Guardian 24352/Orlando – Mungo Jerry?

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Not as hard as the last Orlando I had to blog though had to guess at a couple of defs. Please enlighten. Seemed more than average anagram count which probably explains why I found this relatively easy.

Across

1 MUM’S THE WORD=(who strummed)*
9 HESSIAN – two meanings (I recognized the cloth from somewhere)
10 DU(CHESS)ES – our game’s just CHESS.
12 MUN,GO – I don’t fully understand this — I did manage to guess the answer given M?N?O and GO is a great definition of “leave”, Saint MUNGO is a fully paid-up sponsor of Glasgow but I don’t understand the dialect part and MUN: “Scottish saint using dialect has to leave”.
13 WOOD=”would” — nice clue. A grove of limes being a WOOD though the Ximenean rule of misleading capitalization being violated.
14 MAI(SON)ETTE – SON in teatime*
19 WA,I,F – would this have won last month’s Times crossword clue competition?
22 PROGESTIN=(top singer)*
24 ARAL SEA=(alas! – are)*
25 IN FO,C,US – “dope” is our INFO.
26 SMALL CHANGE – two meanings

Down

1 MUSIC TO ONE’S EARS – (assure economist)* — another anagram. Auditor not indicating a homophone for a change but part of the definition.
2 MAIN,[constabl]E
3 TUN(IS,I)A – well-constructed clue with a sensible surface.
4 EPHES=sheep*,US – it’s an ancient Illiyrian city but I don’t see how US is produced from “no good” (other than an expression of universal anti-Americanism). “Stray sheep no good in ancient city”. (OK — I looked up US in Chambers and, yes, as a couple of commenters have noted, it’s U/S meaning “unserviceable”).
5 ON, RE(MAN)D – “bloke” is our MAN and “working” is ON (not sure why I blogged IN REMAND initially… see notes).
6 DEFINITE ARTICLE – nice CD
7 SH(AD)OW
15 CLAR(IS)SA – IS in rascal* — ref. the novel by Samuel Richardson.
16 F(ULM)AR – ULM must be in Germany. And FULMAR’s a seabird I think.
17 T(OP,S)AIL – To TAIL is to SHADOW (7D) and a TOPSAIL’s part of a boat’s rig.
18 GOO,DISH
20 FINISH=”Finnish”
23 ELFIN – hidden in “AriEL FINally”.

8 comments on “Guardian 24352/Orlando – Mungo Jerry?”

  2. 12A – According to Chambers, MUN means “must” in some dialect

    4D – I agree with Diagacht. U/S is an abbreviation for “unserviceable”

    5D – I believe this is ON REMAND

  6. I had a few problems when I pencilled in FRENCH for FINISH!

    Further to Matthew’s comment MUN means must in some Yorkshire dialects, look out for MUNT meaning mustn’t.

    On 13, Ximenes (and Azed) allow upcasing an initial lowercase letter but not downcasing an initial capital. On upcasing Ximenes says, “[…] at a pinch”.

  7. Yorkshire does not have a monopoly on MUN – it’s the same in Lancashire, though “must not” is MAUNT there, as in “Tha maunt geet t’neer t’fire”. (You must not get too near the fire)

  8. Colin, you are not alone, I did the same.

    So why is the answer _not_ “French”? Or to put it another way, is the only reason it is _uniquely_ FINISH because of the crossing letters?

    Or is it because “one hears” is too much or too little, i.e “Polish language” = French, and “Polish language one hears in Paris” = French, but “Polish language one hears” = (only) Finish?

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