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Thanks to Paul for a clever but extremely challenging centenary Prize.

I'm very proud of filling the grid in only about 15 minutes longer than median Prize solving time (almost can't believe it, as DNF seemed likely), but still can't parse one clue.

FOI 7. Co-LOI stemmed from correcting a mistake in 22, after which 13 and 19 fell into place.

Struggled too much to take COD notes, and now my head hurts too much. There were some nice (and complex) constructions, a couple of Pauline entries, and solution words that rarely occur outside crosswords.

Wondering if other solvers found this difficult.

Wow! What an absolute monster from Paul to mark the 29,500th edition of the Prize crossword.

Had pretty much resigned myself to a DNF but, somehow, managed to scramble over the line.

If you do get stuck (and you will) there is at least one long anagram in both the acrosses and downs.

There are 3 clues I can't fully parse, namely 11a, 3d and 13d but I'll look at them again tomorrow with fresh eyes and hopefully see what, thus far, has eluded me.

COD - A few Pauline clues that made me chuckle so, in that spirit, I'll go for 22a, although 4d deserves an honourable mention.

I did wonder if 25,19,1 might not be known outside the UK, but it looks like Geeker had no trouble with it so perhaps it's more universal than I thought:-)

Thanks to Paul for a real challenge, worthy of the milestone:-)

Please feel free to leave a comment letting us know how you got on, we're always happy to have new posters join out merry band.

Stay safe:-)

Brendan, I was not familiar with the term (25,19,1), but with the help of crossers, I read the phrase as innocent and an immediate corollary of (14,9,10)...once I got the latter, which took a good while. Needed Google to fully parse and grok the full Pauline naughtiness. 🤣

I've just Googled it and it is a Britishism (is that a word!?), so congrats on getting it Geeker.

Paul definitely had his fun with this one:-)

The first word of 11a uses the same device as the solution of 4d.
For 3d, think Mendeleev.
13d parses as 3 inside 7 ("black and blue").

Got them, many thanks Geeker.

Kicking myself on 3d as that was my very first thought but, for some reason, I discounted it!

Will call 17 COD as I like the subtle wordplay.
Still can't parse 1d, though the solution is a familar guest in US crosswords.

1d - I struggled with this as well. The best I can come up with is 4 letter "bear with me" "that has"/goes around "powerful" then finally "one" - the trouble is though that I can only find justification for "power" not "powerful".

15 minutes or so over the median for me too, geeker, having started an hour later than usual. An absolute joy to solve.
Too many competitors for COD, but I’ll go with the almost thematically Pauline ones: 8, 18 and 22.
Brendan: pedant that I am, I can’t stop myself from pointing out that it’s not the 29,500th Prize, but the 29,500th Cryptic (the Guardian’s own nomenclature being misleading). It’s rounded off a fittingly tough week of Cryptics in the Guardian (only one of which I really didn’t much like).

Thanks, Brendan. I agree with your parsing and did not see the 4-letter "bear with me". Agree with your cavil as well, but the parsing logic must be correct IMO.