Well not really; rather good, as I have come to expect from Punk. At first he seemed rather difficult and unsatisfactory, but increasingly nowadays I enjoy his well-constructed crosswords.

Between a SNAFU with my contract and a chest cold, I actually had some leisure to look at this properly this morning. Just as well - Pasquale is one of the compilers who has in the past beaten me rather badly. Today’s puzzle fortunately had some easier clues that gave you an “in”. A first-rate puzzle with some groan-out-loud puns and a couple of real stinkers.

ACROSS

1 DI(THY-RAM)B : I had to build this laboriously from the wordplay and check it online. My favourite definition is “A frenzied, impassioned choric hymn and dance of ancient Greece in honor of Dionysus.” Sounds like enormous fun. Note that a “ram” is an animal that “butts”, therefore it is a “butter”.

6 C(OP-S)E : “Elders” in the sense of “trees”. A copse is a small wooded area.

9 FOOT POUND SECOND : (TO CONFOUND DOPES)* - The FPS system is the competitor set of units to the Metric system. Loved the surface.

10 TAHR : “Regularly” is often crosswordese for “take alternating letters” - hence - ThAtHoRn. Had to check online to find that this is in fact a Himalayan goat.

11 D-AINT-IE-R

14 BUCC-AN-EER - sounds like “Buck An Ear”

15 LE(E)CH

16 SATI(r)E

18 HEAR-TB-URN

20 IT-CH(I)EST

21 GAFF(e) - I lost a lot of time insisting it was SPIT(e)

25 LIBERAL DEMOCRAT - (CREDITABLE MORAL)* Apart from Mark Oaten, obviously

26 Y AXIS - groan !

27 H(US-BAND)’ED

DOWN

1 DEF(e)AT : Not a word you use every day, but perfectly fair

2 TROPHIC : (THI(s) CROP)*

3 YA(P)S

4 ARUM : MURA(l) in reverse

5 BAD HAIR DAY : “Shock” as in the sense of a “a shock of white hair”

6 CLEANS-LATE : Again lost time with the misguided insistence that CLEAN SHEET would do the job.

7 Omitted on purpose - hint : double definition

8 ENDORPHIN : (PHONE IN DR)*

12 CAD-ERID-RIS : “Sir” “Dire” in reverse on “Cad”. It’s an allegedly haunted Welsh mountain - if you spend a night on the summit you will either wake up as a madman or a poet. I would contend that you’d have to already be one of these two things to want to spend the night on the summit.

13 ME-THUS-ELAH

14 BEST-I-ALLY : I did mention I have a chest cold. I also had a mouthful of coffee when the penny dropped on this. Cue legendary coughing-fit that will probably have me barred for life from any Costa coffee shop.

17 TUCK BOX : Reference to Friar TUCK from the Robin Hood tales

19 UNA-I-RED

22 FE(TI)D : I assume “TI” is some form of fodder

23 prinCESS : An old word for tax (quaint spelling of “assess”)

24 S(OF)A : I believe this is “S.A” (as in Sex Appeal) being “It”, with “belonging to” = “OF “. I am often wrong about such things.

Across

1 JERRY BUILDER - jerry, ? - Gerald gives ‘jerry’ but I don’t know how Bob yields ‘builder’. The phrase itself is new to me but the second word can be easily got from the crossings B, I, D, R - all from sure answers.

12 EXIST - (-s)exist

13 HEAD MISS - I know that Mrs Thatcher had the tag “Iron Lady’ and a head miss is likely to be tough. But beyond that I don’t see how this clue works. Revised to HEAD GIRL. See comment below.

15 BONESHAKER - b(one s h)aker

24 RENEW - Rene, w - Ref. to French philospher and mathematician.

16 STEW - anag. of ’swet’ after deleting ‘a’ (”one” ) from ’sweat’

18 EROS - string in ‘FathER O’Shaunessy’s’

20 DIRTY LINEN - cryptic def.

22 SAFE SEAT - cryptic def. Of course the MP would need this only when he or she stands for re-election.

26 NUANCES - The wordplay defeats me.

27 GLUTTON - glut, ton

28 POST MERIDIAN - anag. of ‘promised time’ but one could solve it just from PM. Revised to POST MERIDIEM. Came back to fix this careless mistake in typing when the fifth comment below was just posted.

Down

3 ROAD TEST - cryptic def. - “Heaps’ here are old, dilapidated cars.

4 BEEF - two defs.

5 INCREMENTS - anag. of ‘mn in secret’ after deleting ‘e’ from ‘men’

7 REALIST - anag. of ‘is later’

8 MIXED BLESSING - when ‘blessing’ is ‘mixed’, it gives ‘glibness’. What is this type of clue called? Reverse anagram?

9 GOOSEWING WIND - cryptic def. - the last entry for this landlubber but I am proud that I got it (assuming it to be right). At some moment I guessed the -ing termination and then I could guess the compound from the crossings. As it was new to me, I looked up Chambers (1998) which has ‘goosewing’ though not this answer as a whole.   Revised to FOLLOWING WIND. See comment below.

14 CAPITAL SUM - capitals, (-col)um(-bia)

17 ALL-ROUND - Cryptic def. But I would think that even ‘all round’ is a shape!

19 OFF-RAMP - During my U.S. visits I too have escaped the same way!

21 NANETTE - I guessed the name even before I got all the crossings but the anno. did not occur to me until this very moment of writing. Anag. of ‘entertain’ after deleting ‘Ir.’ Seamless surface reading.

23 SECTS - homophone of ’sex’, I think.

25 AGAR - Aga,r - This kitchen stove is not known in India. An inveterate page-turner of dictionaries that I am, I happened to notice ‘Aga saga’ the other day; its etymological note mentions this appliance. (It’s quite another matter that I forgot the word that I wanted to look up originally.)