Cryptic crossword No 2,432

Fair warning: one parse might need a certain bit of general knowledge, or a little light Googling 😁

Dear lord, I've just got home and fancied a nice easy crossword and see your rubric. Oh well bed time. Thanks Rob, not tonight methinks.

Good lord indeed! I blundered some of the way, more by luck than by fully grasping your diabolical trickery. Always fun to try to wrap my brain around your puzzles, even if I often remain puzzled!

Forgot to say, faves included 5,6 & 7 down as well as 16d and 19d, and 13a, 25a and 26a.

As a native of the Irish city in question, I very much enjoyed that clue 😄

Thanks Henri for another clever crossword. I found this challenging, not because of the 'trick' but because the wordplay stumped me more than once. I revealed 15a & 21d but I figured out and/or guessed the rest often without full parsing. My favs were 26a, 7d, 10d, 14d, and 15d. More in reply

Fairly well defeated by this Henri. I never fully cottoned on to the device, which didn’t help, particularly as I assumed certain modifications that turned out to be incorrect! But now I can fully appreciate the ingenuity of the construction - chapeau! Thanks for the workout. Spoiler …

I'm glad I stuck with this over a couple of sessions -- very cool idea with many smiling-inducing clues, e.g., 18a, 21d, 26a, 4d. I also spent a good 2 minutes of bafflement hilariously mispronouncing 14d's answer before finally reading the word correctly.😶 Thanks for a great mix of challenge and fun.

Phew. Took me some time to get around to tackling this as I was distracted with finishing mine own. I never sussed the relevance of the 'key' clue, I'm afraid and suspect its ingenuity will be beyond many solvers. I got most of the downs and then stumbled my way through the accesses with a few uses of the Check button early on to confirm my suspicions. I think you were fairly kind with the cluing - esp the downs - to help solvers get a toehold. But it was still a bit of a bugger! Thanks. PM