No 12928, Wednesday 06 May 2020, Incognito

Day 43 of 54 Stay safe at home

Solution to 25D has been deliberately left unsolved and is to be answered only by a non-regular/novice commenter, with proper annotation. Those who have answered earlier in the week, please give others a chance.

ACROSS
8   Bird consumed when proven wrong? (4) CROW [C&DD]

9   We returned after brief function to get strength (5) SINEW {SINe}{WE<=}
10 Sailor, engineer and French cleric (4) ABBE {AB}{BE}
11 Psycho author consuming tea makes a mess (6) BLOTCH {BLO{T}CH}
12 Utter: “Boas writhe in front of musical instrument” (8) ABSOLUTE {BOAS*}{LUTE}
13 Hippo — campus’s main mount (8) SEAHORSE {SEA}{HORSE}

15 Nicest sort of crime? (6) INCEST*
17 Cheat, subscribe and send (7) CONSIGN {CON}{SIGN}
19 I chased grammarian Wren’s partner for a drink (7) MARTINI {MARTIN}{I}
22 Instruction booklet involving human labour (6) MANUAL [DD]
24 Jet bomber is able to bomb exhibited rocket right away, for starters (8) CANBERRA {CAN}{Bomb}{Ex...d}{Ro...t}{Ri..t}{Away}

26 Excited Libyan gets a piece each of lamb and chicken for cooking pot (8) BILLYCAN {LIBYAN}* over {Lamb} and {Ch...n}

28 Some shrug and accept Amin ruled this country (6) UGANDA [T]

30 Unit of cultural transmission created by setter repeating again (4) MEME {ME}{ME}
31 Arrive at car he crashed (5) REACH*
32 Sultanate where woman, not wife, can be seen (4) OMAN wOMAN

DOWN
1   Ointment is taken away from Scottish castle, it is said (4) ORAL balmORAL
2   Macbeth’s hags are after small rail-yard controls (8) SWITCHES {S}{WITCHES}
3   Xerxes’ wife’s anaesthetic contains sulphur (6) ESTHER {E{S}THER}
4   English got older and was busy (7) ENGAGED {ENG}{AGED}
5   Perhaps, The Hindu Cross-word created by Sakti was extraordinary (8) SWASTIKA*

6   Bulb mentioned in hangar licence (6) GARLIC [T]

7   Zero binary digit, in brief, represents short send-off message (4) OBIT {0}{BIT}
14 Virus noticed during regression of a lobe (5) EBOLA [T<=]
16 Spanish gentleman seen after I left senior (5) SENOR SENiOR
18 Badly flog model having vehicle, one used by some sportsmen (4,4) GOLF CART {FLOG*}{CAR}{T}
20 Creasey’s Jewel Thief actress gets graduate degree (3,5) THE BARON {THE{BA}RON}
21 Supreme Court’s with a criminal? That is malicious gossip (7) SCANDAL {SC}{AND}{AL}
23 Fruit with queen is more unseemly (6) UGLIER {UGLI}{ER}
25 Name should mean nothing (6) N?U?H? (Addendum - NOUGHT {N}{OUGHT} - See comments)
27 Thing crushing mite (4) ITEM*
29 OCR error, when reading ‘clean', led to replacement with a college officer (4) DEAN Rebus

Reference List
Sailor = AB, Woman = W, Small = S, Model = T, Criminal = AL, Queen = ER, Name = N

Dr RKE's TalePiece

ESTHER ABBE and John CROW,  working in the Faculty of Virology and Epidemiology in CANBERRA university were deputed by their DEAN to UGANDA for studying the 2019 outbreak of EBOLA. It was a tiring journey to REACH Uganda, as they had long layovers at Singapore and at Muscat, OMAN. They had studied the virus thus far in the safe confines of the lab, but they came face-to-face with the UGLIER side of the virus, while working in the field. They had been instructed to ABSOLUTEly follow the safety precautions in their field-work MANUAL.  The most dangerous part was taking the ORAL swabs. The contagiousness and deadly nature of the virus meant that one misstep was enough to catch the virus and die of it- then they would have been CONSIGNed to history, earning only a heroic OBITuary. Imagine sweating it out in the African summer, dressed in a  3 layer PPE while camping at a tribal village, lugging the equipment around in a GOLF CART like contraption and also trying to cook your GARLIC cassava soup in a BILLYCAN!

After an exhausting fortnight in the field, they finally found time to unwind in the air-conditioned comfort of THE BARON, a star hotel at Entebbe, over a glass of MARTINI.  As they stood under the huge SWASTIKA emblazoned on the wall of the foyer, John fell on one knee, held Esther's hand and proposed to her. They were soon ENGAGED. Their mutual friends back home, who discovered that they had become an ITEM while in Africa,  lost no time in sending rib-tickling MEMEs on FB and Instagram. One of them showed them in their PPEs, keeping a safe distance between themselves and throwing their engagement rings to each other after spraying a sanitizer solution on the ring! It had a cheeky by-line that read "SWITCH mentally and imagine the nuptials".