Biffed a few, and probably just as well, as eg I DNK Bajan. Biffed 1d as well, helped by a recent discussion here of UK/US spelling differences; George's parsing sounds good to me. At 5d I suspect the setter may have been thinking of Madame LaFarge specifically; I was, anyway. COD to IMAGE.

Edited at 2018-05-17 01:24 am (UTC)

But I didn't have a clue about 'jess', and my parsing of 1 down was overly simplistic - your 500 lines of COBOL code is a goodie for the compiler! But at least I am enough of an Anglophile to know of the BBC Third Programme, so I was quite confident of my answer. But how do you spell Azerbaijan? Very carefully, especially if 'Bajan' doesn't mean much to you.

Fortunately, there was a lot of stuff we see every day: Otranto, denarii, Grenada, snapdragon....

28 minutes, rewarded by my attempt to solve yesterday's oldie by being able to write in KRAAL. A slightly old-fashioner feel to this one, I thought, but the setter must get credit for working AZERBAIJAN into a puzzle.

I deduced THAT THIRD trailed SECOND as in any competition.

FOI 20ac AJAR
LOI 19dn OTRANTO
COD 22dn VROOM (Remember John Kent?)
WOD 3dn AZERBAIJAN

45 minutes but DNF as I had 12ac as FESS (FESTS of the joke type!) JESS should have been obvious.

One point on the blog, OTRANTO is a 'physical' castle and it features in several places on the Wiki page for the port. Unfortunately I didn't know that (nor the town despite its many appearances in past puzzles as mentioned above by vinyl1) so I had to rely on wordplay for the answer. Other unknowns were BAJAN and PEARL RIVER but I still finished within my target half-an-hour with 1 minute to spare.

The THIRD PROGRAMME was the BBC's classical music station before it was renamed BBC Radio 3 in 1967. Regulars may have noticed that I am not overkeen on 'old' (or 'former') with reference to things in the past but I think in this clue something along those lines is fully justified as the answer is a bit obscure, especially, I imagine, for overseas solvers.

Edited at 2018-05-17 04:39 am (UTC)

Thank you, George, for your parsing of 1d. THIRD PROGRAMME had to be the solution and I'm old enough to remember it but I had no idea how the clue worked until I read your blog.
COD for me was GRENADA. I was silly enough to spend time looking for a Spanish island.
Never heard of JESS.
Another sad day: Ray Wilson, elegant left back of 1966-and-all-that fame has died.

59 minutes and 30 seconds! FOI 6d EYED after nothing much else sprang to mind, then dotting about trying to knock off any easy ones before I got enough crossers to build momentum. LOI 3d AZERBAIJAN—glad I see I'm in good company not knowing BAJAN.

Also glad that KRAAL came up recently, as I didn't know it before this week. (I've just started reading another of my crossword-inspired novel choices, She, so it's possible I'll encounter the word again before the week is out, but I'm only up to the bit where they hit the African coast...)

COD 17a GRENADA for the misdirection, though a mention in dispatches for JESS for its "strap on leg". Luckily I knew the falconry term. WOD SNAPDRAGON.

Edited at 2018-05-17 06:56 am (UTC)

Excellent crossword and such concise clues taking up less than two thirds of the available space. JESS, IMAGE and GRENADA were my trio of CODs.

40 mins with a croissant and Gin&Lime marmalade (hoorah).
You wait ages for a Kraal, then two come along at once (albeit one delayed from 1977).
A gentle solve with nothing to excite the horses - except, perhaps the oily lad in his medallion. Ugh.
Now I will always know how to spell Azerbaijan. Or one way, anyway.
Thanks setter and G.

I've never heard of THIRD PROGRAMME but I thought of THIRD as 'second trailer' quickly so evidently I was briefly on the wavelength.

I'm not sure I'd have got JESS but for the fact there was a pest controller using a hawk on the office block next to where I work last week and one of my colleagues referred to the JESS on its leg (he actually said Jesse).

Easy again .. I suppose that nowadays we would call it the Third Program?

...I heard you say. At least not today. 18 minutes, same as yesterday on the Championship qualifier. I'm getting delusions of adequacy again. I didn't know JESS, which was a guess from crossers and jests. In my hurry to break 20 minutes, I didn't bother to parse DENARII or THIRD PROGRAMME which were clear from literal and crossers. Never heard of PEARL RIVER, which I did properly construct. I realised why REALISE after biffing it. Here's a first for me. I'm giving COD to an anagram, ANGRY YOUNG MAN which was a neat clue. Thank you George and setter

Edited at 2018-05-17 08:18 am (UTC)

22:49. I was on target for sub 20 mins but then got stuck in Azerbaijan. I just couldn’t see it. I didn’t give serious consideration to Z being a candidate for the missing second letter.

COD Azerbaijan. Nice surface and unexpected.

Just over 10 minutes. Quite a lot from wordplay today, which I always like: JESS, PEARL RIVER, OTRANTO, the spelling of AZERBAIJAN (I knew BAJAN fortunately). Funny to see KRAAL again so soon.
I was just thinking of the ‘tricoteuses’ in general rather than a particular person.
The professional association of 8dns is called BAAPS. No seriously.

Edited at 2018-05-17 08:34 am (UTC)

Those were the days: Home Service, Light Programme, Third Programme.....Only knew of OTRANTO from the Gothic novel, dnk GNOME in that sense. LOI IMAGE.

12'36”, twenty seconds faster than yesterday. Are there many others who don't send it in because of potential stress?

Thanks gl and compiler.