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This took quite a while to get started, but spotting the event helped considerably. An excellent puzzle providing a good level of difficulty. I was worried that all of my first down answers seemed to fit without alteration - but all soon became clear as water.

;)

Yep, very similar experience here. Enjoyable level of difficulty. Found it challenging to start with and then inroads in SE corner and then across to SW at which point thinks started to fall into place. Nice theme and endgame.

Thanks Quixote.

Thoroughly enjoyed this today too. Brilliant. SE corner started me off too.

It seems we all solved this in roughly the same way - I went SE SW NW NE - and I am not sure if I could have finished the NE corner without knowing the theme.

I’ve been trying to solve 26a for a long time, can I get a hint? It looks like anagram, 7 letters with one leftover. But definition is ambiguous.
And a tip for 5a would hopefully help me move to NE.

Lumen...

5 Across has a Bosom followed by three letters of a four-letter word meaning 'look lecherously'. The definition is the first two words.

Thanks Malone.
This is certainly tougher than the last few weeks.
Funny to read that some of the cells in Heavy Metal Band were the wrong colour! I didn’t even notice that at the time.

Lumen, 26 is defined by the first word. There's one of the very usual 'pets' (minus a letter) and a usual 'tot', verb. There's backwards stuff involved...

Thanks again, I have 26 now, very obscure word. I actually saw that word last night, and thought no, that can’t be a saw....!