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Thanks to Vlad, a fairly recent visitor, for another Prize challenge.
On the difficult side but not an outright impalement.
Quite a few "gettable" short clues to provide entry points, but many Prize-worthy tricky constructions.
I found the top half on the easy side but the bottom beastly.

FOI 9, LOI jointly 17 and 27.

Joint COD 11 (I like the word), 12, 17, 20 (naturally), 24a and 25. 24a might have been the winner due to nice wordplay, but the surface is not smooth.

Thanks Vlad.

As can be expected from Vlad.

Likes:13a, 24a, 25a, 8d, 18d, 20d

COD: 24a

Agree with Geeker's assessment - a mixture of Prize clues requiring some out of the box thinking and less taxing contributions.

24a and 25a held me up the most - guessed the solution from the crossing letters alone, but parsing the clues took some work!

COD for me was 1a or 15a.

Looking again at the grid, I have to upgrade 13 to the COD long list. Wrote it in but didn't appreciate the full parsing.