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Many thanks to the formidable Vlad for a tough but rewarding challenge this week.

FOI 9, LOI 16.

Quite a few clues required shifting into "Vlad mode", i.e. solve first and parse later. Some long solutions in this category were helpful in filling the grid. As often happens with Vlad, wordplay logic often took some time to sink in: PDMs followed by "Gee, that wasn't *so* hard after all".

Plenty of clues on the COD candidate list. For obvious reasons 21 must be the winner. Short list adds 8, 2, 27, 13, 16 and 18.

Well, for the first time in a while I’m up at midnight, and what do I get? Vlad!
Enjoyed the challenge, but it took me a while as expected with this setter: many tricky devices to contend with.
FOI the easy 2. LOI 26: the solution could only be one thing once the crossers were in, but parsing it took me a while.
COD? Too many contenders, inter alia 3, 4, 10, 19 5.
I was going to say that 15 may prove tricky for non-Brits, but now I’ve seen geeker’s post and it obviously didn’t!

Quite right, geeker: 21 deserves the palm for sheer cheek if nothing else!

Roger, the wordplay in 15 was relatively straightforward, but for this non-Brit Google was definitely required to confirm the solution.

Same experience with 26.

Hi Geeker,

I must say my heatr sank when I saw this week's Prize was by Vlad but, for some reason - maybe because I only finished the Genius at 23:55 so I was 'in the groove' so to speak, I pretty much sailed through most of this.

Unfortunately, there are stilll a couple I can't parse. Namely...

2d - Mount Everest’s peak undergoes damage (4)

23d - Coach drops team leader for a start (5) I see it's a coach but but no idea as to the wordplay?

COD: Lots of contenders, but I really liked 26a.

Stay safe:-)

Regards 21d, shouldn't it be "finish to close" rather than "close to finish"?

Ah, 2d - that type of "mount" - very good:-)

Brendan
23d is 1, 4

Ah, them "drops" - I mistook it for an instruction so kept trying to add back T to anything that came close to being a synonym for start!

Many thanks ilippu:-)

Actually, 13d deserves a COD honourable mention.