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Lovely

Like 8, 9, 19, 25

Thanks to Everyman for another fun puzzle.

25d raised a smile following on, as it does, from last week's "Pitt the Elder" clue.

A rare miss in my opinion is 6d which has one of the the worst surfaces I've ever come across, and I'm somewhat mystified why 23d begins with "looking up:" instead of "looking up at" but I'm sure Everyman has his reasons.

COD: I really wanted to give it 4d but, in the end, opted for the super smooth 9a.

What did you think of it? Let us know in the comments.

Stay safe:-)

Plus like 20, now that I’ve parsed it

Hi Bren

Agreed on 6

23 - happy with looking up (in a down clue)

I thought this was fun and again tougher than the old-style Everymans.
Enjoyed a couple of trademarks: the Spooner and Everyman clues.
Also 8, 23 and 15.
Granted there are some clues that may spark objections. I'm permissive, so will stay silent on those. ;-)

Maybe it was from watching all those Jean Paul Belmondo films [the man who taught me how to smoke]

Hi Raffles, hi Geeker

My issue with 23d is why Everyman chose a colon instead of using the the word "at". Surely the clue would read better if it began "looking up at black......" rather than the stop start effect of using a colon - maybe it's just me:-)

I prefer the colon - at envokes the sky?

Brendan, I mostly liked the clue because of the cleverness of "black" (avoiding spoilers). I'm permissive about the punctuation, which I often abuse in my lame Clueless and PR entries.
I thought the colon might even be witty here, as putting it after "Looking up" draws attention to the duality with "in the sky". But my taste is questionable.

I don’t have a problem with it. Reads fine to me.

My COD is 1a, just because I VERY rarely like Spoonerisms, but this one was perfect, and gave me a chuckle. (If my children were still in primary school I might feel differently. 😆)