Cryptic crossword No 196

Love 15!

Thanks, Newington. Fairly tough but lots of good stuff in here. As with your first, I felt the concise clues were generally best e.g. 1A, 10A, 2D, 3D and 22D. I also really like 12A but it was too clever for me - I had the ‘C’ so assumed it was CAROL (which is a plausible but much less satisfying answer). Happy to provide some very detailed feedback if you wish.

Why on earth has this puzzle, which as Coot says is tough but with some good stuff in it, acquired a downvote?! Some really clever clues here, I think my favourites being 25a, 8d, 15,5. The annotated solutions were valuable because I didn't see how 1a and 14a worked. A couple that I'm not entirely convinced by [SPOILERS IN REPLY]

Thanks Newington, this was tough but perseverance was rewarded. Took me a while to get going but once I had a few crossing letters it all started to fall into place. It’s clear that you’ve paid a lot of attention to marrying smooth surfaces with complex but precise wordplay - 23a, 1d and 6d being good examples. But I also like the neat simplicity of 9a, 22d, 13a, 2d. 15d/5d is great. And 3d made me LOL. I’m not a big fan of homophones but 18d also raised a smile.