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Just a general comment - that was tough! I was barking up the wrong tree until Brendan’s hint on 20d then it fell into place. FOI was 16a but COD for me was probably 19d.
Enjoyable but quite a challenge

The special instructions weren't printed in the paper? Wow, that would make this nearly impossible.

Hi havermonkey, and welcome
All the thematics are of the same kind. The initial letter is the ??????? of the full word.

I am very impressed that anybody completed this under their own steam. I needed a lot of help from here. Once the theme was established it opened up a bit, but I found a lot of the parsing to be too convoluted. FOI 4. LOI 1ac. COD 16d

OK I have parsed 13A now. The other one that fitted would have been impossible to parse anyway, so I kind of knew it must be correct. Not that it is helping much now I have all the themed clues done!

19D was a great clue once I worked it out!

Just got 14D as well... another good clue!

Thank you Chrise! Will tackle afresh tomorrow with my morning cuppa and hopefully it will click quickly.

What can I say? I wanted to hate this because it was so tough and I say again to those who finished early well done. But actually it's a really good puzzle with some fine clueing alongside not a difficult theme to get. Thanks Paul and all on here who helped out.

COD 19d. But 10a was good too. In fact many were.

Hi everyone

As usual I started late - had dead heading to do in the garden.

First read through I got four - FOI 16ac followed by 15ac, 1d and 7d. Then I was stuck, wondering what all the clues starting with A were about. I do the crossword on the paper, so no instructions. It has taken me ages to read through the thread, so now I need to see what answers I can get, if I have time before Beck. At least I don't do football. Must get the washing in and close up the greenhouse.

Chess note for Brendan (possibly others):
"The Beast from [25]" is making a 2-day cameo appearance at a blitz event in Zagreb. Sadly, Day 1 was a fiasco.