Across
1. WATTLEBIRD. WATTLE (acacia) + BID (attempt), including R (rook). These wonderful honeyeaters, for that is what they are, grace the gardens of Minjup and are so called not because of their fondness for acacia but for the red dangly things (wattles) they wear from their cheeks.
6. AMPS. A + pharmacist's qualification. "Currently engaged" is nasty #1. You can count the rest for yourself.
9. NAR NAR GOON. On the C433 on the way to (or from) Gippsland if you stay off the Princes. It's RAN (back x 2) + GO ON. Ramson says (perhaps unfairly): "Used allusively to denote a small and insignificant place". Why these poor souls when Koo Wee Rup, Bunyip or, indeed, Minjup itself would have done just as well?
10. USES. Double def.
12. OLIVER. O (duck) + LIVER (offal).
13. CONCLUDE. Double def.
15. OPINIONATED. Yet another duck + PINION (wing) + A + TED (small boy). "Thought to be" isn't doing much. And "pig-headed" isn't quite the same as "opinionated". Or at least, that's a matter of opinion, as the man with the wooden leg said.
18. GUARDEDNESS. Anag of "guessed" + R + "and".
21. IN-SCRIBE. So this can be to sign ... but necessarily one's name?
22. VIENNA. Reversal of ANNE after (at?) VI. So, she could equally be returning at four?
24. INCH. Two definitions. Old crossword chestnut.
25. PETTY THIEF. Anag of "yet if the" + PT ("empty pot"). Very indirect definition here. Let us ban them forever.
26. GLEE. Sort of double def. one of which is "a song for men's voices in three or more parts, usually unaccompanied, of a type popular esp. c. 1750–1830" (OED). Hence clubs of the same name? Another indirect (second) def. in the absence of a noun (which both "glee"s are).
27. ITINERANCY. Anag of "Nancy" + "I tire". "Travelling" is doing double duty as the def and the anagind. Hate this smart-arsed stuff ... especially when it doesn't work.
Down
1. WINTON. Anag of TWIN + O (round) + N[orth]. Between Longreach and Cloncurry. I've been there (as an itinerant "folk" musician) and it makes Nar Nar Goon look like Paris. (Readers my choose any Paris they prefer.)
2. TURNIP. Starting letters of "Time universal recession" + NIP (bite). Here's a root ("Hooray fuck", as the great Leunig/Hepworth combination would say) but not "of it".
3. LEASEHOLDERS. Anag. An arse-backwards clue: the rent-payers are made from the anagram fodder, not vice versa.
4. BOGY. Now here we really need Ramson. (Peace be on you, Bill.) It's a strange quasi-homophone. He gives "bogEy" as: (noun) a swim or bathe; or else (verb) to swim or bathe. The derivation is from Dharuk bu-gi -- perhaps, later, of board fame? Chambers wants the word for the devil to to be "bogy" (or "bogey"). So the parsing has to be: swim (bogEy) + homophone indicator = the devil (bogy). So the homophone indicator has to be "we hear, like". Can you accept such a thing?
5. RHODOLITES. A type of garnet. Simple anag made harder by the mis-enumeration.
7. MOSQUITO. MOs (medics) + QUIT + O (the ring).
8. SUSPENDS. The American writer is US PEN, inside SDS, made up of D (dead) + the corny old "aboard ship" to tell you to put SS around the outside of it (D). The whole of this schemozzle indicates "arrests" which, in itself, is dubious. The "follows" is a link word that has sadly lost its moorings and ended up in rheme position -- a terrible backwater for any link word and I feel sorry for it.
11. SCENE-SHIFTER. Anag.
14. WILDEBEEST. Anag. Again, the arse-backwards phenomenon. "Edible stew" provides the ingredients for the said.
16. IGNITING. Now think backwards again ("In rising"). Take a GI and insert N (last letter of "gun"), then a TIN ("can"), then another GI. This is lasting proof that God gave all of humanity an aesthetic sense but had an off day when it came to babies in the Home Counties c.1950.
17. MASSACRE. Anag of "sarcasm" + E.
19. INDIAN. I + anag of "in and".
20. MAYFLY. Once more, breaks the rule about the def being in theme or rheme position so as to get an apparently witty surface. I defy any person of vaguely Ximenean persuasion to parse this.
23. STUN. What this crossword is, weekend-in weekend-out: arse backwards.
If you're doing the real Times in today's Oz, or indeed at any time, add 15,813 to the number to get its original number.
Then you can look it up here.
