Cryptic crossword No 515

Thanks this time go to PostMark for reviewing this puzzle.

Pleasure to get an early sight of this, Glynos, and there is some creative clueing in here. We may not have agreed on everything but I'm pleased to have been able to help. 26a and 15d still my favourites, along with 14a, 16a, 3d and 13d. I think 1d is new? Very droll!

glynos, nice work, that was fun. As Spurs will indeed open next season against Southampton, the reference in 12a is neatly topical - in fact, the clue set as a whole suggests a sports-crazy (12a, 2d, 7d, 20d) mathematician (9a, 11a, 2d) at work! If I have to have a moan, I’ll suggest that equating “plain” and “dull” in 8a is a stretch……but this may be my problem, as many setters use less-than-exact synonyms and consider them fair, while I too often cannot make the connection.

Very enjoyable crossword. Good consistent standard of clues and barely a niggle (though I wasn't certain about 21a despite the excellent surface). Fairly straightforward to solve overall but not the worse for that. Particularly liked 19, 22 and 26.

A fun crossword to solve thanks, glynos, with a nice theme that I spotted for once! I rattled through the top half but found the bottom half rather tougher, with 21A left unparsed. No issue at all with 8A, picking up Leucine’s comment. Favourites were 11A, 26A (COTD for surface and disguised definition), 1D (maybe slightly loose but I liked it) and 15D.

This was good fun. I think I found this a little harder than some, but this is down to my deficiencies as a solver, I’m sure. Have you annotations that you can turn on? It’s usually me being dim, but I can’t quite parse 6d and 21a. I really like 1d and other favourites were 19a 14a and all the four letter clues! Cheers

Nice one glynos, that was fun! You found a lot of inventive constructions, and I particularly liked 9a, 14a, 28a, 1d (wittily amusing), 2d (thought it very neat), 6d (nice surface), 13d, 15d (perhaps my favourite) and 25d, I like the definition (having used it once myself) but I almost always get thrown by it - well played!