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A real challenge, for me at least, from Imogen, but a joy to solve, with a wide range of devices demanding a good dose of lateral thinking. A fine end to a wonderful evening in Carcassonne.
FOI 20 (yes, it took me that long to find an in). LOI 18 (which should really have come sooner).
So much competition for COD, but I’m going to give the palm to the sublime 14.

Incidentally, today’s Quick Cryptic by Picaroon is an absolute beauty. I’d recommend it to anyone who might be trying to get a friend of whatever age into cryptic crosswords.

A stiff challenge but good fun nonetheless.

FOI was 10a followed by 11a.

If you do get stuck there is at least one long anagram in both the acrosses and downs.

Philistine that I am, I was unaware of the Tennyson reference but given the crossers and definition, it could only be one word which I then put into Google alongside Tennyson and Hey Presto!

9a - This is the only parsing I'm not sure of although I am sure of my answer. The best I can come up with is that a 4 letter "replaces" is reversed and then followed by "nothing" and "right". My problem is that there is no reversal indicator so wonder if that's why the question mark is there - or I've completely misunderstood it!

COD - Joint winners this week with 7d and the witty image it evokes and the wonderful 14d.

Thanks to Imogen for a most enjoyable challenge.

Congratulation to Forum regular Chris who celebrated his Golden Anniversary last weekend.

Welcome to new poster Nuncio.

Stay safe:-)

Bonjour Rog 🤪

Thanks to Imogen.
More challenging than Prize norm. Quite a few easy clues, but also a number of tough ones. Feared a DNF for a while, but some pennies dropped.

FOI 3
LOI = COD (as often happens) = 14
Before being alternately baffled and impressed by 14, COD long list was 17, 25, 9, 10, 19, 7, 15 and 11.
Being American, parsed 16 but needed Google to verify. Also got the Tennyson clue by parsing, ignorant of underlying meaning.

Morning all! Foi also 20. Enjoying this a lot. Couldn't see why 23 was so but guessed and sure enough so it is. Hope I'm not coming across as too dense. Cheers!

Brendan I've just started and 9a was my second one in. I agree with your interpretation but that is a new use of replaces that I've never seen before.

Bonjour Brendan!
I think you are there with 9. If you put the word ‘back’ after the four letter word you have the synonym for ‘replaces’. The ? indicates that the cryptic indicator is implied, if you see what I mean.

I took it as “replaces” = “???? back”.

Good fun I thought.

Hi Rog, we crossed, but looks like we are saying the same thing!