There were three kinds of clue here:
13 were ‘beset by inflation’ — they each included an extra letter.
13 were ‘beset by recession’ — a character string (not necessarily a whole word) within the clue needed to be reversed before solving.
The rest were normal, but their solutions had to ‘suffer property repossessions’ before being entered in the grid. This meant that a word for a property had to be removed. Nice idea, though I think some were a touch sub-prime execution-wise, when what was omitted was half of a two-word phrase (although, to be fair, at least all entries were proper words).
Solving time: no idea — I did it in bits.
Grid entries are shown in BOLD. Deleted properties are shown CROSSED OUT.
| Across | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | WHOLESOME | Recession: ‘Ned’ becomes ‘den’ | ‘Whole’ = “hole”; ‘some’ = ‘a bit’. |
| 10 | OZONE | Recession: ‘a tart’s’ becomes ‘strata’ | ‘zone’; after O = love. Ozone is sometimes loosely used to mean ‘fresh, bracing air’. |
| 11 | FLATBREAD | Repossession | ‘Unable to generate’ in the sense of ‘flat batteries’; money = bread. Flatbread is (usually) unleavened bread. |
| 12 | BREAKNECK | Inflation: extra C | *(Barak keen). Breakneck speed is very quick. |
| 13 | SULLAGE | Inflation: extra P | Chambers defines ‘sullage’ as all the delightful ‘filth; refuse, sewage; scum; scoria; silt’. S = ‘last of noxious’; ullage = dregs. |
| 14 | APHESIS | Inflation: extra L | *(pea hiss). For aphesis, see … |
| 17 | ISLET | Recession: ‘llot’ becomes ’toll’ | *(tiles). An atoll is an islet. |
| 19 | PHALLUS | Repossession | PH = first letters of (‘starts to’) ‘provide hope’; ALL; US. |
| 20 | ASTON VILLA | Repossession | *(los valiant). |
| 21 | GROGRAM | Inflation: extra C | GR = Greek; Margo (a lass’s name) reversed. Grogram is a kind of coarse cloth of silk and mohair. |
| 22 | CATCHES | Recession: ‘ban’ becomes ‘nab’ | catch; E’s (‘drug’ having become a very convenient way of indicating E). ‘Catch’ can mean ‘concealed difficulty or disadvantage’. |
| 24 | SWEETENER | Inflation: extra N (?) | I think this is ‘sweep’ minus P; then ‘tener’. But I would expect ‘accepting’ to mean that one word became included in, rather than appended to, another — so I was wondering about ‘ten’ in most of ‘sweeper’. |
| 26 | HARSH | Inflation: extra E | Hidden in ‘Kandahar shouting’; ‘hard’ is the definition. |
| 28 | GREENHOUSE | Repossession | ‘Green’ = ‘young’; ‘ken’ = ‘a house, esp a disreputable one’. ‘Greenhouse’ is a word for cockpit. |
| 29 | EDITORIAL | Inflation: extra F | *(Rita oiled) |
| Down | |||
| 1 | SWAB | Recession: ‘Pom’ becomes ‘mop’ | I always like a cricket clue, and this is a sound one. The definition is ‘mop’. SA is South Australian; W and B are abbreviations used in scorecards. |
| 2 | BOREAL | Inflation: extra U | *(n labour e), where E is ’importance, finally’ (i.e. the final letter). |
| 3 | HEADMASTER | Recession: ‘Tupac’ becomes ‘caput’ | I’m not entirely happy about this one. ‘Caput’ = head; ‘master’ is a leading authority; ‘headmaster’ is an authority figure…er… |
| 4 | ROUBLE | Recession: ‘race’ becomes ‘care’ | ‘trouble’ minus its first letter. |
| 5 | VETERANS | Recession: ‘Del rang’ becomes ‘gnarled’ | *(steven ra). ‘Gnarled’ is OK as an anagram indicator; but I think the purists may take issue with RA = ‘a couple of randy’. |
| 6 | PADLOCK | Repossession | PACK around *(old). |
| 7 | SOMERSET | Inflation: extra D | *(s m dorset). Somerset, for non-Brits, is a county bordering Dorset. |
| 8 | REEK | Recession: ‘knits’ becomes ‘stink’ | ‘Breeks’ are trousers in Scotland. |
| 13 | SHUTTING | Repossession | *(things ut) — ‘things out’ minus O. |
| 15 | HEART-THROB | Recession: ‘nip’ becomes ‘pin’-up | HEAR = listen; T = supposed northern form of ‘the’ (actually, it’s a glottal stop); THROB = beat. |
| 16 | SINKS | Inflation: extra L | K in ‘sins’. Sink can mean ‘to pay (a debt)’. |
| 18 | LOOSENER | Inflation: extra A | LOO = ‘can’; *(Seren). |
| 19 | POMANDER | Inflation: extra D | MAN in PODER (‘powder’ minus D). Pomander. |
| 22 | CARDIE | Inflation: extra D (I think) | *(Dirac e); ‘Dr’ is the anagram indicator. A nice warm cardie could be described as an insulator. |
| 23 | HORRID | ? | First letters of ‘he obstinately refuses’; RID = ‘remove’. I can’t remember whether I fully worked this one out; if I did, I didn’t make a note of it.Thanks to Qaos for explaining this one — reverse characters to form ‘beastly’. |
| 24 | SIGN | Recession: ‘Nemo’ becomes ‘omen’ | Double definition — to sign is to take on. |
| 25 | TINA | Recession: ‘dia’ becomes ‘aid’, making ‘maiden’ | I suppose Tina is contained in ‘agglutinate’, though ‘Agglutinate around the maiden’ doesn’t quite seem like a full clue. Maybe I’ve got it totally wrong. |
| 27 | HOME HELP | Repossession | HOME = ‘local’, as in sports events; HE = chap, LP = Labour Party. |
23d: Recession, because “belt, say” -> “beastly” (horrid) with “ltsa” reversed. Overall, I thought this was a very fun xword to do. The “recession” part had me trying to ADD letters to the clues to make things work – the possibilities of which were endless and actually fitted in a few places, making it harder to give up that idea!