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Thanks to Prize star Picaroon for a highly entertaining puzzle this week.
Felt difficult, but upon finishing I found that it took about median Prize solving time.

I still rate it on the tough side, but somewhat of a relief after this week's Guardian "murderer's row" (old-time baseball slang) of Enigmatist, Vlad and (a difficult) Paul on consecutive days. 😬

Clearly thematic, maybe an auxiliary theme or two. Esoteric (to me) GK required for a few thematics.
FOI 18 (took a long time to get going), LOI 29 (write-in guess worked but parsing escaped me).

Too many COD candidates to list. Perhaps will narrow it down later.

Sorry, geeker, we crossed and I’ve therefore duplicated. Hopefully an admin will resolve…

…and it looks as if we had a very similar experience.
Re 29, you have to add ‘ing’ to 13d for what I think is a cockney version of the US 29. I’m trying not to give too much away, so I hope you get my drift.

Thanks, that was key in my late parsing of 29. No spoiler because that character string is clear in the clue.

Sorry, geeker, I misconstrued your first post as saying that you still had not parsed 29, when clearly you had!

Picaroon is an absolute master of his art and continually produces clever, witty and entertaining crosswords, and this is no exception.

I actually got 1d before 13d and its related clues, which, given that I couldn't see a connection, caused me to grow increasingly confused and, dare I say it, a teensy, teensy bit angry....

... and then the PDM came crashing down on my head! This was all the more enjoyable because of my earlier state of heightened angst.

Too many COD contenders to list (really Bren, you got somewhere else to be?) but I'm going to pick the outstanding 7d. There is not an ounce of fat on this clue, with every word contributing to either the definition or word play, not to mention the surface is simply sublime.

Thanks to Picaroon for a truly wonderful puzzle:-)

After some deliberation:

co-COD 24 (of course!) and 19.
Top tier of contenders 10, 7, 31, 20 and 4.
Next tier 17, 15, 23, 13a and 26a.

As an indication of depth, 17 with its elegant surface would be very nearly COD in many puzzles.

Looks like you and I had similar experiences, Brendan. I saw 1d right away also, but couldn’t get 13d for quite a while. It didn’t help that UK slang was involved in some of the thematics. The clue that put the light bulb on for me was 25a. That gave me 13d and then everything fell into place.

Geeker, I thought of you when I got 24.

12 gave me 13!

13d was FOI for me!

Stuck on 4d. i have
?E?L?T?R
Is that right?

Can't parse 19d, or parts of 26,11