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Excellent Vlad again. Thanks.
Will post my long list of likes when done.
Stuck in NE with 2 crossers to go.

Thanks to Vlad, a good one.
Took significantly longer than Prize norm, but short of an impalement.

Started slowly but a number of surprisingly (for Vlad) easy clues allowed some entry points. Had to frequently go into "Vlad mode", i.e. guess/solve first, parse somewhat/much later.

FOI 1 (which gave a false note of encouragement). LOI 12, which was easy to guess but took forever to parse.

Too many good clues to list right now, but 19 definitely COD. 21 also a standout, many more could be mentioned.

Interesting, illipu - I was stuck in the NW with 2 (10 and 12) failing to yield. The solutions were obvious from the crossers but the parsing evaded me for a while before the pennies dropped.
Some typically Vladish intricate parsing elsewhere too, not least the self-referential 11.
A fair bit of competition for COD, but I’m going for the very clever 14.
Vlad always terrifies me, and this was no exception, but as usual I really enjoyed the challenge.

Rosa Klebb seems in fine Friday form at FT.

Likes include:
11a, 12a, 14a, 17a, 19a, 24a, 26a
7d, 20d, 21d
Three-way tie for COD 14a, 26a, 21d

Btw, got those two in NE.

One is UK slang, it seems, and the other had well-hidden definition.

COD definitely 19

I see geeker had it too. Makes sense.

And we both used "definitely". 😏 Rightly so.

I agree with 2 out of 3 of ilippu’s CsOD: 14 (to which I gave the palm in my first post) and the excellent 20. I’m less convinced by the third, 21, which (unless I’m missing something) sacrifices ideal parsing on the altar of an admittedly very witty surface. I prefer 26 from illipu’s longlist.
I can understand why geeker and darla *definitely* preferred 19 above all-comers, but it somehow didn’t quite do it for me, though I admit that it’s both clever and witty. Ah well, tot homines quot sententiae, as always they say down my local boozer.