The usual entertaining and varied mix from Julius. Thank you.

ACROSS | ||
1 | GRETA GARBO | Actor Bogart shaking with rage (5,5) |
anagram (shaking) of BOGART with RAGE | ||
6 | EMIL | Continental chap seen in vermeille every now and again (4) |
every other letter (now and again) of vErMeIlLe | ||
9 | REDEPLOYED | Embarrassed editor hiding base gambit assigned elsewhere (10) |
RED (embarrassed) ED (editor) contains (hiding) E (e, base of natural logarithm) PLOY (gambit) | ||
10 | SNUB | Ignore small Greek character… bye! (4) |
S (small) NU (Greek character) B (bye, a non-hit score in cricket) | ||
12 | BODICE RIPPER | Sexually explicit British epic period novel Romeo? (6,6) |
anagram (novel) of B (British) EPIC PERIOD then R (romeo, phonetic alphabet) | ||
15 | EAST COAST | Each way price laid about a side of Great Britain? (4,5) |
EA (each) ST (street, way) COST (price) contains (laid about) A | ||
17 | HELOT | He’s enthralled by the lottery (5) |
found inside (enthralled by) tHE LOTtery – a slave | ||
18 | ROOTS | Test batsman, opener from Somerset, becomes established (5) |
ROOT (Joe Root, test batsman) then first letter (opener) from Somerset | ||
19 | AIR GUITAR | Instrument invented by plucky performer? (3,6) |
cryptic definition | ||
20 | ACTION REPLAY | Reprise Cleopatra in new year (6,6) |
anagram (new) of CLEOPATRA IN then Y (year) | ||
24 | KIEV | Capital that is outwardly grand. Very (4) |
IE (that is) inside (outwardly has…) K (one thousand, grand) V (very) | ||
25 | OFF BALANCE | Somewhat unstable, Oscar leaves money in the bank (3,7) |
O (oscar, phonetic alphabet) FF (following pages, leaves) BALANCE (money in the bank) | ||
26 | TATE | Going around French State Gallery (4) |
ETAT (state, French) reversed (going round) | ||
27 | STROKE PLAY | Some golf kept royals busy (6,4) |
anagram (busy) of KEPT ROYALS | ||
DOWN | ||
1 | GORY | Bloody good men – last in infantry (4) |
G (good) OR (other ranks, men) then infantrY (last letter in) | ||
2 | ENDS | Puts a stop to English nudist regularly getting stripped (4) |
E (English) then NuDiSt (every other letter, regularly getting stripped) | ||
3 | APPROACH SHOT | A good one might make chap shoot par! (8,4) |
anagram (might make) CHAP SHOOT PAR – read the definition as: a good one (the solution) might make… | ||
4 | AIOLI | Top quality oil stirred into dressing (5) |
AI (a1, top quality) then anagram (stirred) of OIL | ||
5 | BEEFEATER | Yeoman’s ale containing iron consumed (9) |
BEER (ale) containing FE (iron) ATE (consumed) | ||
7 | MANIPULATE | Met Al up in Ambleside about upcoming work (10) |
8 | LABORATORY | Research facility in which question of political leaning is asked? (10) |
LAB OR A TORY (question of political leaning) | ||
11 | WITHOUT A CLUE | Morse completely stumped, unable to start the crossword (7,1,4) |
double cryptic definition – fictional detective Inspector Morse was a keen crossword solver | ||
13 | BEAR MARKET | Identify gamble covering weak investment climate (4,6) |
EARMARK (identify) inside (with…covering) BET (gamble) | ||
14 | ASSORTMENT | Sanction old registered trademark “Bottled Potpourri” (10) |
ASSENT (sanction) contains (…bottled) O (old) RTM (registered trade mark) | ||
16 | AT A PROFIT | Throw up some confetti for Pat Archer, making hay (2,1,6) |
found reversed (throw up) inside (some) congetTI FOR PAT Archer | ||
21 | PABLO | Spanish chap game to get infusion of different blood type? (5) |
PoLO (game) with O replaced with AB (getting infusion of different blood type) | ||
22 | ANIL | Indigo metal block (5 down) (4) |
ANvIL (metal block) missing (down) V (5) | ||
23 | DEFY | Stand up to democratically elected Free Yemen leaders (4) |
leading letters of Democratically Elected Free Yemen |
7d is a backwards inclusion.
9a is missing ED.
Thanks PeeDee & Julius. Very good.
Always a pleasure doing a Julius.
thanks PD and J — I misled myself into parsing 25a OFF BALANCE as [o]OFF,BALANCE with OOFF being another version of OOF=money. Oh well. Didn’t see leaves=pages=ff.
Thanks Julius and PeeDee. I’m another who did not parse the FF in OFF BALANCE and also the missing V in ANIL
What copmus said – many thanks to both.
Thanks Hovis for the corrections – fixed now.
Thanks Julius and PeeDee
Enjoyable solve as usual from this setter and found it not quite as hard as he can be. Seemed to be a bit of sport floating around in the answers but nothing connecting to a theme.
Was another who didn’t see the FF (pages) at 25 but everything else was able to be parsed.
Finished down the bottom with ANIL, ACTION REPLAY and the tricky to parse PABLO the last one in.
No, absolutely not. If ff (following sections,pages, lines, whatever is deemed appropriate by the educated reader) = leaves, then I give up.
I prefer the ooff option, but only one man knows
Thanks PeeDee for your blog and thanks too to those who have commented.
In Chambers, p=page and pp=pages. Although a folio is a leaf, it’s probably a bit of a stretch to make f=folio ff=folios=leaves.
I’m sorry that this has so exercised Dansar that s/he is contemplating taking up sudoku or decoupage and I hope that a solution can be found. Thoughts with you, etc.
best wishes to all, Rob/Julius
Decoupage possibly, sudoku never.
Dansar @9, Julius @10
What’s the problem? From Chambers:
ff – 2. Folios (printing)
folio
noun (pl folios)
1. A leaf (two back-to-back pages) of a book
2. A leaf of paper in a manuscript, numbered on the front only and blank on the verso
This took me several sittings to complete but it was worth the effort. Thanks Julius and PeeDee.
Thank you Gaufrid @12
Folios works much better. I should have seen that Julius gave that parsing @10 but I was too busy looking up “decoupage” to notice.
Thank you Julius, PeeDee and others!
I am so ignorant of finances that I did not know BEAR MARKET: apparently it is so called because a bear attacks by going down on its paws (whereas a BULL MARKET is so called because the bull attacks by raising its horns.
If I can be so bold, I think to have SHOT as part of an anagram that includes SHOOT is not very elegant.
On the other hand, I thought that 8d was great!