A nicely-judged Quiptic from Hectence, I thought. There were a few that were difficult to parse, though.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Every day member gets censure in the liberal paper
DAILY TELEGRAPH
A charade of DAILY for ‘every day’ and LEG RAP in (THE)* Bit complicated, but once you had some crossers, it couldn’t be anything else.
9 Denounces experts securing Cuba-America meeting
ACCUSES
An insertion of C and US in ACES.
10 Essential to have key Russian top level domain and agents on line
CRUCIAL
A charade of the key of C, RU for the internet abbreviation for ‘Russia’, CIA for ‘agents’ and L.
11 Trace some incriminating evidence
TINGE
Hidden in incriminTING Evidence
12 One’s very sad and listless
APATHETIC
A charade of A and PATHETIC.
13 Red tent is possibly the most groovy
TRENDIEST
(RED TENT IS)*
14 Small outing to get team kit
STRIP
A charade of S and TRIP.
15 Opponent of energy with which young chaps go west
ENEMY
A charade of E and Y MEN reversed. ‘Go west’ is the reversal indicator.
17 Padre does reform outlaw
DESPERADO
(PADRE DOES)*
20 Ordnance Survey copy is boxed to send to Coventry
OSTRACISE
A charade of OS and IS in TRACE.
22 Kindle‘s brilliant!
LIGHT
A cd cum dd, I think.
23 Left with an old length of cord
LANYARD
A charade of L, AN and YARD, but why the ‘old’ is there I’m not sure. Yards are still current, although I’m a metres man myself.
24 Meteorological effect from fresh air preceding northern front
RAINBOW
A charade of (AIR)* N and BOW. BOW as in ‘front’ of a ship, which is of course pronounced differently to the BOW in RAINBOW. That’s English for you.
25 Dream of rook in flight?
CASTLE IN THE AIR
A cd cum dd. The French equivalent is to build castles in Spain, for some reason.
Down
1 Alerted Todd, who’s knocked unconscious
DEAD TO THE WORLD
(ALERTED TODD WHO)*
2 Burning oil in church nave’s initially seen regularly
INCENSE
A charade of IN, CE, N for the first letter of ‘nave’ and SE for the odd letters of ‘seen’.
3 Agreement on trade foundering one year previously
YESTERDAY
A charade of YES, (TRADE)* and Y.
4 Veteran sneered at concealed climbing net
ENSNARE
Hidden reversed in vetERAN SNEered.
5 Beguile sweetheart bearing tea and books
ENCHANT
A charade of E for the ‘heart’ of ‘sweet’, N for a ‘bearing’, CHA for ‘tea’ and NT for New Testament or ‘books’.
6 Limitless dry period is hard
ROUGH
One of a number of good surface readings from Hectence this morning. It’s [D]ROUGH[T].
7 Playwright’s retaining right for publisher
PRINTER
An insertion of R in Harold PINTER.
8 Tourist attraction provided by resort’s drag queen?
BLACKPOOL TOWER
A bit whimsical for a Quiptic, perhaps. The ‘resort’ is BLACKPOOL, then it’s TOW for ‘drag’ and ER for ‘queen’.
14 Hot into retail angle with oysters, maybe
SHELLFISH
An insertion of H in SELL followed by FISH for ‘angle’.
16 Country seat’s ruined, bringing in zero tax
ESTONIA
An insertion of O and NI for National Insurance or ‘tax’ in (SEAT)*
17 End wild chaos and peter out
DWINDLE
(END WILD)*
18 Admit jury using bad language’s no good
SWEAR IN
SWEARIN[G]
19 Kind of maths requiring a large brain’s not popular
ALGEBRA
A charade of A, LGE and BRA[IN]. Is LGE an abbreviation for ‘large’? I can’t make it work any other way.
21 Look for a wife with top class sex appeal!
AWAIT
A charade of A, W, A and IT. If somebody had ‘top class sex appeal’ they’d have A IT.
Many thanks to Hectence for this morning’s Quiptic.
Thanks Hectence and Pierre
I came here to see how to parse 14a. I had guessed it was S + TRIP but I still do not see how that relates to “team kit”.
I parsed 19a in the same way as Pierre.
Fair enough about yards being “old” – it’s only the USA and Phillippines who use feet and yards these days. Almost all of the rest of the world uses metric system now 🙂
ignore my comment above
I just found STRIP =
2 Brit. the identifying outfit worn by the members of a sports team while playing. the team’s away strip is a garish mix of red, white, and blue.
Thanks Hectence and Pierre.
Lge = large is in Chambers and Collins.
I didn’t much like the clue for BLACKPOOL TOWER as the resort is where the tourist attraction resides. I see the DAILY TELEGRAPH is a liberal paper now!
Thank you Hectence and Pierre, and Michelle for explaining STRIP!
ROUGH was great, but NI in the parsing of Estonia caught me out, as it always does since I live in France.
I can still remember going up the BLACKPOOL TOWER some 50 years ago and getting the most awful earache from the cold wind.
Joyce – Thanks Pierre for the blog as I needed you to parse 10ac. I still cannot see what purpose ‘top’ is doing in the clue.
An enjoyable solve though – just right for a lunchtime solve on your own.
Thanks Hectence.
Joyce @5, Wiki has
.ru is the Latin alphabet Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Russian Federation introduced on April 7, 1994.
Liberal in 1ac is the anagram indicator for ‘the’. The DT is becoming less liberal by the day. Not that I read it, of course.
I raced through this at the time but now, looking back, I see that I neglected to fully parse all the clues and that some were a little more complicated in construction than is usual for a Quiptic – eg ALGEBRA and DAILY TELEGRAPH.