Four-letter words about three-letter words? (Puzzle No. 3,248)

Link to puzzle: http://www.thenation.com/blog/169313/whats-three-letter-word

Hozom’s comment: A discourse on the role of three-letter words in block cryptics.  They’re considered weak construction here in America, but not so much in Great Britain, because (as Hot and Trazom point out) you can include the three-letter word in a solution spanning multiple lights (as 6a/5d do here).  Frank Lewis did that a lot, and it’s very common in the Financial Times.  I like multi-part answers since you can do some very clever things with them, especially if you’re willing to bend the rules and do puns instead of ‘by the book’ wordplay and definition. 

Themework: Straightforward: I imagine some other setters have worked with this theme before.  Might have been better if they could have used the theme words for definitions in each case instead of two of them going in the wordplay, but there aren’t many words you can define by 26a

Difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): Medium

Political content: 1a, 3a

Solution and comments 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	*COMMUNIST	*MOM’S TUNIC (anagram indicated by “turned”)
6a/5d	~SPITTOON	Homonym (indicated by “say”) of SPIT (“stick”) + TOON (“Bugs Bunny”)
8a	*VA (CAT) ED	*DAVE (anagram indicated by “dissolute”) contains (“adopts”) CAT (“a pet)
9a	*ONAGER	*ORANGE (anagram indicated by “shockingly”)
10a	COW | *ARDLY	COW (“beef”??) + *DARYL (anagram indicated by “upset”)
11a	<DEB | TOR<	<ROT (“to spoil”) + BED (“place for a flower”)< (reversal indicated by “swivel”)
14a	TIER	Double definition
16a	_ECO_ | LOG | I | CA | _L	dECOr (center letters indicated by “stripped”) + LOG (“something taken from a tree”) + I (“one”) + CA (“California”) + laureL (last letter indicated by “at last”)
18a	*OPEN SECRET	*RECENT POSE (anagram indicated by “affected”)
19a	F (L) AX	FAX (“transmission”) containing (“about”) L (“long”)
21a	~TUTORS	~TOOTERS (“trumpet players”, homonym indicated by “to be heard”)
22a	DOWNCAST	Pun on “down cast”
26a	_O RIG IN_	tO RIG INdigo (hidden word indicated by “cargo”)
27a	I | SO | LATE	I (“one”) + SO (“very”) + LATE (“dead”)
28a	_F LAN_	stufF LANgoustine (hidden word indicated by “guts”)
29a	IN | T | ROVER | T	†IN + T (“time”) + ROVER (“dog”) + Terrify (first letter indicated by “beginning”)

Down

1d	<CIVIC<	<CIVIC< (palindrome indicated by “running forward and in reverse”)
2d	MAC | AW	MAC (“a computer”) + AW (exclamation often heard about cute things
3d	U (PTU) RN	Progressive Trade Unions (initials indicated by “leaders”) contained in (“split”) URN (“coffee container”)
4d	*INDELICACY	*A CYNIC LIED (anagram indicated by “deviously”)
5d		See 6a
6d	*SPACE (A | G) E	*ESCAPE (anagram indicated by “extraordinary”) containing (“involving”) A (“acceleration”) and G (“gravity’) Someone who compiles lists for solvers ought to do a page of one-letter physicial quantities, like B for magnetic field.
7d	*IDENTICAL	*IN DIALECT (anagram indicated by “translation”)
12d	RE | LAX	RE (“note”: musical, not a paper note) + LAX (“West Coast airport”)
13d	AL *(LEGOR) IST	*OGLER (anagram indicated by “perverse”) contained in (“captivated by”) A-LIST (“elite group”)
14d	TROUT	Theme solution: “Rainbow TROUT”
15d	*ELECTORA | L	*RELOCATE (anagram indicated by “randomly”) + Lecturer (first letter indicated by “opening”)
17d	*EST | ROGEN	*SET (anagram indicated by “unusual”) + ROGEN (Seth Rogen, star of Knocked Up)
20d	IN TOTO	Pun on “In, Toto” (In the film The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy carries her little dog Toto in a basket)
23d	AD | AGE	AD (“commercial”) + AGE (“era”)
24d	T | WEE | T	posT (last letter indicated by “ultimately”) + WEE (“small”) + Text (first letter indicated by “bit of”) Exclamation point for using the last part of the wordplay as the definition
25d	*ANTI	*AINT (anagram indicated by “more correctly”) All kinds of possible misdirection in this clue: it’s one of those that sounds promising but not quite right, and you doubt yourself.  Then you get the right answer and know it’s right.