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Thanks to Qaos for this week's Prize challenge.
I thought there were many elegant and enjoyable clues, but a few perhaps (YMMV) slightly strained.
Most of the grid filled quickly, but a handful difficult and obscure clues extended solving time beyond the norm. One short clue I guessed but had to look up with Google, solution dependent on GK I'd no idea of. One longer clue involves an obscure usage I had to confirm online.

FOI 1d, LOI 18 which puzzled me no end and still seems a bit awkward.
Still not certain of 25's parsing, though there's only one possible reasonable solution.
Co-COD 29 and 24, which is somewhat arbitrary as there were many contenders including 24, 28, 12, 21, 26, 20 and 11. Bottom half of the puzzle very strong.
Qaos is fond of "ghost" themes. I see a couple of possibilities, but nothing clear jumps off the screen.

Hi Geeker,

25d - the "horse" is letters 2 and 4 with letter 3 indicating that it's "pregnant" - I think

Brendan, thanks...that was my take on 25, but the first letter of the answer seems to come from nowhere.

It's in Chambers as an abbreviation for "about".

Oh, that figures. 😂 Another miss due to my flaky refusal to use Chambers.

Typo: forgot to mention 22. Complex parsing, had to go into "Vlad mode" (guess first, parse later) but it was another COD candidate.

I saw the theme early enough to help with gridfill which is a very rare occurrence for me.

So far I have 9, 10, 26, 29 as thematic in the acrosses, and 2, 11, 14, 18 in the downs. Any others?

I'm a bit unsure about the parsing for 8d. I can see the small object, but I don't know how the cat fits in.

Hi Gweilo,

8d - "cat" can also mean 'vomit' - hope that helps.

@brendan

Ah, thanks. I did not know that

Thanks Gweilo:-)