Toughie No. 54 — cryptic crossword

A toughie puzzle: 40 clues on a 15×15 grid. Solve it online — check your answers as you go, ask for a hint, and read how each clue works once it is solved.

Across

1. Subject to cop it, sadly (5)
4. Underwater craft, nuclear — smaller than an atom (9)
9. Primarily, assorted notes about a writer (3)
11. Something that never took off, yet went down badly (4,7)
12. Of birth, some Roman at Alexandria (5)
14. I led back into the sandwich shop (4)
15. Sect's four dined out to develop the land (9)
16. Crude editor, drunk (5)
17. Power ebbing away, coming first (9)
19. Reckoned, we hear, to be a visitor (5)
21. Catches son inside birds' homes (5)
23. Dynamo: information about an age on the hill (9)
27. Head for Gretna Green with English stride (5)
28. Trades places where calls are connected (9)
31. Painful swelling in a big outing (4)
32. English upset Eire? Spooky (5)
34. Big tidy-up: bound to be blameless (6,5)
35. Champion serve (3)
36. No riotous outburst, yet infamous (9)
37. Frets over casseroles (5)

Down

1. Thanks cut short in comparison (4)
2. Dish allows for cells that stop bleeding (9)
3. Lice, old and agitated, bump into one another (7)
4. Son, chanting wildly, is thieving (9)
5. Darling left in confusion (5)
6. Chatting, taking Latin in (7)
7. Low note makes cash (5)
8. Study of a novel jet cure is guesswork (10)
10. Burst drain — the lowest point! (5)
13. Beer about? Guinness, perhaps (4)
16. Frank and mature — time for shooting (4,6)
18. Stern gags concocted for mobsters (9)
20. Hangers-on: English, our agent, adrift (9)
22. Canners redeployed to make a reading machine (7)
24. Concerning men standing in for the king (7)
25. A lotion or emollient, initially! (4)
26. Work with a twitch of the eye (5)
29. Wagon carrying one weight of gold (5)
30. Good coke, refined, becomes a lizard (5)
33. Fish or else, at sea (4)

More: Toughie cryptic crosswords.

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