Solving time: 24 minutes (one dubious answer)

Another sound puzzle from Dac which held my enjoyment right the way through.
Not terribly sure about 13 across, I wondered if the countries had been switched.  I thought (wrongly) MATÉ is a food in Japan, and a China is Cockney for a MATE (China Plate).   However a check in Chambers reveals MATE to be a Paraguayan bush that can be made into a tea, so any ideas?

ACROSS
1  BIGAMIST Usually this tends to attract a cryptic definition (Is the penalty for this criminal two mothers-in-law? (c) Les Dawson). This conveyed a nice image  Epic film =  BIG MIST about A.
5. CAMPER    River =  CAM   TRAVELLER reversed =  PER
10 LOTTO L =  League +  OTTO
11/12 LOITERING WITH INTENT  Anag of  WINTER NIGHT inside anag of TOILET. 
13 MATÉ  See above
15 ARMED A Cockney would say ‘ARMED for ‘INJURED’
17 MOON-EYED MO = a short time  ONE +  YE’D  Why “met”?
19 DRAGONET Curse =  DRAT with GONE = dead inside
20 NURSE Railwaymen’s = NUR’S + Introduction to engine = E
22 EASE  Ecstasy tablets, I am told = E’S
23/27 HAVE A LOT ON ONE’S PLATE  Cryptic def.  I would normally feel uneasy about these clues that could contain  ONE’S or YOUR - but I suppose that the clue wording makes it clear in this instance.
28 ADAIR The late RED ADAIR was a chap who fought oil rig and other tough fires.
30 MANDINGO MAN + DINGO
DOWN
1 BELOW PAR    BE + LOW + PAR(T)
2 GET IT EG reversed + TIT
3 MOOD INDICO Low noise -  MOO DIN D = died  I GO = I attempt.  The classic piece made famous by Duke Ellington.
6 ALEX  ALE + X 
7 PRIVATEER PRIVATE + ER
8 RAGGED Double def
9 SIGNPOST Double def   Nicely worded!
14 KENNELMAID   Cryptic def   Hmmmm……
16 MARE’S NEST aNAGRAM OF steersman
17 MANDALAY A LAD reversed inside MANY
18 LEONARDO On = working  inside anag of ORDEAL
21 RECOIL RE = conCerning  COIL = form of contraception.  Not seen before in a daily crossword!
24 ENEMA I don’t think a serene man would happily face one of these!
25 TRAIN  Double def
26 OPEN  O = Old   pen = Penitentiary = Prison.

I was at a beer-tasting event last night, so was hoping for an easy puzzle today - no such luck! I groaned when I saw it was Araucaria, but after looking over the clues I saw the theme and relaxed a bit. As a former Ladbrokes betting-shop manager I’m very familiar with the racecourses and big races that make up today’s theme, and quickly found them all. As for the rest of it though… This would have been OK as a Saturday prize puzzle, when most solvers are at home and have access to dictionaries and reference books, but I certainly wouldn’t have finished it on the train! As it is I had to look up 4 or 5 answers in online dictionaries and/or Wikipedia. I’m half convinced 12ac is actually a made-up word! I couldn’t find it on OneLook.com.

Across
1 GOO(DAFTER)N,O,ON
10 A,IN TREE - last racecourse I got, after getting its race (26ac).
11 TH(WAIT)E - straightforward wordplay, but I didn’t know the word itself and had to look it up to check.
12 FA(B,B)Y - is this really a word? Not in any online dictionaries I consulted, anyway. Obviously short for fabulous, but…
13 (be)D,ON,CASTER - took me a while to see how DON was indicated, as the whole clue appears to just be a definition of CASTER (apart from “of course” at the end).
14 EP’S,O.M.
16 STOCK,HOLM = “home” - another dodgy homophone, I certainly don’t pronounce them the same.
18 DI(SIN)VE,ST - tricky wordplay, but just about fair I think.
19 (Main)TENON - I’d heard of Madame de Maintenon and guessed it must be a place in France, so a tenon must be the bit that sticks out and a mortise is the hole it goes into. I never knew which way round they were before.
20 OVER,TIMER - strange word, don’t think I’ve ever seen it used before.
23 PE(T)AL - I’ve never been fond of model=T as in Ford. I think I’ve only seen it in the Guardian though.
24 ST LEGER - LEG inside (REST)*, first thematic race I got, which allowed me to quickly put in all the other thematic entries.
25 (be)GUINE,AS - well, I’d heard of the song “Begin the Beguine”, but didn’t know it was a dance.
26 G,R(AND,N)ATIONAL - only worked out the wordplay as I was typing this up.

Down
2 O,M(NIB)USES
3 DERBY - as in the Manchester Derby between United and City.
5 EATING OUT (tongue-ti)* - missing “ed”.
7 hidden in “gOD IS Taking” - surprisingly well hidden, I didn’t get it until I had all the checked letters.
8 HATFIELD HOUSE (used half the 10)*, with 10 just being used as IO. Actually in Herts, it’s the home of the Marquess of Salisbury.
9 DEC,RIMIN(i),A,LISE=isle* - definition is “permit”, which is very loose. Didn’t get this till I had all the checking letters either.
17 OENOTHERA - the evening primrose genus. I cheated with this one, looking it up on Quinapalus Word-Matcher when I had O?N???E?A. The wordplay is (ONE*),OTHER,A with “different one” being clued twice. Quite clever actually.
21 EULER (”oiler”) - ref. the phrase “pour oil on troubled waters“.
23 PRIM,O - guessed it from the name of the author, but didn’t figure out where 17 came in until I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Ah what’s the theme, I thought as I opened the back pages of the Independent. Momentarily distracted by the pictures of weekend’s big fight between Arsenal and Chelsea, I returned to wondering if the theme was that there was no theme. Then I noticed the grid and the big H staring me in the face. A couple of clues later I filled in the initial aitches of all the across entries. Have we had this one before or was that Virgilius’s side-kick Brendan?

With the extra checking the puzzle was a dream. None of the obscure words that Gordius gave us or the difficulty of yesterday’s Tees. This was a straightforward puzzle with some truly excellent clues.

Apologies for the lateness of this entry, but I had technical problems earlier today, and have since had to sit through a mind-numbing Property Strategy meeting for a couple of hours.  The delay has nothing to do with the difficulty of the crossword, but if it weren’t for a couple of moments of inspiration and the handiness of an old edition of Chambers, it could have been… 

In my opinion, a weekday crossword should be one that can be solved by your average commuter with no access to reference sources, and with words which are in the public domain, or at least which can be worked out and checked later, if necessary. Obscure words or references should be kept to a minimum to allow difficult solutions to be worked out from checked letters. Gordius is one of the more difficult setters due to the proliferation of hard clues in his puzzles, and this one is no exception. It took me a good 35 minutes and even then I still had four or five answers I had to check with Chambers, and a couple I’m still not sure about.

13 MERIMEE - as in Prosper Merimee (1803-1870), the French author.   He wrote the novel on which the opera Carmen is based.

15 DURANCE - DU(RAN)CE - I may be misinterpreting this, but I believe the setter wants us to consider “arrested” as “ran in”, so that we get RAN in DUCE (Mussolini).   “In durance vile” is an old way of saying “in jail”, especially an unpleasant jail.

18 TWO - (<=owt) - as in Two’s company… 20 ICENI - (nice)*I - the “for” is surely superfluous?

6 VANDERBILT - (led vibrant)* - referring to Cornelius Vanderbilt, an American financier that made a fortune on shipping and railways in the 19th century.

7 CHARON - CHAR-ON - the ferryman who carried dead people over the Styx in Greek mythology.

8 IDLE - homophone of IDOL - Apart from being unimaginative, the clue doesn’t read well.   It should read “False god heard not to be working” for the wordplay to make any sense. 13 MAFIA - “starts” Many A Feud In America - poorly disguised and I don’t like the use of single-letter words like A and I in this type of device.

28 INGE - s(INGE)r - referring to William Ralph Inge, who was a professor of divinity at Cambridge and the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral between 1911 and 1934.

29 EDNA - (<=ANDEs)

Another fine puzzle from Tees and, in keeping with the last few Monday puzzles, quite difficult in places.