Cryptic crossword No 469

Haven, thank you for this nice crossword. It was mainly in my Goldilocks zone, and I filled the grid in about 45 minutes with some closing assistance from my web-based friends. I thought the wordplay was immaculate, and whenever I matched a solution with a clue, I saw clean correspondence. Having said that, there were some pretty recherche references! 7d, for example, came out of the wordplay, but I had to Google the mythology. 14d was a new word to me. To hide spoilers, I will continue...

Thank you, Haven. Very enjoyable - I'm kicking myself for not parsing 1a, but I suppose it was late at night. 14d is an obscure word but I don't mind those when the wordplay is that clear. My favourite was the beautifully concise 5d, though I note Leucine's reservation about the definition. Mild spoiler in reply.

Plenty to like in this one, Haven. A few stretched definitions and a few instances where the pedant might question wordplay but I liked a lot of this and there was some real ingenuity. Like Leucine I like your 12's trick and the one in 20d. My big ticks are 10a, 11a, 16a, 25a, 1d (excellent), 2d, 3d, 6d, 7d, 8d, 20d. Couple of fairly minor queries in Reply.

Thanks for the puzzle Haven, I liked what you've done with the surfaces and the wordplay is getting tighter too! Still some things that were a little chewy for me but lots to like, particularly 4a, 11a, 16a/17a, 25a, 1d and 2d

Thanks for the workout Haven. I had to do this in three or four interrupted sessions. Bottom half definitely the tougher section, but got there in the end. I particularly liked 16a (nicely devious), 25a, 5d & 16d. A few real head-scratchers, but annotated solutions make sense of the ones I didn’t fully understand from the definition or wordplay end of the clues.

Nice one, Haven - lots of inventive, fun clueing here. Favourites for me were 1a, 25a, 1d, 6d, 8d and "springy" in 27a. Took me ages to work out what "one of the 12s" was doing in 16a 17a - sneaky! To echo other comments, I don't get the def for 12a but the wordplay element is sound. Couple of spoilery comments in reply...

Good stuff Haven, I'm impressed how you've maintained your style but have a better control on the difficulty now. Lots of inventive clues, I'll pick out 10a, 13a, 16a 17a, 1d, 2d, 8d and 14d (very fair cluing of an unusual word).