A nice games-themed puzzle today. A number of references in clues and I spotted at least ten in answers scattered throughout the grid.

I guess when you’ve been setting for a while, you can either spice things up for self and solvers with esoteric themes, or you can cast ever wider into the available word-pool. Paul’s been drinking deep at the fountain of vocabulary - footballers, politicians, place-names, catchphrases all get a look-in here. Some great clues as ever, hard to find any not worthy of some comment.

Had I been on the tube applying normal daily puzzle rules (all doable without recourse to reference works) I would have given up with 2dn and 13ac unfilled, but a brief look at Bradfords got me one, and the other followed.

ACROSS:

9. OLIVE TREE. TO RELIEVE*. Very well concealed anagram which took a while to spot.

10. CARP I. Wrists, as in carpal tunnel syndrome.  I knew it was some bit of the anatomy anyway.

11. ED BALLS. Whose name needs no help to be funny really.

12. MOO RAGE. Takes a little licence, but made me laugh.

13. DART. The last one to fall. Strictly, ‘as in’ is redundant.

14. WHATS UP DOC. TWO CUPS HAD. ‘Animated inquiry’ is a cryptic def for Bugs Bunny’s catchphrase.

19. VAMP I(REBA)T. Clever clue; ‘bare bum’ meaning anag of BARE.

26. E XERT (T.REX<)

27. C(LIT HERO)E.

DOWN:

1. R(O GERD)ECOVER LEY. Quite a complicated one, because I started with OG for old German, but it’s actually O GERD for ‘old German name’.

2. A(IR BO)RNE. Neatly misleading - ‘going up’ is not a reversal, it’s the definition. Not being too good on English composers, I resorted to the list in Bradfords, having guessed at the structure of the clue.

3. SEAL. 2 defs, close as verb.

4. BRAS(S)H AT(tack).

5. H(ELM)ET. It must have been tempting to link this with the previous clue, but keeping then separate allows this lovely cryptic def+wordplay.

8. SILENCE IS GOLDEN. A reverse clue, i.e. the wordplay’s in the clue - sh is au. It would be good if ’shisau’ were a word.

16. I N(”I QUIT”)Y. A stretch pehaps, but a pre-emptive ‘I quit’ is one way of refusing to be sacked.

20, 17. (acade)MICHEL PLATINI(mpossible). Amazing hidden clue, made easier if you’ve been watching the football and saw Platini, now UEFA bossm handing out the medals on Sunday night.

25. BA(H)T. The currency of Thailand.

A puzzle where no clue poses any especial difficulty. I solved 21dn first even as my eye took it in.  I got 5, 6, 7, 8, 14, 17 and 24 in the Down set before moving on to the Across set where 4, 12, 13, 15 and 28 fell first. I completed the right half of the grid first. The very last clue was 18dn.

Many clues such as the following have familiar wordplay: Across: 10, 13, 20, 30 and Down: 5, 11, 14, 24

Across

1  WAY OUT - way-out (unconventional) sans the hyphen  
9 TARTAR - tar, tar -  I suspect that ‘Salt’ is a misprint for ‘Salts’ which will give salt (tar), salt (tar).
10 SUNDRIES - sun (’heat source’) dries - The repetition of the word ‘heat’  might have been avoided
13 ORDEAL- or (gold), deal
15 THIN - hidden in boTH INstances
16 SPLENDIDLY - (Len, did, l) in spy
19 GREENHOUSE - green, house - at the time of solving I took ‘family’ to be a nounal adj. qualifying ‘place’, only now do I see that the def. is ‘place to cultivate plants’ and that we have to get ‘house’ from ‘family’ (as in the ‘house of the Montagues’)
20 SCAR - s,car
23 ROCOCO - ro in C0 (company), CO (Commanding Officer)
25 ORIENTAL - or(i.e. nt)al - nt is got by deleting o from not - The clue as a whole has rather tricky wordplay 
27 ARCHIVES - arch(iv)es*
28 HAMLET - ham, let - good surface reading
29 ETERNITY - eternit*,y - y after anag. of (enter it)
30 STONED - two def.

Down

1 WITHOUT - wit (brains), h (hard), out 
2 YORKSHIRE - anag. of (His yorker)
3 USABLE - (-yo)u, sable
6 EL DORADO - el, do, rado* (anag. of road)
8 DISPLAY - dis (rev. of Sid), play
11 STEPSON - steps on (walks over)
14 LEISURE - lei, sure
18 INACTION - in, action (fighting) -
19 GARBAGE - b (born) in garage
21 RELATED - two def - As this is a linked clue, I believe, there must be three dots after the word ‘kin’ .
22 REPAST - re, past - Why four dots, I wonder. Three dots would suffice.
24 CACHE - hom. of cash
26 DEFT - d,e, FT (the paper)