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This week's puzzle by Brendan is composed around the theme of "ears".

In terms of difficulty it is much like last week, in that much of it went in quite quickly but the last handful, mainly in the NE, took ages.

If you do get stuck there is at least one hidden the acosses and at least one in the downs.

FOI was 9a followed by 11a which I recommend if you have trouble starting.

There are a couple I cant fully parse, namely 6a where I'm a bit confused about "not cut" and 7d which looks like a homophone but can't see how the first 4 letters relate to "breakfast or lunch".

COD - When a setter has to keep to a specific theme it can often prove limiting in clue construction and I think that might be the case here (no pun intended).

Thanks to Brendan for an interesting puzzle.

Stay safe:-)

Hi Brendan,
I struggled much more with this than with last week's.
The long thematic was practically a write-in with just a few crossers, but progress was such a slog that I didn't think to keep the customary list of COD candidates.
FOI 11, which is a really easy clue. LOI 4, over which I pondered seemingly forever.
Quite a few nice clues, will call 22, 5d and 5a co-COD. Also liked 7, 2, 3 and no doubt a few others I didn't write down...
Thanks to Brendan (setter) for the challenge. I sense that I may be missing some subtle thematic aspects, as some of his recent Prizes have featured ingenious constructions.

Brendan, 7 is 3 inside 3, not a homophone. Eat as verb. Defn. deal.

Thanks Geeker,

7d - I had thought the last two letters were "tea"? so was tying myself in knots trying to figure out how the first part worked, completely falling for the "hear" trap.

6d - I've got "line" + "a bit of corn" then "not cut" but while the last 2 letters can come from "not" they are not "not cut" - blimey! that was turning in to Peter Piper picked a peck ..... 😂

I meant 6a not 6d.

Brendan, I agree on 6. I figured "cut" in the middle (unusually) and considered it parsed, though not ideally.

I see that but I can't believe a setter would use "cut" to indicate a removal of a random letter, it's well established that the letter to removed should be specifically indicated, ie 'last to deaR' or 'start of Lunch' etc and that "cut" means 'minus the ending'.

True from the crossword perspective. Only way I can justify it is by analogy with words like "isn't", in which "nt" serves as the "cut" word in question.

Very good I thought. Heavy themes aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but they are fun now and again. Reminded me of the way Boatman often does themes.
I also took ‘cut’ in 6a to mean ‘contracted’ (in the grammatical sense).

Very clever but rather tedious. 2 or 3 not parsed (and may be wrong), but I can't be bothered to spend any more time on this. Sorry Brendans!