Cryptic crossword No 2,719

868 - Promoted Pawn - 2025 Sep 17 ... also available, with hundreds more, at Ben's Cryptics: http://ibendr.github.io/xwd/bendr/index.html

I was going to go back and highlight the definitions in the clues - a facility which I quite like - but today every time I do that it generates another entry for the "changes since publishing", even though that entry shows no apparent change. (I thought previously I'd been able to do that after publishing without it showing up in the change log... not sure if I'm remembering wrongly or the if the site has changed.) In future I will have to remember to perform that step before hitting "publish"!

Very nice grid! I enjoyed the theme, though it became apparent extremely quickly as 1,16 was very gettable by enum alone. Very much liked 13a, 14a, 17a, 22a, 3d, 6d and 9d.