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All done now - 11d clever, with a new meaning for roughness to me and 13d resolved thanks to wiki.

Very enjoyable puzzle! 1D was a completely new term to me that I feel I should've come across at some point in life, but thankfully all of its letters could be obtained from other clues.

Put me down as another one who spent far too long on 11d because they forgot who the setter was.

Not that it matters, but I don't get the parsing for 14ac or 23ac. They're fully checked, so it's fine, but if someone wants to help me out, many thanks in advance!

Hi acornz

It's a bit difficult to give a hint without revealing too much. In each of those cases - 14ac and 23 ac - the wordplay starts out with a 5-letter word which is then reduced by 1 letter, as clued, and then reduced by a further 1 letter, unclued.

I hope this sheds light.

Thanks will37, yes it does. It forced me to double check my extra letters, I had made a mistake elsewhere, which meant my hypothesis for what the extra letters were in those clues were wrong. All is now clear.

A gorgeous puzzle with a really fun ending! Lovely to see a talented new setter gracing our pages - hope he, she or they continues to submit puzzles! Bravo, Demoniacal!

All done, but I still can't see the parsing for either 14a or 23a (and maybe in other, ambiguous cases we should specify whether it's the clue or the entry number that we're referring to) - but no doubt the light will come.
I would like a hint to the parsing of clue 25d - I'm sure of my entry which satisfies the definition, sure of my extra letter, but cannot see the local mother, if the daughter follows the usual convention.

Doing the necessary Wiki search for the Author, initially drew a blank until I remembered Wiki's rather prissy insitence on correct diacritical marks - a bit like the Chambers app's frustratingly pedantic requirement for terminal full stops before it will reveal the meaning of some abbreviations.

The crucial element of the design for the final appearance of the grid became obvious through my strategy during the cold-solving phase of listing my answers grouped by length, to aid spotting crossings - not by reading the message, or the synopsis of the play - that came much later as reverse engineering.

Clue 19d was easy for me as we had a ceremonial visit from one every year at my old school - one year it was the Queen, and she spoke to me: " Worms, Ma'am" I replied.

Very clever, and fun - thanks Demoniacal.

All finished and understood, except I cannot for the life of me parse 25d. Hint please.

re 25D - not 'usual' convention as mentioned by quixote...

14A/23A

Top of a mountain (Scot) the same word as the top of a head.

Five letter word for fast missing A = answer