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A rare, but very welcome, appearance in the Prize slot for Matilda, whom I maybe wrongly associate with Mondays and even Quiptics.
This was something of a breeze for me, but a highly enjoyable one with a variety of lovely devices and surfaces.
FOI the lovely 1a, LOI 15, which I got early on but wanted to be sure of from the crossers, and 13 dropped far later than it should have.
COD? Too many to choose from, but 3 was an early one which stuck with me as a fine example of a short and clever surface.

Thanks to Matilda.
This was a lot of fun.
A fair number of accessible/easy clues, but took above median time to solve because I found several challenging, especially LOI 14. Several tricky disguised definitions stood out.
FOI was 1a.
Can't select a COD, but 12, 3, 26, 13, 8, 20, 6, 16 and 14 (in rough order of solving) all made the first tier, indicative of a well-crafted puzzle.
Also noted 9, 21 and 25.

With the usual, 'horses for courses' and 'your mileage may differ' caveats, I found this to be at the very easy end of the scale.

Yes, there are a few tricky parses, but there are also a lot of anagrams, the odd hidden and homophone etc. to help you out should you run into any problems.

The only two clues I had to check in Chambers were 15a, where I didn't know that meaning of 'mole', and 22d where, strangley, Chambers says the answer is a paste and doesn't mention "soup", but thankfully I knew it and have even eaten it - or drank it? 🤔

6d - I'm not a fan of this type of clue as it only makes sense once you've solved it which, to my mind, rather defeats the whole point of a clue - what do you guys think?

Made a bid of a rod for my own back with 15d by completely forgetting or overlooking who the '"Matilda" in the clue was referring to!

Thanks to Matilda for a gentle but fun Prize puzzle.

As always, if you do run into difficulties, just post your queries on here - there's always people around willing to help.

Stay safe:-)

Allow me to withdraw my criticism of 6d - I inexplicably overlooked half of the clue!!

Held up by the last couple in the north east. Should have seen them earlier but I suppose that is the sign of a good puzzle.

Brendan

Agree with a lot of what you say.

6d: A Marmite clue.

They once said of Jonathan Miller:

Too clever by three-quarters.

Brendan, I like 6 because of the deception, which I think was intended by Matilda. Struggled for a long time assuming a grid cross-reference was involved, and only after conclusively deciding that was a dead end (a la Sherlock Holmes's "eliminating the impossible") did the penny slowly drop.

The solution 20 appeared in a very recent daily (Vlad Grauniad 29,707).
I had the soup 22 at a restaurant last week. ;-)

It might be my fevered brain, but I seem to remember a literary themed crossword had a clue:

R (11)

Think George Elliot.

A bit mixed. I liked 18a and 7d.
I will have to find Chambers to explain 15, it seems!
Why "strict" in 14d?