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Sorry, should have said abbreviation for "money (I'll ask Norah to remove it)

Yikes. Finally filled the grid after seemingly interminable struggle. Thanks to Vlad for the challenge, though it consumed much more of the evening than I'd have preferred...😬
5 held me up for the longest time because I was not familiar with the term. FOI 6, LOI 24.
Have to go with 11 as COD, with 14 runner-up. Too many good clues to enumerate, really brilliant with tricky disguised/hidden definitions.

Hi Geeker,

Glad you got it all done. I think 6d might catch a few people out but I was surprised to see the phrase verbatim is in Chambers.

Brendan, 6d was one of those rare occasions in cryptic-land where being American gave an advantage (as you mentioned on the 1st page).

hiya folks from little Laos...i've been an interested observer of this site for a wee while but Vlad's offering today has prompted me to take the plunge. What a delight! Ditto the praise in the above comments because there is some very clever stuff going on. Too many crackers to pick a favourite. Thank you Vlad.

Thanks Brendan, just run out of steam…..

Hi Culmer,

Wow Laos! This blog gets more exotic by the week 😀 Welcome to the Forum:-)

Thanks Johnson, believe me I sympathise - I went right through all the acrosses and up to 13d before I managed to get a single answer!

exotic indeed with lots of interesting 12a! Thanks for the welcome 😎

Re 17a. my ODE does have that abbr. followed by the note “in names of sports clubs”.
The seemingly errant “ . “ in 5d distracted me as I thought it had to be the definition given the enumeration!