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Thanks Geeker and Buzzybee. At first your reply confused me because I thought I had the answer thanks to the Puta Kari words. Then I realized there’s a Cockney word I didn’t know and a two-letter word for something folks are often ‘doing’. So I’m all solved and parsed, thanks.

Re 3, of course! Should have seen that. Many thanks. Haven’t seen Charade. Haven’t even seen north by north west, but I do have the latter recorded, so any day now… My mother claims to have had a pleasant encounter with Cary Grant in the lanes around Thurlestone in Devon. (That sounds racier than it was. He was in a car, she was on foot)

Didn't really get into this because I was driving all day. NW corner was a write-in then I faltered. Then didn't pick it up again until last night while watching the football. So all in all a bit distracted. But I've got there in the end. What I will say about Pangakupu is I like the way his anagrams are not blatantly obvious.

FOI 1a. LOI 10a which I'd never heard of.

COD no stand outs for me. I suspect if I understood it at all it will be 25a but still trying to parse that one.

25a: the first word is a homophone ("caught one"), the hyphenated successor is two words for "create" or "to create".

Thanks Geeker. Maybe not COD then.

Finished, before reading the forum, though I now see my parsing of 22 was wrong: I'd taken the first 5 letters as an anagram ("soup") of a sort of noodle/pasta found tinned by Heinz, but wondered where the "very good" came in! Yes, i've heard of the Vietnamese soup.

Foi: 18
Loi: 19 (had 3 crossers and guessed the"sex" component, but had to use CrosswordSolver for 1st & 3rd letters though it made sense the moment I saw it listed as I knew the "safe".)

None of the clues seemed outstanding, though there was plenty of clever misdirection.