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A thoroughly enjoyable Prize puzzle from Imogen which I found to be pretty accessible, helped by some long anagrams, but still containing a few very knotty clues!

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

FOI was 1a followed by the crossing 1d.

There are still 3 clues I can't fully parse, namely 13a. 20a and 22a - although I think that last one might just be a DD.

COD - a tie this week between the unusual &lit/anagram at 4d and the clever 10d.

Let us know in the comments how you got on.

Thanks to Imogen for a fun workout.

Stay safe:-)

Sorry, brendan (and all) - your post must have appeared just before I pressed send on mine. I hope the admins can do a merge thing.

No problem Rogissimo, the same thing happened to me a few weeks ago - I'll email Norah to let her know .

I think we both had a similar solving experience with some clues going in easily but others proving to be a bit more difficult .

I've always struggled with Imogen's puzzles. Thanks to her for a relatively rare Prize appearance.
Found this about average difficulty, but many good and enjoyable clues.
FOI 5, LOI 10a.
No single COD, but joint favo(u)rites 22, 13, 10d, 24 and 18. Seven others made the "long list", which is a good sign.

Brendan, 22a is a dd, with the 2nd having a slang prefix beloved by crossword setters.
20a parses as 3, 4, 2 where the 3 is a (4 with a letter dropped).
I also have trouble parsing 13a. The solution is obvious, I see "inspiring figure" and "later" but the rest unclear.

Just figured out the wordplay for 13a:-)

That just leaves 20a though I think I am sure of my answer 🤔

Thanks Geeker,

The. "French art" is very popular in barred puzzles and is their version of (though) "art"

geeker - you need to use the ‘apostrophe s after ‘inspiring figure’ and then a bit of French at the end.

Thanks, I see it now. That occurred to me but I didn't develop the idea.

Apologies to Imogen, who I referred to as "her".
Less than two weeks ago, I discovered that Imogen and Vulcan are the same (male) setter...

https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2020/dec/07/crossword-blog-meet-the-setter-vulcan

Signing off here to avoid further stupidities. 🤣