Fifteensquared

Solving time 14:43

I raced through the top half in a couple of minutes, but then struggled with the bottom half and really struggled with the SE corner. Nothing particularly difficult and all seemed pretty straightforward once I got them, so it was just down to me losing the plot rather than the clues being tougher. Really good surface readings throughout, not a shaky one to be seen.

Across
1 INSIGHT - “incite”. Pretty dubious homophone, as the stress is on the wrong syllable no matter what your accent.
5 SNIPES - good CD. Maybe it’s because the test match is on at the moment, but I was fooled by the cricket surface until I got a couple of crossing letters.
12 INSPECTOR,AT,(chas)E
15 ISRAELITES - (realise it’s)*
20 SPOT(LIGHT)S - previous nonsense removed after Eileen’s comment!
26 GROYNE - “groin”. A mole can also be a breakwater.
27 ELEMENTS - double def.
28 RAKISH (Shark I)* - I thought “into the wild” was quite a good definition really.
29 TE(T)ANUS - last letter of aunT in Austen* - tried for far too long to find a word with EMMA in it!

Down
1 I,A,GO - the villainous character in Shakespeare’s Othello.
3 GUERNSEY - (us,energy)* - got this from crossing letters, then realised it was an anagram.
6 NAR,ROW - RAN rev
8 SURREALIST (I, art’s rules)* - good anagram &lit., although it could be argued that the cryptic grammar requires the I to be at the start of the word rather than mixed in with the anagram fodder.
14 GROUND,WORK - I was fooled into thinking this was an anagram of (land, labour) for a while.
16 I’M,POST
18 DIPLOMA,T
24 AN(O)N
25 IS,IS - a bit unfair. If the clue said “Goddess is first and last”, I’d have got it in a second.