Solution No. 3,260

Heeding the suggestion of a sage e-mailer, I'm going to try putting the weekly solutions into their own posts, so they'll be at the top of the blog.  However, they'll still be below a fold (i.e. click to see them), so readers who haven't worked on the puzzle yet won't see them accidentally.

3,260 was a breeze, as I said, with a theme that was probably as much fun for the constructors as for the solvers.  The theme simplified cluing enough to let them put some things in the grid which otherwise would have been either too hard or too obvious to make a good clue.

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): easy.  5d is not a construction I'd seen before, but perfectly legit.

Political content: 1a.

Composer reference: No composers, but a pretty diverse lineup of performers referenced in 15a, 24a, 8d, 17d, and 24d

solution and annotation below the fold

Legend: "*" anagram; "~" sounds like; "<" letters reversed; "( )" letters inserted; "_" or lower case: letters deleted; "†" explicit in the clue, “^” first letter or letters, “{“ relocated letter or letters

Across

†1a	<TWEN< | T_Y TWENTY	<NEWT< (“Gingrich, reversal indicated by “returns”), + T_rustworth_Y (first and last letters indicated by “superficially”)
9a	*HEREAFTER	*FREE EARTH (anagram indicated by “revolutionary”)
10a	*E(M)BER	*BEER (anagram indicated by “spill”) containing (around) M^ine (first letter indicated by “beginning”)
11a	WOODSY	Pun: Tiger Woods (golfer)
†12a	<BOR A< BORA	<A ROB<  (A + steal, reversal indicated by “to the west”)
14a	_HALT	asp_HALT (“pavement” omitting [“leaving”] ASP [“snake”[)
†15a	BUDDY BUDDY	Non-pun: Buddy Holly (musician)
†19a	W(ALL)A WALLA	ALL (“everything”) contained in (“can be found in”) WA (“Washington”) This should have had an exclamation point: “Washington” is part of both the definition and the wordplay.
21a	AM I | D	“AM I” (“existential question”) + D^espair (first letter indicated by “start”)
†24a	_LANG LANG	s_LANG (“nonstandard language”, omission of first letter  (†)
26a	_VER IF Y_	co_VER IF Y_ou (hidden word indicated by “look inside”)
28a	C_R | AWL	C_arpente_R (first and last letters indicated by “clothes”) + AWL (“cobbler’s tool”)
29a	RE}E{LECTED	RE}F{LECTED (“deliberated”, change of F to E indicated by “one more stroke of the pen”) Clever!
†30a	DOUB_ | LE VIS | (I) ON	DOUB_t (“suspect”, omission of last letter indicated by “for the most part”) + LEVIS (“jeans”) + ON (†), containing (“having”) I (“one”)

Down

1d	T(*URM)OIL	*RUM (anagram indicated by “drunk”) contained in (“during”) TOIL (“work”)
2d	*ELAPSE	*PLEASE (anagram indicated by “shuffle”)
3d	TO | T_E	TO (†) + T_allahasseE (first and last letters indicated by “outskirts”)
4d	T_ | OR SO	T_en (first letter indicated by “first of”) + OR SO (“approximately”)
5d	*EW(<E LAM<)BS	<MALE< (reversal indicated by “mounting”) contained in (“in”) *WEBS (anagram indicated by “tangled”)
6d	*TABLOID	*A BIT OLD (anagram indicated by “is recycled”)
†7d	CHOW CHOW	Double definition
8d	_ARIA	m_ARIA (“Callas”, omission of first letter indicated by “doesn’t begin”)
13d	<TUB A<	<A BUT< (“a though” reversal indicated by “getting higher”)
16d	*DOLT	*TOLD (anagram indicated by “off”)
†17d	<YAD< | A  YADA	<DAY< (Doris Day, reversal indicated by “brought up”) + A (†)
18a	BALL | CLUB	BALL (“dance”) + CLUB (“beat”) “Indians” example in the definition is the Cleveland Indians
20d	*LON(G AG)O	GAG (“silence”) contained in (“maintained by”) *LOON (anagram indicated by “crazy”)
22d	*MOISTEN	*SOME TIN (anagram indicated by “haphazardly”)
23d	YE | (ME) NI	YE (“ ‘the’ old”) + NI (“nickel”) containing (“captivated”) ME (†)
24d	LUC_Y	LUC_k_Y (omission of K [“king”] indicated by “abandons”) Definition cross-references 27d
25d	*NERVE	*NEVER (anagram indicated by “fails”)
27d	*DESI	*SIDE (anagram indicated by “jittery”) Definition cross-references 24d The matched pair cross-reference makes it harder to get the definitions.  So in the interest of fairness, Hot and Trazom made the wordplay easy