An elegant puzzle by Phi - solving time 17 mins.    A theme/Nina to it, which I refer to after the clue explanations.

* = anagram  < = reversed

ACROSS

1 P (L) ACES

5 ROAD TEST   O in (started)*

9 AL MON (D) - EYED

10 L U  twice i.e LULU

11 RE (PR IS) AL

12 RAP I.E. R (run)

13 SU FI   (if US)<

15 PRETORIA   e in (airport)*

18 I DOLATE R   (to lead)* &lit

19 TEEN(y)

21 FR APP(l)E

23 H AND H ELD  (LED)*

25 A ID A   ID = name

26 TOUCH AND GO

27 LEAD F(R)EE

28 RESULT   Hidden but the ‘ultimately’ nicely misled suggesting last letter.

DOWN

2 LI (LL) E     Not sure if there are Indy solvers in Lille  to comment on seeing their city defined as a station…

3 CHOIRGIRL   (rich Glori)*

4 S A (DI’S) M    Had to think a bit before seeing American = am not just a so plumping for sadism not sadist, with the former always looking more likely from the definition.

5 ROYAL OPERA HOUSE   (poo rehearsal you)*   in London

6 ALDER MEN(d)

7 TU (L I) P       p (i l) ut    all<

8 SILVE RISE    (Elvis)*    Tricky as the surface reading at first suggested containment

14 UNDERMINE   (ruined men)*

18 OUTSHINES  (the sun so I)*

17 AT TEST OveR    Good

20 A N(navy) CHOR(e)

22 PL AID

24 LEG AL(l)

Theme and Nina:   This blogger is no opera buff and has learned most of his knowledge about it from doing crosswords.     I see here in the Left and Right columns PARSIFAL (by Wagner), and TURANDOT (by Puccini) - seeing this with some letters to go helped me complete the solve.   The ROYAL OPERA HOUSE  in the centre column is therefore thematic too I guess.    And I think I see two more, symmetrically placed - 10 across (LULU by Berg) and 25 across (AIDA by Verdi).

Solving time: maybe 10 hours

Many readers of crossword blogs will know by now that I had surgery on a brain tumour near the end of July. After taking a while to rebuild my confidence on blocked puzzles, this was my first serious attempt at a barred-grid thematic since (I found a sub for the one just after I came out of hospital), and it was quite a struggle from about last Friday until everything fell into place late on Wednesday evening.

Most of the left half was finished relatively easily except for the unclued lights, but the right was rather tougher. I was then pretty stuck for a few successive looks at the puzzle, with few ideas for unclued lights except some that turned out to be wrong, the worst of these the unfortunately part-thematic DOUBLE for 29D. But eventually the phrase from extra letters gradually came to light. First, “THE PARA” at the beginning and “UNITED” at the end, then a gradual realisation that the whole was THE PARACHUTE REGIMENT MANCHESTER UNITED. This was slightly delayed by 40A, where the wordplay could have been the LEE(T)LEe I went for as well as the correct LEE(T)LEn (LEE(T)LEs and LEE(T)LEw also work!). The phrase didn’t help much until I re-read the rubric and remembered the need to highlight the theme in the grid. One of the number one places to look is leading diagonals, and the NW-SE one came up trumps with enough checking letters to see THE RED DEVILS - their shared nickname. Then the rest was plain sailing - the 8 unchecked answers were four reds (BREAST, ROUTE, SETTER, ENSIGN) and four devils (FIREWORK, PERISHER, OLD ONE (I think), DRUDGE) with the grid’s blue sky matching the paras and the green pitch Man U. And the title reflected the fact that both have squads.

The extra letters from wordplay are in lower case below - just tacked onto the end when they’re a part of anag. fodder and could therefore go anywhere. Lower case letters in parens are subtractions in wordplay.

After yesterday’s slog, a more enjoyable offering from Sleuth for my scheduled blog this week. One or two words or usages I had not come across before (boss, Jewry) but otherwise fairly straightforward.

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Across

1 BOSSA NOVA  BOSS (excellent) A AVON (a river, a flower) reversed

6 RECAP  RE (about) CAP (international) - in many sports an international player receives a cap

9 TARTLET  ART (skill) LE (the, French) in TT (dry, tea total)

10 HALIBUT  [m]ALIBU (surfing place without money) in H T (hard time)

11 NOVEL  V (verse) in NOEL (festive celebration)

12 ESPERANTO  *(NEAT PROSE)

14 EEL  LEE (General) reversed - take your pick between General Robert E Lee (American Civil War) or General Lee, the Dodge Charger in the Dukes of Hazzard. This probably depends on the era in which you were brought up.

15 CHARISMATIC  *(SMART CHIC A I) - the ‘I’ being ‘a touch of individualism’

17 REDISCOVERY  SIDE (team) reversed C (caught) in ROVER (car) Y (unknown)

19 SIR  hidden word in ‘ethicS I Revered’

20 LONG EATON  LONG (extensively) EATON (a homophone of ‘eaten’, enjoyed by diners) - you have either heard of this town about 9 miles SW of Nottingham or you haven’t. Despite extensive travelling around the UK in my younger days, I hadn’t so I had to resort to Google for confirmation.

22 LEMUR  LE MUR (the wall, French)

24 EN SUITE  SUIT (clothing) in [r]ENE (Frenchman not right)

26 JEWELRY  E (English) L (Latin) in JEWRY - to save you looking it up (as I had to), ‘Jewry’ is ‘the Jewish world, community or religion’

27 THYME  homophone of ‘time’ (season)

28 HEYERDAHL  HEYER DAHL (two authors) - Georgette Heyer, known for her historic romance novels and detective fiction, and Roald Dahl, the writer of many children’s books. Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian explorer, archaeologist and anthropologist, probably best remembered for his 4300 mile trip from South America to the Taumotu Islands (Polynesia) in 1947 on a raft called Kon-Tiki which was made from balsa wood.

Down

1 BATON  NO TAB (without loop) reversed

2 SHRIVEL  SHRIVER with ‘R’ changed to ‘L’ - Pam Shriver is probably not the first former tennis star to come to mind, even if you have been a fan of the sport

3 ALL BLACKS  A LL (couple of lines) L (league) in BACKS (defenders) - The All Blacks are New Zealand’s Rugby Union national team. Now we’re talking, a ‘proper’ sport! It’s a pity this had to be spoilt by an association football reference :-)  Backs in football generally defend but in RU they are primarily there to attack.

4 ON THE WAY OUT  *(TONE H) WAY OUT (eccentric)

5 ASH  [b]ASH

6 RULER  cd

7 CABINET  TEN (figure) I BAC[k] (largely support) reversed

8 PATROL CAR  cd - hands up those who initially put in ‘police car’ and then found the NE corner impossible to complete :-)

13 PRIDE AND JOY  P (quiet) DEAN (college official) in RID (free) JOY (woman)

14 ENROLMENT  *(LEN MENTOR) - initially I though that ‘registration’ would have been a better clue definition but Chambers does give ‘register’ as one of the definitions of ‘enrolment’

16 MAYFLOWER  cd - MAY FLOWER (potential to reach peak)

18 DYNASTY  DY (drearily empty) NASTY (unpleasant)

19 SOMALIA  SO (very good) MALI (African country) A

21 ELITE  E (back of fridge) LITE (not high in calories)

23 ROYAL  LAY (amateur) OR (men) reversed

25 ETH  [m]ETH[s] - meths is an abbreviation for methylated spirits

As ever, a very enjoyable crossword from Paul, with lots of animals (mostly pigs and cows), a few communists and a couple of computer references.

Another very tough but very satisfying Saturday puzzle, this time from Nestor. Lots of great stuff here but I can’t work out the wordplay in 3, 15 and 17. I filled in 11 without really knowing why but finally got it when I sat down to write this; 16 was the last to go in and 24 and 7 gave me problems too.