Amazed to find this blogged already! Add an hour to your solving time, Jerry, and that will tell you mine. And I cheated a couple of times along the way once the hour was past.

Looking back on it now I'm not sure what the problem was because the clues are fairly conventional stuff with more than a few cliches thrown in and nothing unknown other than GRAPNEL which I suspect was simply forgotten. I hope I won't be the only one to have found it on the hard side.

So add me to the list who found this harder than JW. And ditto jackkt: it doesn't look so hard after the fact. Suspect the grid had a bit to do with the trouble: if you can't get 1dn right away there are six initial unches to work around. Then chuck in the brevity of many of the clues. As a relief, all the 3s and 4s were easy enough for a change.

1ac took me forever to see, with so many cryptic possibilities. And that didn't help either!

19:15 .. really enjoyed this one.

Last in …SQUADDIE, where that "Space before U, think Q" finally saved me.

I'm sure you're far from alone, jerrywh, in having spent some time looking for the anagram of 'wet rile dog'. It just looks like an anagram.

I never heard that one in regard to cricket (but I know darn little about cricket). I figured "strum" and play (a guitar).

And m = maiden, o = over, w = wide, nb = no ball. I vaguely remember seeing DL for Duckworth/Lewis once, but I don't remember ever seeing lb or lbw, so far..

Fret not, Jack! This took me two hours, with two wrong - two of the easier ones (a hasty 'insistent' at 3dn pushing me to the unlikely 'arkmason' for the boat) after being ground down in the bottom half. I thought this was a terrific puzzle, in spite of my travails. As McT says, havigng a 'displaced' 1dn makes it that much harder for those of us who routinely start there. COD to SQUADDIE.

Edited at 2012-05-02 03:53 am (UTC)

I don't follow 11a. Current = I?

OK, new one by me, will lock that in the cryptic lobe of my brain...thank you

Not to mention Iodine?

Enjoyable and straightforward, except for the SE. SQUADDIE, SASHIMI and RUM BUTTER defeated me. I'd worked out the definitions but was pretty certain I didn't know the answers: it would have helped if I hadn't been fixed on either 'ct' or 'woo' for 'court' in 22ac. Many thanks for the blog, jerry.

I still don't like gym = PE..mutter, mutter! To me gym = the building not the activity. I was surprised that this took me only 67mins as I thought it a bit of a brow furrower. As with Jerry, I tried for a while to make an anagram from rile wet dog. That was my COD but I did like 1ac, 22ac, 27ac and 4d as well. BTW, You let me down, Jerry! Over in The Times I predicted that 17ac would be omitted from the blog here.

Edited at 2012-05-02 06:48 am (UTC)

Not all of you do bother, which makes your tradition more silly than hallowed IMHO.

Just under 30 minutes online, with the congenital inability to spell ROT-thingy a considerable hold up.
I think a great deal hinged on whether you spotted the 1's straight off, which in my case was unlikely given that, like many, I was looking for one of the elements, probably an only vaguely familiar one. Slip=DETERIORATE is a slippery definition that didn't occur until some hard won crossers were in. At 20, I was looking (again) the wrong way round, something that ended -PER that meant attractive quality. That's what made this puzzle (for me at least) particularly tricky, a capacity for luring you to the wrong definition or the wrong anagrist.
No stand out CoD for me today - it wasn't that kind of puzzle.

I really liked this puzzle and had great fun solving it in 25 minutes, so a tad on the difficult side for me.

Some great clues. All over the world people are trying to make an anagram out of "rile wet dog" - great stuff. And look at 1D - an excellent surface and construction. I think "die" for "decline" comes from "die back".

Many thanks setter and well done Jerry

A bit solemn for my taste, though perfectly fair, I imagine the Mephistopheleans will enjoy this one.

Took me about an hour though I cannot see why; it just exuded this air of being far more intimidating than it actually was, and that was enough to paralyse my brain.

Perhaps it was the two long words at 1 across and 1 down, with their subtle definitions; I was looking for a chemical element in 1 across, but I could only think of ones with 12 letters; though there is the improbable synthetic element Rutherfordium.

More difficult than usual for me, as some of the definitions were so well hidden (1A, 13A 22A, 1D), and when more obvious led to less common solutions (27A, 4D, 25D). But all very fair once solved.

It is possible that on another day I would have ben more on the setter's wavelength, but I doubt it.

Definitely a superior example of a Times puzzle.

A prosecutor is not a DA, but a PA. DA is defence attorney, who as the name suggests represents the defendant.

Yes, I learned that years ago from watching Perry Mason on TV. Also that PM was not a detective!

And the police detective is Lt Tragg. Another great name!

Thanks for clearing that up, I suspected I might be wrong

I suspected I might be wrong in that I doubted the setter and the editor would allow such a mistake to be published, and for it not to have been picked up on the blog. I may have sounded overconfident because I looked up defence attorney, presuming that to be the expanded version of DA.

I spent one of my nine lives trying to finish this puzzle because I was sitting in my daughter's violin class that went on for an hour and a half yesterday evening. For all my efforts I barely got through half the puzzle. And then I come here to the blog and see that the answers make perfect sense and duh! how come I did not see it!! Wonder why we (being kind to myself by including others though I don't think it true of the folks here) sometimes spend an eternity parsing clues when other more difficult are easily dismissed off of our presence.

That's just how it is so no point beating yourself up. Having said that a background noise of a violin class hardly sounds like ideal solving conditions!

It is the skill of hiding something in plain sight. Some setters are very good a disguising a clue so that it can be parsed in many ways, with the right one being the least obvious. Infuriating sometimes, but a delight to the masochist in us. It gives that DOH!!! moment.

25m. Glad others found it a bit knotty - I thought I was being thick! Tricky while solving, but looks easy in retrospect: a mark of quality.

Don't feel so bad about my 35 minutes after seeing a general air of varying difficulty above. Tricky little number, no complaints, something to get my teeth into before a trip to the rottweiler, that is, the dentist's.

Really enjoyed this one. Thank you setter. Found it taxing but I never thought I'd not finish. Slow to get going but finished at a sprint once I'd late on got the four long ones round the edges. LOI Exam.

Couldn't finish, in two stabs, distracted by sunshine and overdue gardening, no concentration. Even so, thought it quite a difficult puzzle, spent forever making an anagram of 'rile wet dog', couldn't resolve 'tragedienne' either, still it's good to get a rude awakening from time to time. Congratulations to those who breezed through it. Or even tackled it while listening to a violin being tortured.

Edited at 2012-05-02 06:10 pm (UTC)

A tricky puzzle that took me about 40 minutes, with the greatest holdup on 1A and 1D. The crossers led me to DISTINGUISHED after a while despite not understanding the wordplay at all. (Ruined=Dished?). LOI was DETERIORATE, right after SQUADDIE, a word I only know from these puzzles. I got RUM BUTTER from wordplay only, and when (just now) I looked it up I find it's what I know as 'hard sauce'. Something saucy, indeed. COD to the TRAGEDIENNE, for the surface and because it's a lovely word. Regards to all, and thanks to Jerry for the blog and a salute to his fast time.

I enjoyed this. Lots of longish answers, not a lot to start with, but it was the sort of puzzle I knew I'd be able to finish with effort. Last one in was GRAPNEL.

I didn't know trimaran (but I think I've seen it here before), squaddie, grapnel, sash = frame, advertise = trail (though I know 'trailer'), doyen, and oar = spoon.

On 13a, I was misled by (RILE WET DOG)*, and 18a I misparsed as T(ASK+MAST)ER(m), wondering how mast = mark!

I was not expecting 'actress' to be the definition in 12d.

I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever finish a puzzle in less than an hour again. I really struggled to get on the setter's wavelength, but did finish with all correct in something over 2 hours.DETERIORATE was my LOI, but 1a only went in a couple before it making life difficult. Took me ages to spot TRAGEDIENNE due to miscounting the letters and not immediately looking for an anagram. Like many I also spent ages trying to turn RILE WET DOG into a word. Very satisfying to finish though. Thanks to Jerry for the blog. As has been said already it all looks straightforward when you can see the answers, but it has to be a sign of a good setter when it takes so long to work out.

11:27 for me. Some clever stuff here, as well as a few stock clues. I too wasted time on "rile wet dog", despite an uneasy feeling that I might be being sold a pup.