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8d Def is 1st word; 4-letter "stupor" with 1-letter "indeed" inside; last 3 letters are a word for the jack of clubs.
12d Def is 1st 2 words: 3-letter word for "clod" is followed by a 2-letter pronoun for "one"; 4th word is extra.
25a The 2-letter word you need is "or".

On the subject of 8, I never could find justification for the one letter for indeed. What am I missing?

In Chambers one of the entries for "I" directs you to "aye".

Aye it does. Thanks, will.

Yes, that kind of thing is what I was referring to: several of the definitions are multi-hop, and some a bit strained. Likewise, I don’t think “or” really means “in preference to”, and nor does BRB. To get “clod” to clue what is needed for 12 requires an unusual definition which BRB calls out as Scottish, but the clue had no hint it was a dialect term. This happened in quite a lot of clues, which just took the shine off this otherwise magnificent construction for me. Thanks will37 for the help — all clear now :-)

Mooncow, as far as I can see the BRB does list ‘in preference to’ under ‘Before’, which is one of the definitions of ‘Or’ (albeit archaic). An indicator would have been nice, but it is in there.