A nice twist in a crossword with conventional clues (no misprints, extra words etc. to muddy the waters). The puzzle was made more difficult by the fact that I found the clues in the top half easier to solve than those in the bottom half, so the author only appeared late in my labours on the bottom line.

As soon as EUGENE O’NEILL had made an appearance, MOURNING rang the “Mourning Becomes Electra” bell, and it dawned on me that we were supposed to metamorphose  MOURNING into ELECTRA. Amazingly this metamorphosed all the crossing down words into other valid words, which must have taken some time for Dysart to compile!

O’Neill was indebted for his plot to AESCHYLUS, who appeared in the right hand column, minus his H, which had to be inserted after ELECTRA. The character hiding was ORESTES who appeared diagonally down starting at the O below the 14 square.

 Solving time : A very on-and-off effort. 2.5 hours altogether?

My chronic lack of geographical knowledge slowed me down quite a bit in this puzzle with lots of varied and often rather clever uses of “capital”, both in definitions and wordplay. On reflection, this probably made me waste more time in those clues where the geographical capital could not possibly have been relevant, eg 4ac.

I found this easier than usual for this setter but there are still a few bits and pieces that I don’t understand.

Solving time, 22 mins.

* = anagram < = reversal

ACROSS

5 A WARD’S Maybe not exclusively an urban district, but usually so.

7 SLE EVE (eve Els)< If golfer Ernie Els could claim royalties from his appearances in puzzles, he’d be even richer.

9 DIARY OF A NOBODY (A do on Friday boy)* Well-known book about Charles Pooter written by George Grossmith (late 1800s)

11 SEMAN TIC (cit(e) names)<

13 RE FORM RE = Religious Education

15 IN DIRE STRAITS A rare foray by Quixote into the world of pop music, the Knopfler brothers being part of the former group Dire Straits.

17 (L)IBERI(a) S

19 VI (NEGAR) Y (anger)* (ivy)*

20 HYDRO (COR) TISONE cor = ‘that’s amazing’ in (ones thyroid)*

23 OF FISH

24 STONED A hidden that took me ages to spot.

DOWN

1 CARD pack of cards

2 SALA (MAN) D ER

3 VERB Hidden. ‘kiss’ and ‘cuddle’ are examples.

4 T ENDERISER (reindeer’s)*

6 D AYSTAR (rays at)*

8 L ONE R left and right sides

10 F ACE-S AVER

12 ENID BLYTON (Tiny blonde)* Children’s writer, one of the most popular ever.

14 F AIR G ROUND

16 RAN (RIO) T This was my last entry. frolic = rant I don’t recall meeting before but dicts confirm it.

18 SECTS Chooses = selects and you can get to sects by taking either le (the French) or el (the Spanish) out of it.

21 RIF(l)E

22 ENDS Send = post with the s moved to the end.

Just a reminder about the common abbreviations that I use
*() = anagram (fodder)
cd = cryptic definition
dd = double definition
ha = hidden answer
ins = insertion
cha = charade

Two weeks ago, I made my blogging debut with Flimsy and I come back to Flimsy again. It was overall a very enjoyable puzzle with some brilliant clues.

Across
1 SET PIECE Cha of SET (tv) PIECE (part) Who can forget the many number of times that David Beckham has curled a ball from a free kick to move tantalisingly out of the reach of the goalkeeper into the corner of the net
5 RAGTAG Cha of RAG (tease) TAG (children’s game) The best part of my British education was the rag week at the beginning of each academic year and my discovery of this wonderful pastime called cryptic crosswords (In my first year, while waiting for a Professor Dennison lecture, I saw a group of students huddled over a Guardian newspaper. I approached them to find out what was the attraction and that was how I discovered crosswords and when the rot started - talk of misspent youth!)
10 THIN AIR *(this rain minus s)
11 SULTANA cha of SULTAN + A
(Chambers sultan n a Muslim ruler, esp () the former head of the Ottoman empire; a despot; a small white (orig Turkish) variety of domestic fowl with feathered legs and feet.
12 FLING dd
13 SHELTERED I can see COSY but the rest of the clue didn’t do much for me
14 PROMISED LAND Cha of PROMISED (assured) LAND (come down to earth)
18 HIGHLY STRUNG dd
21 HANDCLASP Somehow this clue left me unmoved
23 ELIDE *(lied) E (electricity initially)
24 SUSPEND Ins of US (America) in SPEND (invest)
25 INSIDER Cha of INSIDE (porridge or prison … I simply love that British TV series starring one of the two Ronnies; who is the one with the hairy legs?)
26 SISTER ha
27 EGG TIMER *(get grime)

Down
1 SET OFF One of those reversed anagram clues. This device has often been done with earth-shattering and heart-breaking
2 TRIVIA Ins of I (one) V (very) in TRIA (l) test mainly
Do you know that crossword aficionadoes are the people with the greatest amount of totally useless information aka trivia? You and I know the name of Don Quixote’s horse. We also know the names of all the Three Musketeers and what RURITANIA is. We know that PO, EXE and OUSE are names of rivers and SKUA is a bird and spelt backwards, AUKS are also birds. But come quiz-time and all the people want us on their team…I wonder why?
3 INAUGURAL *(a gun I) URAL (river)
4 CHRISTMAS CARDS cd
6 ALLOT Cha of AL (boy or most time clued as gangster Al Capone) LOT (a great deal)
7 TEA BREAK Ins of *(bear) in TEAK (wood) Brilliant clue with a superb imagery which reminded me of the song that starts “If you go down to the woods today…” Wasn’t that a teddy bears’ picnic?
8 GRANDADS Cha of GRAN (old woman) D (diamonds) ADS (advertisements or notices)
9 ASSET-STRIPPING An excellent cd harking back to the 70’s when many poorly-performing companies were taken over and their underlying assets (including prime real estate being used for mundane activities that could be transferred to cheaper land) disposed to realise capital gains (Sorry if I sound like a Chartered Accountant but I am one)
15 DINNER SET Another clue that didn’t do much for me
16 PHTHISIS *(this hip’s) Excellent &lit clue. It’s a good thing that I was once the Treasurer of the Malaysian Association of the Prevention of Tuberculosis to recognise this affliction.
17 AGONISES Ins of NIS (town in Serbia) in A GOES (one advances)
19 DIADEM Cha of DI (Princess) *(made)
20 TERROR dd
22 CREPE Ins of P (softly) in CREE (native Americans)
Chambers -
n any of several finely wrinkled fabrics similar to crape (qv); rubber rolled in thin crinkly sheets (cr*pe rubber); (usu cr*pe) a thin pancake.