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You're absolutely spot on Rog, I've checked Chambers thesaurus (which I always seem to overlook) and the longer version of that word is given as a synonym for "generally".

10a - thankfully I've been a fan of and followed this particular ..... since way back when. which makes his current predicament all the more painful.

Geeker, I really am coming across as a total Philistine tonight - can you believe I had to Google 10a and "ambler" to understand the reference!

Brendan, he wrote some terrific books, even though some consider the genre lowbrow. A Coffin for Dimitrios is an all-time classic.

Lowbrow did you say? Now you're talking my language 😂

Came to this late today. As said before, I am somewhat ambivalent about Paul these days. His tortuous long pun/homophone is marginal, I would suggest. Still, a few hallmark witticisms.

As often on gentle Prize Fridays, I'm working on the FT (Guy). If you like (25,22) here, consider 3 in FT 18,135.

I have to say that I'm amazed at the equanimity that people are treating the 9, 25, 16a, 21 homophone. It only works if you're an Italian from Brooklyn being played by Nicholas Cage. That said, it's extremely funny, so I won't complain too loudly. Those two clues were my last in because, even though I had three of the four clues for a long time, I couldn't work out how they could go together. Sadly, 25,22 was the last of the four even though he is one of my favourites.

7d is fine as a compound, Brendan. I'm not a chemist, but you just need Wikipedia rather than Chambers.

Thanks Rainman,

You're absolutely right, it's in the first line of its Wiki entry but I opted to use Chrome's AI mode which says it 'can' be a compound and didn't look any further - that's on me.

Fantastic description of the homophone, especially the reference to Nicholas Cage... at his most hammy (not the bees!)

In fairness to Paul, though, he does qualify it with "roughly speaking" and a ? so I think we can cut him some slack on this one.

Rainman,

Thanks for that. Now I have 1a, 1d.

Funny, I had 9, 25, 16, 21 for ever.

I don't have 10a with all the crossers in place.

Letters 6–8 in 8 dn are an archaic/poetic/abbreviated form of a frequently used 5 letter word that can perhaps loosely mean 'generally' (e.g. A. Pope "True wit is nature to advantage dressed, ...)"