What a relief. When no crossword appeared on Monday, I wondered if the Indy had quietly dropped it, but when I rang them they admitted their error. To do them justice, they did at least say that they’d made a mistake, and this morning they didn’t hide behind “technical reasons”; “a production error” was at least more or less the case. “A cock-up” would have been more accurate, though.

Up to Virgilius’s usual standard. The words at the perimeter are all homophones, although those down the left side stretch things a bit. Perhaps in Virgilius’s Northern Irish accent they sound more similar than they do to me.

dd = double definition
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram

I am truly blessed. Last week, I landed Paul and now I get to blog Puck, the magic dragon.  As expected, Puck mixed up a whole variety of clues, using all kinds of devices. However, the feature that pleased me the most in this puzzle is his creative use of definitions … Hippy my foot :-)

Across
1 AYCRBOURN Sounds like “ache borne” (pain conveyed) Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE, a British playwright, born 1939 in London
6 STIR Smooth dd
8 ON AND OFF Cha of O (old) NAN (woman) DOFF (throw)
9 KIRSTY *(risk) + TY (extremely TiddlY) Kristy is an equally correct answer which gave me so much problem with 6D until I was left with S?IT OUT. Sh*t ! Something is wrong :-)
10 ATWOOD Ins of WOO (court) in AST (A sTuDy regularly) Probably Margaret Atwood, Canadian author born 1939
11 RADIO SET *(a steroid)
12 ABBESS Cha of A (rating) B (Black) Bess (horse)
15 SPITTOON Ins of TOO (excessively) in SPITN *(pints) That humble feature on the floor of a saloon in a Western was cryptically defined as “one with a big gob”
16 GARSTANG Cha of GAR (fish) and STANG (rev GNATS) Garstang is a town parish within the Wyre borough of Lancashire, England
19 GATHER ha
21,1D AS LIKELY AS NOT *(asl a yokel isnt)
22 IMPUGN I’m (setter’s) Pug (dog) N (north point)
24 URETER Ins of RETE (network) in UR (old city) I wonder why this has been defined as ‘number one tube’?
27 MINCEMEAT *(I’m a cement) Puck made me laugh with his definition for mincement as ‘that’s been given the chop’

Down
2 CONDONE Simple cha
3,22,26A BROAD IN THE BEAM Cha of Broad (woman) IN THE BEAM (lit up)
The def, hippy is so misleading and yet so literally & succinctly precise. Bravo!
4 UNFURLS Ins of NFU *(fun) in URL’S or Uniform Resource Locator (the system of addresses for the World Wide Web).
5 NO KIDDING I can only categorise this very amusing clue as a cheeky dd
6 SORT OUT Sounds like SORE (irritated) Tout (solicitor like those flogging tickets at Wimbledon)
7,25 IS THE POPE CATHOLIC? Ins of I (Italy) in *(hippest chocolate)  Reminds me of the cartoon making the Internet round showing George W Bush greeting Pope Benedict and asking “How’s the missus?”
13 BRASSERIE Cha of brass (money or bread) erie (lake or water) Inspired cha
14 SNARE DRUM Cha of snared (caught) run (odd)
17 SHITTIM *(this ) + Tim
n (; in full shittim wood) the wood of the shittah or shittah tree, believed to be a species of acacia; applied also to various other trees …. Chambers
18 GAY ICON *(Okaying minus K plus C)
20 TOP HOLE Ins of OP (rev Po river) in *(hotel) This expression is now to me.
23 GLINT rha

Just a glance at the clues and I realised that, as one coming after weekend and prize puzzles, this crossword is a piece of cake.

So I adopted a different approach to my blog today. First I solved all the Across clues - with no help from the crossings of Down clues.

Next I didn’t read the Down set of clues at all but proceeded to have my own fills/guesses. Only half-a-dozen of these had to be revised in the light of the published clues.

Across

1 LOUNGE - two def. - room / to sit - prob. also straightforward “Room to sit [in]”
4 BRACELET - brace, let
10 FLATTERED - flatter, ed.
11 NOOSE - rev. of ’soon’ plus E
12 OPAL - op, a, l
13 CAPITULATE - anag. of ‘up’, ‘late’ and ‘cat I’ - unusual anag. signal in “originally”
15 ENHANCE - anag. of ‘hence an’
16 HITMAN - hit, man
19 ADMIRE - anag. of ‘I dream’
21 BENEFIT - anag. of ‘been’ plus fit
23 ABORIGINAL - a, b, original
25 BUST - two def. - broken / statue
27 COBRA - co, bra
28 EYEOPENER - eye (v.), opener
29 ENTREATY - E, N, treaty
30 STRESS - s, tress

Down

1 LEFTOVER - left, over
2 UNABASHED - Una, bashed
3 GATE - two def., prob. also straightforward
5 REDDISH - red, dish
6 CONSULTANT - Con., sultan, t
7 LOOFA - a, rev. of ‘fool’
8 TIERED - tie, red
9 CREATE - cre(a)te
14 INTIMIDATE - Anag. of ‘Tim and I tie’
17 AFFLUENCE - Anag. of ‘Naff clue’ plus E - naff = (slang) worthless, esp. in style or taste (Chambers) :: See also ‘naff all’ and ‘naff off’
18 STATURES - stat(r)es :: As the ans. to 25 ac is BUST, the use of ‘busts’ here might have been avoided
20 EMINENT - anag. of ‘mine’ plus anag. of ‘net’
21 BRAKES - homophone of ‘breaks’
22 GAUCHE - anag. of ‘hag: cue’
24 ORBIT - or, bit
26 SPOT - two def. - notice (v.) / blemish (n.)