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Morning all,
Agree at was a little trickier than recent weeks and the clues generally a little tighter. I thought there were rhyming pairs in both the downs and acrosses. Didn’t have a problem with 24a, the speech marks are a little hint that it is something spoken (or shouted!). My COD would be 24a.

I found this all rather strange. There seemed to be a profusion of partial as well as complete anagrams (some of them terrific, admittedly - 20A, 24A) as well as one or two clues that would barely pass muster in a quick crossword (10A!). Agree with some of the comments about 23A too. I can only presume that the answer is half of a synonym for duffer, but if that's the case, lord knows what it is (a quick Google revealed 45 and none of them worked!). Finally I'd be eternally grateful if someone could parse 14D - utterly mystified by that one.

14d: it is an anagram with k added.

I parsed 23a as a an anagram (fouled up) of half of duffer (three letters) plus a single letter representing ’ball’. No idea if that is what was intended

Thanks Mathi - I was the wrong side of the 38th parallel! Another anagram to add to the list!

And another partial anagram if you're right Jono. What on earth is going on this week? Anagramitis!

I thought this was the most difficult Everyman for a while. Thanks to this thread for some insights into 23a. I saw the game-related word but didn’t think it could be right... there’s a fine line between “cleverly cryptic” and “hamfisted” isn’t there?

Was slightly held up by putting the wrong fish in 9ac for a while. There’s a species that’s something of an evolutionary anomaly that works perfectly for the second half of the clue, but I couldn’t get the wine out of the first half.

I found this the hardest puzzle I've tried for ages - definitely not an Everyman. 23a is an awful clue, in that the wordplay is for a homophone of the answer, not the answer itself. Is 26a really a word? The definition for 18d (LOI) is very loose.

I wasn't helped by having the wrong fish at 9a to start with.

Favourite 20a.

Chrise Richardk I agree that this is the hardest Everyman for ages. I have long suspected that there are multiple "Everymen" compiling from the same playbook. The two rhyming pair today are straight from that playbook. I needed the down one to solve 3d.

Hi all, just discovered this forum when searching for a hint on 23a. Got it thanks to a comment -- cheers brendan! I had already come with the answer from the wordplay but didn't remember this meaning (despite having come across it recently in a Times crossword). For my taste this is a rather too esoteric for an Everyman -- especially in such a vague &lit clue.