Published in the i newspaper on 5 September 2020.
I thoroughly disliked this puzzle for several reasons, and I might not even have attempted it if I hadn't spotted SAN BERNARDINO almost straight off. There were so many obscurities throughout the rest of the puzzle, and the endgame, that it felt more like tackling a particularly hard exam than something done for pleasure. My feeling at the end was more one of relief than of satisfaction.
Firstly I felt that the instructions were unclear; they talked about "superfluous letters generated in wordplay", but didn't indicate whether this applied to every clue, or how many superfluous letters were included each time. Since the previous week's puzzle (by a different setter) had explicitly specified one extra letter per clue, I proceeded on this assumption, which turned out to be right; but that was more by luck than judgement. The preamble needs to be unambiguous every time.
I also felt there was far too much reliance on obscure words purely for the sake of it; if the answer to a clue isn't a common word, then I don't think the wordplay should rely on obscure words or definitions as well. There are still one or two answers I'm not sure of because there was no clear way of working out the unchecked letters.
As for the endgame, if I hadn't been given the hint that the top row was a Jewish phrase I might well not have completed the puzzle. Nor did I recognize the "equivalency", which turned out to be LAW IS A BOTTOMLESS PIT [or] THE HISTORY OF JOHN BULL - the title of a 1712 work by John Arbuthnot, apparently. The unclued Across entries all had some sort of connection with "law", and the unclued Down entries were all loose synonyms for "pit" minus the last (bottom) letter, although the top two were unknown to me.
Running across in order, I had SHULCHAN ARUCH (the code of Jewish law), RIOT ACT (a law that no longer exists, though people continue to "read" it), INVERSE SQUARE (not the name of an actual law, but a generic description of certain physical laws), and ROZZERS (old name for the police = "the law"). Running down the left-hand side were SCROBICUL[a] (one of the smooth areas surrounding the tubercles of a sea urchin) and ABYS[s]; and down the right, HANG[i] (a Maori method of cooking food in a pit), and DEPRESSIO[n].
As for the nine cells to be highlighted, I assumed that they were CRATERULE in column 5 - CRATE being CRATER (synonym for "pit") without the final letter, and RULE being a synonym for "law". However, since the solution to 3 down was the word CRATER itself, this didn't seem very satisfactory to me.
Here are my attempts at trying to unpick the clues. The redundant letters in the wordplay are underlined.
Across
8. OWARI - OIL surrounding WAR (the "contrary" of WAR ("strife") about OIL). Owari is a former Japanese province.
9. SHMO - hidden in [clanni]SH MAO[ri]. "Shmo" or "schmo" is a Yiddish word for a stupid person, but I didn't see where "aged Jonathan" came into it.
12. TRON - I suppose this is ROW ("rank") in TN for "tradename", but I didn't recognize the abbreviation. Also I understood that a "tron" was a weighing beam used in a Scottish marketplace, rather than the marketplace itself.
14. GORING - not sure about this. "Running through" is the definition, and it seems that "Igor" may be a brand of banking software, giving IGOR - R ("rubles") + RING ("call").
15. BENNES - are sesame seeds (oil producers), To understand both this clue and 33A I needed to know that a "but and ben" is a Scottish two-roomed house, with the "but" as the outer room and the "ben" as the inner one. This gives BEN + NESS ("headland").
16. THEO - presumably a reference to footballer Theo Walcott. E ("European") in an anagram of OATH.
19. COYPU - a large rodent. COB ("swan") + Y ("unknown quantity") + rev. of UP ("in an excited state").
21. STOUP - an old word for a bucket. Presumably SO + TO + UP ("to rise"), although "so" = "well" seemed a bit doubtful. Is it a reference to the current habit of starting sentences with "so" where one might once have started with "well"?
23. UNDULANT FEVER - I got this from UNDU[e] (most of "excessive") + anag. of LEFT TAVERN, but I'm not sure about the definition. Apparently it's another term for brucellosis, a gastrointestinal disease with many nasty symptoms including nausea and vomiting, but which doesn't affect the joints as far as I can tell.
26. PEKE - either a little dog or a little word for a dog - I don't think it matters which! Anagram of KEPT + E, although I don't recognize E for "earl".
27. TITULE - this was horrible and I only got it after a strong hint. I presume "Bart" is intended as an abbreviation of "baronet". "Baronet" is a title, and "titule" is an old word for "title", it seems. The wordplay was a bit obscure too: rev. of OUT in TILE ("baseball cap" at a stretch?)
30. ALNAGE - it seems that both this and "ulnage" are old terms for inspection of cloth, but the wordplay sorted it out: L (Luxembourg) in MANAGE ("control", as verb).
33. BUTS - see 15A for the definition ("Perth's outer rooms"). Initial letters of B[e] U[p] T[o] L[etting] S[outh].
34. OLPE - obscure word for a Greek jug which I didn't know. Anagram of PEOPLE without its initial P.
35. NEEZE or NEESE - really not sure about this one at all. It seems to be a variant of "sneeze" (="sudden expiration"), and the redundant letter has to be S, but I can't sort out the wordplay.
36. SAN BERNARDINO - Californian city, anag. of BANNERS IN ROADS. Nice clue.
Down
1. HOISE - can't quite get this. It's an old variant of "hoist" (="lift"). Could it be IS (="remains") in HOPE? I don't understand "hope" for "enclosure", though.
2. LATEN - I hadn't realized that this word for "make late" or "delay" was an actual one, although its meaning is obvious once you guess it. Anagram of AT LINE.
3. CRATER - it's the name of a constellation ("stars"), which I wasn't aware of. Assuming C for "canine" (why?) gives C + RATTER ("vermin killer").
4. HICKS - synonym of "hayseeds" in the American sense of "simple people from the country", although I got this completely wrong first time and put in COMIC, thinking of the comic strip. C ("hundred") and K ("thousand") in THIS.
5. ASTI - should probably have guessed that this was the town where they make the eponymous wine. ASH + TI, "ti-tree" being an old spelling of "tea-tree".
6. AMBO - a raised platform in an early Christian church, hence "pulpit". I suppose it must be AME (the French word for "soul") + BO, but I don't see why BO = "man", and I didn't think French nouns were allowed in wordplay (as opposed to "le", "un" etc.).
7. ULRICA - this comes from the wordplay, being RIC[h] ("splendid") in the initials of U[ltra] L[ight] A[ircraft]. "Ulrica" does seem to be an older spelling of the name but "Germanic female" seems a little misleading to me. The modern German spelling "Ulrike" didn't fit the crossing letters, so I initially wrote in ULRIKA, which is the usual spelling in Swedish and probably only the one most British people have come across (Ulrika Jonsson). It doesn't affect the rest of the puzzle, so I wonder why the alternative spelling was clued.
10. HIGHSET - I initially wrote in HIGHEST but the crossing letters ruled it out, although it also fits the wordplay: HIGH ("drunk") + anag. of SITE. It's an Australian term meaning "built on high stumps" (of a house), hence "pitched up".
11. CONGRUE - didn't like this clue at all. It's an old word for "agree", made up of CONS ("prisoners") + GRUE ("shudder" - the root of "gruesome"). I presume that "Bard's" is an indication of Shakespearian origins, and that "in Barlinnie" indicates a Scottish word (Barlinnie being a Scottish prison), but clueing one obscure word in terms of another goes against the spirit of cryptic crosswords in my view.
12. TROUT - not sure how to parse this. If you take "unpleasant old meddler" as the definition then you can break it down as a reversal of TORT ("wrong" in law) + UT (Latin for "as"), but are Latin words generally allowed in isolation? There may be another way of doing it.
13. ENVY - not happy with this. Shakespeare coined the phrase "green-eyed monster" in Othello to describe jealousy, which is not a synonym of "envy" as far as I'm concerned. For the wordplay, you need the fairly obscure meaning of ENVOY (more often spelt "envoi"), a short stanza at the end of a poem (so "the final words").
16. TERNE - a thin steel sheet coated with an alloy of lead and tin (so "a mixture of metals"), hidden in [pat]TERN RE[ader].
17. NONPLUS - I only know this as a verb, but it can be a noun meaning "a state of bafflement or perplexity" (is that the same as "great difficulty"?). Anagram of PYLON in a reversal of SUN, which actually confused me because the word "sun" was standing for itself!
18. SHAKE UP - "mix", a relatively straightforward clue for once. HAKE ("fish") in SOUP ("broth").
20. PUPAS - can't quite get this. Def. is "intermediate stages", and I suppose you've got a reversal of SUP ("drink") containing P, A and the redundant letter F. Could "paf" be a Shakespearian ("Will's") term for "befuddled"? Seems a tad unlikely, but it's the best I could do.
22. OVUM - def. is "egg", and the wordplay seems to be JO ("beloved") + VUM (US word for "swear"), although the other bits don't seem to work right. "Jo" occurs most famously in Robert Burns (not known to me as "Sandy"), and "vum" seems to come from New England (not Kansas). Enlightenment required.
24. DENTIN - an alternative spelling of the better-known "dentine" ("material in tooth"). Anag. of NODE + TIN, although the "on" in a Down clue would suggest to me that TIN should come first.
25. FIZZER - "something excellent", although it's a bit of a damp squib if you ask me! It's just FIZZ ("champagne") + HER ("belonging to woman").
27. TRONA - really don't have a clue about this one. It's a sodium carbonate compound ("chemical combination"), and the redundant letter must be N, but otherwise I'm stumped.
28. TOZED - another baffling one. Obsolete term for "combed" (used of wool etc.). The best I can do is rev. of BOT + ZED, but neither "bot" = "sundowner" nor "zed" = "bar" makes any sense to me.
29. LOREN - yet another perplexing one. Sophia Loren of course, and I assume it's LOUR ("scowl"), but why EN for "nut"?
31. GULE - I can only assume this is a Northern word for "marigold", but can't confirm. It's GULLEY without its final Y.
32. WREN - a fairly simple one to end on! The Wrens was the nickname for the former Women's Royal Naval Service ("female sailor"). R and L ("both hands") in reversal of NEW ("fresh").
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