A little trickier than normally for Phi.

Solving time: 22 mins

ACROSS

1 B LOW

2 HIGH SEAS ON

10 RATS  Star reversed

11 ERUPTION   i in not pure - all reversed

19 ODESSA  Reverse hidden

24 ROCK PIG EON  (one)*

25 EGG AND DART   New to me - a typical ornamental feature

26 SOD A   Good

DOWN

2 L U X(times as in multiplication tables) OR

3 WHIS PERE D  (wish)*  ‘d = had briefly

7 A PR(priest) IL

14 O VERD O I NG    Verdi  O = ring  NG = no good

16 C (LEAVe) AGES

22 Edwin DROOD   Door reversed

For reasons I still don’t quite know, this puzzle took me ages to solve. When I look back on it now, it appears to be fairly straightforward as far as themed puzzles go. Admittedly, there are still a few clues where I am not sure about the wordplay, but the “extra letters” device made it obvious in most cases which letter was missing, and, once you had worked out the additional instruction, the rest of the puzzle was fine.

The first thing I did was have a read through, where I picked up maybe 10-12 answers straight away. Having place these, I was left with a collection of letters that didn’t make sense, so I had to plug away at some of the less obvious clues (many of which became blindingly obvious once I had solved them of course!). Eventually I had enough letters to work out what the additional instruction was.

ENTER ALL LETTERS IN LOWER CASE EXCEPT ONES IN CAPITALS…

Now what was that supposed to mean, I thought, glancing down at the grid, and in a Eureka moment, Quito (in MOSQUITO HAWK) and RIGA (in Rigatoni) jumped out at me. A quick scan through the grid, and I discovered the other seven capitals fairly quickly.

The clues which have capitals in them were as follows:-

ACROSS

1 ANTICLIMAX - Lima, Peru - I know that the missing letter from the wordplay is E, but I don’t follow the rest of the wordplay - any takers?

18 MOSQUITO HAWK - Quito, Ecuador - M-OS(QUIT)LO-HA(s)WK - with the L removed

37 RABATTEMENTS - Rabat, Morocco - RA-BAT(TE-OMEN-T(error))S - with the O removed - rabattements are rotations coinciding with another plane in geometry.

45 TIMBER LINE - Berlin, Germany - TIM(BERLINE)S - with the S omitted - a berline being a type of carriage

DOWN

3 TELOMERE - Lome, Togo - (eel remote)* - with an E omitted - a telomere is the end bit of a chromosome

11 COCKABULLY - Kabul, Afghanistan - COCK-(s)EA-BULL-(da)Y - with the E omitted - a cockabully must be a New Zealand fish?

17 VIVIPARISM - Paris, France - VI-VI(PAR-I)S-MS - with the last S omitted - a form of reproduction where the embryo develops within the mother

25 CHROMENE - Rome, Italy - CHROME-N(i)CE - with the second C omitted - an insecticide

26 RIGATONI - Riga, Latvia - RIG + (Antonia)* without NO - with an A omitted

So in order to correctly submit the puzzle, you would have all bar the letters making up these capital cities entered into the grid in lower case.

The title has me beat though - why CIRCUMSTANCES?

Pretty simple fare for a Friday, took me just over 10 mins, with a high proportion of clues solving more or less at first look. Wordplay mostly straightforward, apart from 1ac (see below) and 20 down, which I can’t quite explain.

ACROSS:

1. COMPENSATION. STOP AN INCOME*. I see the idea, but I’m not keen on the anagram indication here. As I read it, if your income is stopped ‘like this’, i.e. by being anagrammed, then you are entitled to compensation. But bearing in mind the plethora of ways we indication anagrams, it seems a bit of a leap to say that being anagrammed automatically means a process deserving compo. What do others think?

11. STEPHEN. HE SPENT*. Ref novelist Stephen King, not King Stephen.

13. CO(ST)S. Well it wasn’t going to be a romaine heart, was it?

16. UP SETTERS. Makes a change to see the dog, not the crossword compiler used. Sadly no ref to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s original 70s reggae band.

19.  REBUT (TUBER<). Shoule be ‘potato, say’, really, but the clue wouldn’t work so simply.

21. TAR GETS. Neat.

25. (sev)ENTH RAL(ly).

26. WELL TEMPERED. I don’t know my Bach much better than the work of the Upsetters, but even I knew this one instantly.

DOWN:

2. (s)MOOCHES. ‘Can begin’ seems redundant.

3. EGLANTINE. IN A GENTLE*. Wild misleads you to look for an anagram earlier.

4. STA FF. FF ATS<. ATS was the Auxiliary Territorial service during WW2, FF means following, and all is reversed, relying on ‘retreats’ being used transitively (is that OK?).

5. TRANSIT. TRISTAN*. Anag indicator seems lacking, but as with the Bach, the definition makes it one that if you know it, you know it straight away.  

6. O PER ANT. term in psycholgoy defined by Chambers thus: “behaviour that is spontaneous as opposed to being a response to stimulus”.

10. DEMON ST(R)ABLE. The paper version reads ‘… among the racehorses horses’, which looks like an editing error - replacement word added without deleting original.

17. S(URN)AME. Good word division with a more cryptic definition than most here.

18. THE VEI L. THIEVE*, L. More usually referring to the hijab now, ‘the veil’ is, I believe, a way of referrring to a nun’s vocation.

20. B LURRE D. I see the bishop and the daughter, but what’s the rest of this about?