (solution) LO,COED – “ko load” – ko is Maori digging stick.
7 Reduce intervening space in gardens for some stuff holding father up (8) (solution) P(ERIS)ARC – rev(sire in crap=cram=stuff). “serry park”, where serry=close together.
8 Where rat’ll comb? Such bran (chesil) stores (5) (definition) RANCH – hidden – where “cattle roam”
9 Love sort of mint glace with end of flake stuck in? Bairn matter (8) (solution) O,NE-P,I(E)CE – nep=catmint. “Wean pus”=bairn matter (pus=matter is in Chambers) [Frank’s comment: I had to write down the words phonetically, so as not to be distracted by the spelling.]
14 Composer called name for d-dish with tell-tale flavour around (10) (solution) TA(P-PETRI)NG – “Tippett rang”= composer called. Ref. Petri dish, TANG=”tell-tale flavour”, ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Tippett who’s a composer. I struggled a lot with this clue not having heard of Tippett so had to wait for lots of crossing letters and then needed Frank’s help!
16 Stoop manner in a tread that’s jerky (8) (solution) RAINDATE – (in a tread)* – “deign rate”=stoop,matter
17 Cotton bargain in US, yippee, beginning to sell around England! (8) (solution) WHE(ENG)E,S[ell] – “jean whize” – Chambers says that “whiz”=”bargain”. Frank says not quite sure how to pronounce the answer so that it spoonerizes to “jean whiz”, but that’s close enough.
20 Woman put on large-scale series of events, vegetable exhibitions (7) (solution) SHE,EPOS – “pea shows”.
22 Rampant mange round dog’s middle – sever claws? (6) (definition) GNOMAE – “clever saws”=O in mange*
24 One part of Bible with God being sent up, having street fête? By no one means (6) (definition) I,NT,OED – rev(deo) – [not having] “straight feet”
26 I’m toff in Rome – that’s some titfer I adopt (5) (definition) FERIA – hidden. “time off” in Rome (Roman festivals).
27 More than one stiff from the weights finish up with horse? Not he (5) (definition) OD,ORS – more than one “whiff from the States”. rev(horse – he, do=finish). Ref. American spelling of odours.
29 Bard who’s one that’s boxed? (4) (definition) AR(A)K – “hard booze “
Thanks Azed for an enjoyable puzzle and ilancaron for the blog.
21ac: The pdf version I was using has the word “one” on the end of the clue.
thanks Pelham — I used Google docs PDF upload with OCR recognition which mangled the text due to the side-by-side columns which meant that I had to post-process… and ONE was lost. Mea culpa.
ilancaron – using my PDF reader on GNU/Linux, I can copy ‘n’ paste text from PDF files (I have done before with Azed when no print version was available). Can’t your reader do that?
Nick
Thank you for tickling out all the Spoonerisms ilancaron. I’m glad it was cooler last weekend. It would be interesting to known how long it takes Azed to construct this sort of torment.
Yes, we started this in summer, but had to wait till December to finish it as our brains were overheating..