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I found this a tricky, but very enjoyable, challenge from Brendan, with a wide variety of clues, misdirections and good surfaces.
FOI all the way down at 19. LOI for some reason 18, which is in the competition for COD, 5 being another in the running. I’m going for the lovely 1 though.
Thanks, Brendan!

Thanks to Brendan.
I found this on the gentle side but was eating and didn't record solving time. Sufficient challenge was provided by a couple of new words (derivable from wordplay but requiring confirmation) and several very tricky parsings. It helped to go into "US crossword solving mode": write in solutions and parse later, with 5a being a prime example. Agreed on surfaces.

FOI 9.
LOI also 18, which also could have been found earlier. It's my COD runner-up after the (potentially geeky) laureate 15 (due to the witty linking of 7 and 15). Other contenders 23, 1, 2, 19, 3 and 5d.

One really obvious solution depends on a UK abbrev I'd never seen and had to look up. Wrote it in anyway and googled after the grid was full.

Hi, Geeker - genuinely interested to know what the UK abbrev is. I'm in the UK myself, so maybe didn't notice its parochialism.

biggus: I hope RAG is not a spoiler for anyone. Wiki says "UK & Ireland".

Thanks to Brendan for a fun Prize challenge.

I didn't find this overly difficult, but there is still one clue I haven't been able to fully parse:-

9a - I would have still got the answer if the clue read "female leading most of in house", which makes wonder where "party" fits in?

brendan, Chambers Crossword Dictionary gives a 6-letter word for party in house... the answer has 5 of those 6 letters... hence 'most of'.

Thanks ilippu,

I'd got the "most of" part but, like I said, couldn't figure out why "party" was in the clue when the last 5 letters are "most of" "in house". Needless to say, I didn't bother looking up the definition in Chambers but you are spot on: "a reception held in a person's own house":-)

brendan,
of course you got 'most of'.... was just making my response complete 😃

No problem, I'm the same ilippu, when posting a reply on here I always explain every part of the wordplay, regardless of the actual question - I just can't help myself 😀