Cryptic
Across
1 US President’s fruity interjection to another? (4,6,5)
9 Keep area back to train, initially in Maine (5)
10 Canton capital pen-pal used when taking in the final letter the French returned (9)
11 Xinjiang city’s quiet with hard (easy-sounding) American individuals about (7)
12 Navigating, ultimately, the web, Roman road goes around north-east Italy (7)
13 Little czar and the queen meet a great soldier (9)
15 New approach to Italian river mammal (5)
16 Plain in South America that some international law is stood on its head (5)
18 Queen gets bitten by a pectoral work out? (9)
20 German flower? One during the morning is found near
Disneyland (7)
22 Old Scots dynasty’s oil is unreliable when half of Ballarat’s gone (7)
23 Virginia’s exiled from old S African province, including the old city over the range (5-4)
24 Infer, incorrectly, from UN freezing unfairly this Kyrgyz position (5)
25 Gambling with Cold War adversary at first’s a very dangerous game to play (7,8)

Down
1 Arms race? Lear jet shuttling for one Washington leader (5,4,6)
2 A Canaanite is popular with firm, it’s said (7)
3 Mexican state drawing up queer rota (9)
4 Republican Intelligence measuring up an Asian (5)
5 Lord Cade takes five in the middle of finding African head (4,5)
6 A new kind of bread arrives at Scottish dale (5)
7 Hail in Rome laurel for Zoroastrian (7)
8 Removed S American leader – and leaves dollar crisis (8,7)
14 Saucy tales of Parisienne turned up by Reagan (9)
15 Is it not Rome’s sacred cow to the letter? (5,4)
17 Manifestations in India of the first ancient mariners support an extract from Java (7)
19 Alaskan bird eats fish (7)
21 Green shire environment for Chinese city... (5)
22 ...shire character coming from a Spanish city – Basque,
actually (5)

Quick
Across
1 6th US President (4,6,5)
9 ——- and bailey – standard Norman castle-building (5)
10 Capital of NE Swiss demi-canton (9)
11 City of Xinjiang set in the Tien Shan foothills (7)
12 Italian region which includes Venice and Verona (7)
13 ———— III, king of Macedonia, 336-323BC (9)
15 S American canyon: orang-utan (5)
16 Prairie-like flat area of northern S America (5)
18 ———— VII (69-30BC), defeated at the Battle of Actium (9)
20 Home to Disneyland in California (7)
22 Second-oldest Oxford college (1263) (7)
23 Traversing European and Asiatic Russia (5-4)
24 Tien Shan foothills town of Kyrgyzstan on the Syrdaria River, aka Ozgon (5)
25 Act of bravado involving a revolver (7,8)

Down
1 39th US President (5,4,6)
2 Empire which gained control of Anatolia during the second millennium BC (7)
3 Mexican state and its capital (9)
4 Inhabitant of modern-day Mesopotamia (5)
5 Westernmost point of Africa: island republic (4,5)
6 River and market town of SW Scotland (5)
7 Zend, an eastern Iranian language (7)
8 President of Chile, 1970-73 (8,7)
14 Medieval stories compiled by Giovanni Boccaccio (9)
15 Edict of the Vatican (5,4)
17 Hindu deific incarnations (7)
19 Alaskan native Americans and their language (7)
21 City of Hubei Province, China, on the Qing river (5)
22 Basque name for Spain’s largest port (5)

Big Bad World by P J Polyp