Fifteensquared

I pencilled BURDEN in over-confidently for 8 Across.  This delayed me.  Solved in just under 20 mins, a bit slower than usual for Virgilius, where a theme usually becomes clear to help the solver along.   I think this theme is so obvious that I need not mention it.

* = anagram

ACROSS

1  FAT ALIT countr(Y) 

8  PIGEON  Double defn

11  LIE EG   (chess)MEN

12  SIXPENCE   Very clever.   D-day is not 6 June 1944 but Decimalisation Day in 1971.   The sixpence coin (tanner) was half of a shilling, equivalent to 2.5 new pence.   Very small, hence football cliche that remains - ”turn on a sixpence”.     I may be wrong in this, but I have a suspicion that the sixpence did not go on D-day;  that, after a pressure campaign, it was kept on for a while longer.     VI = 6 P = pence, though strictly that sixpence was old money, so may it should be VID.   However this is the wordplay element so I’d allow that licence.

21 HONE + D in YEW

24  INFER + ROI (French for King) (reversed)

25 S + A LUTE 

26  TWO-TIMES  My favourite clue   - Two-times multiplication tables are the easiest.   Is deceptive = second definition (Two-timing)  

DOWN

2  DE (successive notes on the scale A to G) + COMPOSE

4  FOUR-LETTER-WORDS   Got this straight away - the four words that comprise the clue are examples too.

6 L on ISLE  (Man, for example, i.e. Isle of Man, v common in crosswords)

7  TENNERS  “Tenors”

14  EIGHTFOLD  (of delight)*

15 HINDUISM  U in (his mind)*

20 EVENS (chance of heads - in tossing a coin) + O