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I found this week's Prize by Kite to be very difficult and, at times, wondered if I'd even finish.

Some of the parsings were so intricate and complex that, even when I was sure of the answer, it took an age to figure out exactly why?

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

The only clue I haven't fully parsed is 4d where I can't see the "emperor", but hopefully I'll have a PDM before too long

COD - I think Geeker will enjoy 17a (as do I). I also liked 22a and 16d.

Thanks to Kite for a challenging but enjoyable puzzle.

Stay safe:-)

The emperor is Russian, brendan

Ah! Of course, many thanks Rogissimo:-)

Brendan, I found this tough and still have not gotten 1!
FOI 3, LOI up to now 3 (1 eventually).
Some new words I could get from parsing but had to confirm or google to fully parse.
Indeed I liked 17, plus of course the geeky 21.
Offhand I'll call 11 COD, though several others could be worthy.

Thanks to Kite for quite a challenge.

Brendan, the last two letters of 4d are the Spanish part.

Thanks Geeker,

1d - the "supports" are female clothing with the "rector" moved down one place - definition is "stops"

Very good, many thanks Brendan.
That was one of the possibilities I considered, but didn't fully understand. Also got distracted by possibility of a triple definition, but of course that got nowhere.

The irony of getting stumped by one of the "easy" clues! 😭

After a very long day at the coalface, I was really hoping for something relatively gentle, but in the end I enjoyed the challenge. Quite a bit of GK required, and my last one in was 5d, even though I now dimly remember having seen it before.
If I’m right, 26d is rather, er, cheeky.

Agreed on 26d, rogissimo.
That one took a while to parse because I got stuck on a similar but wrong term for "Bohemian". And the solution is not really US usage.

I was held up by thinking of a different word for ‘Bohemian’ too, geeker. I wonder if it was the same as yours!

Well that was a weird one. Saw the new setter, filled in a couple immediately in the top left, and thought 'no problem'. Spent the next 40 minutes going through clues and muttering 'well it _might_ be that, but I can't see why', until almost the entire grid's crossers were filled in, but no clues other than the two I'd got initially.

Finally I broke into it and it went down much more quickly, apart from the obvious Knowledge roadbumps. (I hesitate to use the G word of GK.) Not too bad in the end, and I learnt some new words.