I thought this was pretty tricky but I struggled with all but one of the long answers that form the perimeter of the grid, so that will have prevented me from really getting going. Most unlikely word of the puzzle: 9D, by a country mile.

A decent Friday puzzle with some tough nuts to crack. One name I’d never come across before, and required Google’s help, some humorous touches, and a little linked mini-theme including two phrases, one of which I’m not utterly convinced by.

ACROSS:

1. S(CULL I)ON.

10. DU(N)G. Ya dig the clue, man?

11. STRAIGHT A’S. Double definition, but links with 24ac for 15, 22.

12. WA(ll street)BASH. I don’t know the song, but this sounded more likely than WAMASH.

14. UNBEATEN. Quite hard till I saw the def had to be ‘Scrambled eggs will not be’.

15, 22. UTTER L(ovel)Y HO NEST. Straight as Adie, with space = straight as a die. Nic etransformation of those two clues, but was it necessary to indicate the space? There’s no mention of the ’A' in Adie becoming lower case, or  ’straight A’s’ becoming ’straight as’. And I don’t think ‘utterly honest’ is a recognised phrase. I’d be happier with it used as a definition for ’straight as a die’, not vice versa.

17. A NTH R AX. N here is nth, not just N.

20. PAN D EMIC (MICE*).

23. ADSORPTION (ON SPORT AID*). Not wuite sure what the surface is hinting at - celeb sports pundits generating hot air?

24. (l)ADIE(s). Nice wordplay, ref the BBC’s Kate Adie. ‘One-time’ seems a little harsh, I believe she still does some broadcasting now and then.

26. SASH AYE D.

DOWN:

1. OC(CUP)ANT (ACTON*).

4. S(NAR)LUP. PLUS* around RAN<.

5. S(C)RIA BIN. AIRS*. I was torn between this and the equally improbable SCAIRBIN.

6. DISHWASHER. CD, ref supposed practise of making you wash the dishes if you can’t pay for your meal. It always happened in the Beano, but has anyone done it in real life?

7. O PI(r)ATE. ‘At’ seems redundant - a minor quibble.

16. LAMPPOST. ‘Going’ as in peeing, setter unusually meaning the dog (unless Brummie’s referrring to his own habits when caught short after a night on the ale).

24, 21. ADAM AND EVE. Cockney rhyming slang, as in ‘Wouldya Adam n Eve it!”

Solving time:  29 mins      I spotted a theme, I think, mentioned under the relevant clues.

< = reversed   * = anagram

ACROSS

1 DUN MOW FLIT CH     This is the theme, I think.   I was very pleased to work out the answer  (which is completely new to me) entirely from the straightforward wordplay and then try to discover what is what all about.     Apparently a flitch (bacon) is given to couples who satisfy a jury in Dunmow (Essex) about their relationship.    Goes back to medieval times (when it was very well known seemingly) and has been revived in recent times.    The symmetrically opposite 27 across is also relevant, I think, as noted below.

10 A VA (I) L (e)     One of two references to e = ecstasy in this puzzle, defined here as drug, in 25 as tablet

11 RAD I OGRAM    Margo<     Rad = excellent (from US apparently).

12 KOHL   “Coal”    Cosmetic used as eye make-up

15 HYDROZOA   (hard oozy)*

19 TUR GID    (Dig rut)<

20 ALASTAIR   a last air (swansong)

25 SAUTERN ES   (Nature’s)* + es      ‘bubbly’ indicates the anagram

27 C HE ESEMONGER   (some green)*   ‘crumbling’ a very apposite anagram indicator.  I solved this first time round and the word struck me as unusual (but it does exist).   I realised why later because a particular cheese monger famously sought 1 across, I discovered.    So I think this may be a theme item also.

DOWN

2 UGLY   First and last letters.

3 MARAT H ON

5 LEOPARDESS  (Eros lapsed)*    Another word I looked up to confirm it existed, it’s in my Concise OED.

8 BACK CHA(r)T

9 CATHODE-RAY TUBE    Box = TV

17 S (ERE NI) TY   NI = Northern Ireland = province

21 MAG NUM(b)

Quite a few long answers in this which made it a fairly quick solve. Naturally, there are a couple of answers which I don’t really understand: 13 and 15A. Oh, and 16D.

Solving time: ages - at least 6 hours

This puzzle had 44 clues in total, 17 with misprints, and 16 to be treated somehow. That leaves 11 normal clues with no treatment. I’m sure there’s someone out there who had this done in an hour or so and then took Fido for a walk whistling a merry air. That person isn’t me. I’ve been fighting with this one for nearly a week as I write this, and still have one answer I can’t quite justify.

I solved 25-30 of the clues without realising what this was all about. I spent time trying to make anagrams of the title, and most of all, trying to find the misprint phrase. For ages, this looked as if it was going to be THE TA_L_W_T IN THE ____ (underscores in the second word indicating spaces where one or more letters could go). But searching of Chambers established that none of the TA?L???? or TAL?????? words made any sense. All I had for sure was that the words amended in the grid seemed to have some jumbling near the end. I also knew that 15A was HOSTA, converted to HTOSA or ATOSH, and the latter looked more plausible to me. At long last, I decided to cheat a bit with 1D, the one about the map projections. Here, I’d failed to realise that the word ‘or’ in the clue was not a def/wordplay link, but the beginning of the answer. So I looked for (g)LOB(e) in (right shape)*, not {or,(gl)O(be) in (right shape)*} which gives orthographies, which I found with the aid of the Chambers CD-Rom when I decided to cheat a bit. Now if my ‘end-jumble’ idea was right, the end of this word had to be jumbled to fit. Cheating again, I found that raphies* is Shar-pei. Also, 15D now had to be HTOSA and I remembered Tosa = a dog breed, so down went the penny. The phrase is not THE ____ IN THE ____, but THE TAIL WAGGING THE DOG - at 6D I had one of those fatal mischosen misprints - the def. of BEATEN, misprinted as ‘banked’ was ‘banged’, not tanked = thrashed.

LASSIE and SETTER at the end of the long answers helped to settle lots of stuff in the grid, and I was soon down to the last few clues - 1A and 4D, and 41A. A bit more cheating on these found LUATH and RACHE, my last two definite dogs. That just leaves one dubious dog at 4D (see below) but otherwise I reckon I’m done.

Overall verdict - a fair puzzle, but some of those dogs are a bit obscure and the internet has been well trawled for this report. But for someone who generally prefers cats (mostly for reasons of laziness), this was quite educational.