Quick crossword No 19

Having filled in the grid with words that I thought appeared to have good potential, I then found a lot of them surprisingly tricky to clue without resorting to wordplay that would be too complex for a ‘quick’ cryptic - hopefully I’ve got the level about right…

Nice one. It took me about 9 mins, so on the tricky side for a QC for me. I liked PLOD the best. One or two minor points, though... 11A is clever, but "Massage" is doing double duty as the definition and anagrind and the surface is a bit odd. 22A is grammatically incorrect as the singular DBE leads to NUT not NUTS. in 20A I guessed the girl from the checkers and vaguely remembering she was a Shakespeare character, but I'd never heard of the second definition. My ignorance I suppose.... cont.

... "serving" as a link word in the related 4D is a bit cheeky. The Ximineans wouldn't like it, but I think it's OK in the context of the surface. Keep up the good work!

Great puzzle, on the trickier side for me for sure! I particularly liked 1a, 11a, 23a, 16d