A typical Dac, full of elegant and tidy clues. I found most of it easier than usual, until I came up against 6dn.

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve seen Monk in the FT (just under six to be precise) so this came as a pleasant change. Some easy clues, some harder ones and some that were pleasingly misleading. A couple of minor quibbles as indicated below but overall quite enjoyable.

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Across

1 ABU DHABI  BUD (new flower) in A HABI[t] (a timeless custom)

5 POLICE  I C (one caught) in POLE (foreigner)

8 BIG  GIB (Rock of Gibraltar) reversed - interesting definition that could lead to some confusion

9 ALTERNATOR  ALTER (reform) NATO (alliance) R (right) - a pleasantly misleading clue with ‘reform’ making you initially look for an anagram, but I’m not sure I like the definition ‘it may shock’

10 LLANELLI  ILL (poor) ENA (girl) L L (left heart in Wales) reversed

11 ACUMEN  A CU (a copper) MEN (workmates)

12 NOES  homophone of ‘nose’ (beak)

14 PASSIONATE  *(PASTIES ON A) - a well constructed clue with the anagram indicator ‘pie’ cleverly concealed. ‘Hot’ could also indicate an anagram so you could be unsure which end of the clue was the definition

17 ELDERBERRY  ELDER (not-so-fresh) BERRY (Chuck Berry) - Chuck Berry, R&R artist from the ’50s and ’60s who had a ‘ding-a-ling’

20 AFRO ‘pAy FoR tOp’

23 OCELOT hidden reversal in ’sTOLE COming’

24 AMPHORAE  [c]AMPHORA[t]E[d] - two-handled Greek or Roman jugs. I’m happy with ‘evaporated’ indicating the removal of the first and last letters but less so with regard to the ‘t’ in the middle

25 FIRE-ESCAPE  cd

26 MAO  M[i]AO[w] (abridged queen’s speech) - ‘queen’ in this case being a female cat

27 PRETTY  dd

28 AFGHANIS  *(FAGAN HAS) - the currency in, surprisingly, Afghanistan equal to 100 puls

Down

1 AMBULANCE  MB (doctor) *(ULNA) in ACE (one)

2 UPGRADE  UP (on horse) GRADE (form)

3 HEAVEN  E (ultimate in peace) in HAVEN (retreat)

4 BATTLE-AXE  A X (a cross) in B (British) ATTLEE (Prime Minister)

5 PUNJABI  PUN (play) JAB (strike)  I (one) - strictly speaking a ‘pun’ is a ‘play on words’ and I can find no reference to it being reduced to simply ‘play’

6 LITHUANIA  HU[n] (German shortly) in *(ITALIAN)

7 CURRENT  dd - another nicely misleading clue. ‘I will briefly reveal this’ coming from the fact that ‘I’ is the electrical symbol for ‘current’

13 SMELL A RAT  LARA (girl) in SMELT (fish)

15 SCRUM-HALF  C (caught) in *(FULHAM R[eserve]S) - No 9 in Rugby Union

16 EXOGENOUS *(EXEUN[t] GOOS[e]) - growing by successive additions to the outside; developing externally; having an external origin

18 LUCIFER  dd - ‘deuce’ is ‘the devil’ and ‘lucifer’ is ‘a match of wood tipped with a combustible substance to be ignited by friction’ or another name for Satan

19 BUTTERY  T[albo]T E[ge]R in BUY (purchase)

21 FIREMEN  FIR (tree) E MEN (English people)

22 THRESH  THRESH[old] - as in ‘on the verge of …..’ and ‘on the threshold of …..’

A birthday treat for me - blogging Araucaria. Not too hard by his standards, though there were a few tricky areas and one rather obscure answer at 5dn.

Key:
dd = double definition
* = anagram
< = reverse

Across
1. STOCKING FILLER COST* + (NG IF<) in KILLER. Not usually a birthday present but quite apt for me anyway.
9. SALIERI LIE in SARI - the composer who (most unjustly) appears as the villain in Peter Shaffer’s play (and film) Amadeus.
10. NANKEEN NAN, KEEN.
11. EVENS (el)EVEN’S. EL=Railway or line seems to have come up a lot lately - it’s a reference to the Elevated railways in some American cities. “This number” refers to the number of the clue.
12. HALF HITCH Refence to hitch-hiking, and to a type of knot (”not, say”). I don’t really like these reverse homophoines, but the meaning here is clear enough. I remember learning how to tie a “round turn and two half-hitches” in the cubs several years ago..
13. SOLDIER ON SOLDERING IRON less RING, and then “slightly adjusted”
14. CHAFF dd
15. NOVEL dd
17. ARBORETUM A R BORE TUM. “Tum” is your “inside”
20. LAST LAUGH (AT HULL GAS)*
22. EQUAL Hidden
23. SUBARID I was trying to find a place called Subarid, then realised it was really “sub-arid”, i.e. “near-desert”. SUD is French for South and BARI is a resort in Southern Italy
24. MATTHEW MATT (not glossy) + HEW (cut)
26. KEYHOLE SURGERY KEY HOLES URGE RY. I think it’s a weakness that KEYHOLE has pretty much the same sense in both the answer and the wordplay, especially as it’s such a large part of the phrase. I was wrong here - see Richard’s comment below.

Down
1. SYSTEMS ANALYST (LAST NASTY MESSY)*. A term not often used these days for someone whose job is to specify what a computer system should do, for someone else to program.
2. OIL WELL dd
3. KEEP STILL KEEPS TILL
4. NEITHER Hidden - rather a vague indication.
5. FENELON NÉ in FELON “François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, more commonly known as François Fénelon (6 August 1651–7 January 1715), was a French Roman Catholic theologian, poet and writer.” Thanks, Wikipedia…
6. LUNCH L’UN CH. Carrying over a bit of French from the previous clue.
7. ELECTRA ELECT RA. Ra is the familiar Sun god. The Electra complex is the equivalent of the Oedipus complex with the sexes reversed.
8. IN THE FAMILY WAY I nearly gave up trying to work out the wordplay here, but got there in the end: it’s AM I (”is setter”) in FLY (a horse-drawn carriage), all in IN THE WAY.
14. CARPENTER To welcome little fishes, you might say: “Carp, enter!”
16. VISIBLE SIB in VILE
17. ARUNDEL A RUN LED<. Arundel is in Suffolk, and Arundel Castle is the home of the Duke of Norfolk.
18. BAHAMAS HAM in BAAS
19. TOUGHIE TO UGH IE. “To ugh” is “to comment on the repulsive”.
21. LURCH dd - you can be left in the lurch.