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Well, it’s Paul, so it will inevitably be divisive, and I can see the cross-referred clues provoking a few howls, for more than one reason, but I really enjoyed this one.
FOI 9, LOI 7 because the NE corner took longest to drop.
COD? Tricky, but I liked 25,22 mainly because it was up my street.

It had Paul's byeline but to my mind it was very unPaullike.

I also really enjoyed this. Thanks to Paul. I'm a long-time fan; he started setting just as I was discovering Guardian cryptics. Although I often groan at his penchant for linked clues, the puzzles usually prove entertaining after some tribulation.

FOI 4, LOI 3.

Too many COD candidates to pick one. (25,22) an early favo(u)rite, but the long list included 14 others. I'll mention 1d, 10, 20, 12, 13, 16a/d, 15 and 23.

On the gentle side, significantly under median solving time. One solution required Google to verify, but parsing was obvious.

That was pretty difficult but, that said, it was a lot of fun - at least once I got going.

Not entirely happy with "sounds" plural in 9a but I suppose it depends how you read it.

Lost count of how many times I said 9, 25, 16, 21 in my head before the penny finally came crashing down.

You're obviously a man of culture Rog, given your praise of 25,22, I know who he is but that's about it - now if you want to talk about 12a, that's a different matter 😂

7d - I'm going to check with Chris, our resident scientist, to make sure this is a "compound" - I'm sure Paul and the editor vwill have checked it but Chambers doesn't mention it in the definition.

I'm still a bit unsure how the letters between "say" and "courage" come from, presumably, "generally with" - what am I missing?

COD: Very difficult to pick one but I'm going with 5d, simply for the image it evokes.

Thanks to Paul for a real challenge but also a lot of fun.

Stay safe:-)

Hi geeker
I was thinking of you while solving this, and thought that there were perhaps 2 clues that were a bit Stateside versus one that was a bit UK (but whether that was the one that caused you to resort to google I simply don’t know!)

Brendan, funny thing about 12...I look at the solution and think "ambler" rather than "moonwalker" 🤣 [trying to avoid spoilers].

rog, I (not unexpectedly) had to google to verify the solution of the Scottish clue.

Nothing too challenging today, with the typically vague Paul homophones taking up most of the solving time.

Also got stuck for a while on the LOI of 16 across, due to me falling for the clever misdirection hook, line and sinker.

Hi brendan
Kind of you to put me down as a man of culture, but I’m not sure I really deserve it. 10a was a slight struggle for me though.
Re 8, I think it’s just ‘generally’ that gives you three letters (arguably a bit loosely) and ‘with’ merely links it to the following part of the solution. But I may be wrong…

Oh of course, geeker! I thought you might have had to google a different solution, but am now too embarrassed to say which. 😂