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4d is a two letter acronym reversed for the country (don’t make the mistake I did) followed by a three letter informal term for a PI (Chambers precedes it with an apostrophe)

I've decided not to make any more effort with this puzzle but do have a question to ask about Maskerade's Christmas crossword.
The solution was published in last Monday's Guardian. I had all the grid correctly filled in but still hadn't worked out some of the composers' names despite hours of research and Google search. I wrote to the Guardian asking if we could have answers to the clues and have had no reply. Does anyone know if they have been published anywhere to put me out of my misery!

Try here - a site well worth bookmarking:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/2025/01/03/guardian-prize-crossword-29572-maskarade/

Aicram,
I think this is what you are looking for…
https://www.fifteensquared.net/2025/01/03/guardian-prize-crossword-29572-maskarade/

Great fun today -hard but entirely fair,, I thought. 20, 17 is a triumph of anagramming.

Haven’t loved this. As a side note, isn’t the solution to 10a tautologous? The second part is the name of a kiln for the first part.

It can also be used for malt or tobacco, according to Merriam-Webster.

Thanks Chrise and Jono.
You have made my day!

Well!!!! What a trial.

Started at 3.00pm as usual and read all the clues. After an hour I'd only got one, which was 4d and I wasn't even sure about that, as the spelling is off, though I gather you can use a different abbreviation for South Africa.

So, I resorted to cheating and looked up some on DanWord to get me going and checked some of my answers there. There are at least three words I didn't know - 3d, 7d and 13, 2. I couldn't parse half the answers - 7 across clues (1, 10, 11, 13/2, 23, 24 and 25) and 6 downs (5, 7, 15, 21, 22 and 23) . I'm with Chris, some of the clues were definitely odd, eg 9d.

I've now read the grid and am gratified to find I'm not the only one who struggled, so don't bother to explain any parsing. I can now throw the newspaper away. I shall avoid Enigmatist in future. He is clearly beyond me.

FOI 4d, LOI 23d and CODs 12ac and 19ac.

Yes, there I was whinging last week about wanting a "proper" Prize crossword - be careful what you wish for! Despite all your hints I still have a few gaps /: