A very enjoyable puzzle liberally sprinkled with anagrams and cryptic definitions. The clue surfaces are uniformly well-crafted. Specially liked the neat anagram at 8D and the wordplay with ‘bill’ in 23A.
Across
1 UPPER CLASS cd, I think. Help welcome for a better explanation.
7 IFFY [j]IFFY, from ‘jiffy bag’, a padded postal bag/envelope.
9 BERG hidden in ‘NovemBER Game’. Refers to Alban Berg, the Austrian composer.
10 SKIN DIVING cd
11 KIDNAP cd. A pun-style cd, issue = KID and NAP = take. I would have preferred a ? with this clue.
12 ETERNITY (TINY TREE)*
13 TEASPOON cd. Nice play on the words ‘bags’ and ‘leaves’ (though I have never used a teaspoon to take out leaves – the strainer does that job well enough)
15 ITCH [w]ITCH (craigfluke). A rare word, ‘craigfluke’ – found it listed in Chambers and not the online dictionaries. Craigfluke is a type of flat fish, aka the witch.
17 GLEE hidden in ‘gigGLE Endlessly’
19 KINDNESS KIN (family) (ENDS)* S (son)
22 SARDONIC (CANDIES OR – E)*. Good one!
23 CO-STAR COST (expense) A R[eluctance]. Another fine clue with the ‘bill’ of the definition blending perfectly with ‘expense’. I did think that two ‘hint of’s in succession could have been avoided.
25 ANNO DOMINI The full form of AD (A + head of ‘Department’), with ‘these days’ as the definition.
26 ELAN ELAND (antelope) – D
27 TROT dd. one’s left => one belonging to the political Left, Trotskyist.
28 DEGENERATE (GET NEAR)* in DEE (river)
Down
2 PREMISE (I SEE PM)* around [blai]R
3 EGG ON EGG (a type of bomb) ON (opposite of ‘off’)
4 CESSPOOL (COPE LOSS)*
5 ALIVE AND KICKING d&cd
6 SADDEN AD (of 25A) in S (small) DEN (Study)
7 INVENTION (IVE NOT)* in INN (pub)
8 FANATIC (IN FACT A)*
14 SPEEDBOAT cd. ‘Main’ in the nautical sense in the cryptic reading.
16 INACTION I (Flimsy) (NO I CANT)*
18 LEARNER R (recipe) in LEANER (less fat)
20 SEALANT SEAL (marine mammal) ANT (insect)
21 ON HOLD ON (working) HOLD (judge, as in ‘hold the defendant guilty’)
24 SPEAR S[ound] P (soft) EAR (organ)
Thanks for a great blog, shuchi.
A most enjoyable puzzle – and somewhat easier than the February FLIMSY, I thought.
23ac was a fine clue, but 25ac was my favourite today.
I agree with your parsing of UPPER CLASS: a Dante-esque cd?
The wording in 13ac is still puzzling me though.
13ac: I took this to mean that a teaspoon can take tea bags and tea leaves out (of a teacup/pot). A little loose as definition (a teaspoon is more likely to be used for stirring), but I liked the surface image it conjured.
Thanks for the tea and sympathy, shuchi!
Thanks shuchi.
As you say a very enjoyable puzzle with surfaces reading very much like Dante/Rufus.
I thought 11 across was a workable cd. without being split into 2 elements,but your parsing(less typo :)) makes the clue even better.
The only weak point for me was 1 across which I thought a bit vague,one of those cd.’s that you solve without being totally convinced.
Hi Scarpia, Typo fixed – thank you!