On the easier end of the Azed scale – but nonetheless required dipping into the BRB. Attached is the raw grid I scribbled on just for fun.
Across
1 C(H,L,O)RACNE – h,l,o in cancer*. A kind of acne that makes teenage life miserable.
10 RO,UX – ro=abbrev(recto=right-hand page) and ux=abbrev(uxor=wife) and ROUX is a thickener used in baking. I suppose.
11 GOA B(EA)N – EA=river in Gabon*. Where “at edges of” is the containment indicator.
12 O(REA)DES – are* in odes and they are (mountain) nymphs.
13 MARS,H – ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romney_Marsh
14 W(INTER)ISE – winterize for the Brits.
15 BEIN[g] – Scots well-off.
16 PEAR – hidden. Turns out there’s a Conference pear.
17 HUCKS(T)ERESS – T in (suckers she)*. &lit.
19 MONTICOLOUS – mountain-dwelling=”living the high life”. Haha. Now for the wordplay…
23 ISMS – alternate letters of “lissomest”.
26 SPR[a]Y
28 RHEOT*,ROPE – “commutator for reversing an electric current.” (or the)* followed by rope=cable.
29 GAR,NI – rev(in, rag). Whiled away many an hour as a child listening to my father’s nostalgic stories about his rags at Cambridge. Some of which were rather cruel in retrospect.
30 [m]UNITION – conjunction, i.e. “making one”
31 ENT,ROPY
32 IMAC – i.e. an iMac – (mica)*
33 IN,TEGRAT,E – turns out that target=”neck or breast of lamb”.
Down
1 C(R)OMB – (shepherd’s) crook
2 HORDE,U,M – barley (grain crop)
3 LUETIC – (clue it)*. Where lues=pestilence and luetic is “an etymologically unjustifiable formation” thereof.
4 R(ADIO S,T)ATION – adios=farewell
5 CO,STAE – rev(eats). Ribs.
6 NAME-DROPPING – (in garden pomp)*
7 S,ER(I)ES – a mathematician would quibble that a sequence is not a series. ‘S=is following by I in rev(sere=drying)
8 [c]LASSA – struggled a bit with this. But serious drugs are classified as class A and there’s a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassa_fever from Nigeria.
9 INHERES – hidden. “is natural”.
11 G[l]ENS – glens=ghylls and GENS=Roman clan.
17 HAIR-GEL – “superior dressing”. Another haha. (a girl he)*
18 SUR(CO)AT – a Scots undershirt is a surcoat. Um… why? and surat=coarse cotton.
20 O’,ME(R)TA – R in mate*. And O’ = on. Mafia code of “honour”.
21 I(RR,UP)T – our roller is a Rolls-Royce=RR.
22 OP,TIM[e],A – a=abbrev(accepted)
24 S(H)ANK – “fifth from rough” = h
25 TONY – two meanings where wally=stupid=inept=tony and ref. US theatre award http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_award
27 YINCE – hidden. Scots for something or other… “for the express purpose and nothing else”=”given” I suppose.
Thanks Azed for the puzzle and ilancaron for the blog.
19ac: MON [a Japanese family badge or crest = Sign of Japanese family] + TICOLOUS [sounds a bit like “tickerless” = “lacking heart”: note the approximate homophone indicator “(does one hear?)”].
27dn: YINCE is Scots for “once” [St Mirren’s formerly].
25d
More precisely ‘a wally’ = ‘a tony’ (a simpleton).
I had to check that in Chambers in case there was such a thing as ‘a sony’. Ref Sony awards.
19a
I was greatly amused by the use of ‘lacking heart = tickerless’ in 19a. It took a while to parse the clue, but not after I discovered what a ‘mon’ was.
BRB: the bevel-rimmed bowl?
Thanks for the blog – a few I couldn’t parse in this one. I thought 19ac was supposed to contain a homophone of ‘callous’, so unsurprisingly couldn’t make sense of the rest. I didn’t find the neck and breast of lamb reference in 33ac, and also couldn’t figure out ROUX: the RO bit escaped me and I didn’t remember UX. That particular clue didn’t slow me down though, because I make a ROUX at least once a week as the first step on the path to macaroni cheese.