Before & After 36: Covered Up (meta)

**Hello solvers,** and thanks for joining me once again in the comments.  If you liked the puzzle, go ahead and bash the thumbs-up button above 👍 and let me know how you got on.  Here's the usual wash-up:

ACROSS.  1A. ||First letter of "success" = S + "fundamental" = CORE.|| 5A. ||Anag. RESET.|| 6A. ||ME plaintext + reversal of "funding" = AID.|| 7A. ||Anag. PSYCHIC minus "hot and cold" = HC.||

DOWN. 1D. ||Anag. MESS around first letter of "Tory" = T.|| 2D. ||First letter of Conservative = C + reversal of "look" = PEER.|| 3D. || Hidden in ensuRELICense.|| 4D. ||"Drugs" = ES + "claim" = SAY.||

Great puzzle, my main comment is purely stylistic - I'm sure there must be a way of referring to ||Conservative Lord where the Lord refers to peer as in the houses of Lords in the UK for 2D|| although this is purely for elegance as it is always nice when clues tell a story

Good shout!  I tend to avoid UK-centric knowledge requirements on this forum (often failing in this goal), but for this one it seems I had the Kamala/Walz campaign more in mind.

This was my first real cryptic and it was insane but great! 7:21 does not account for the time I spent searching up common cryptic words on another tab lol.

Congrats on the solve and may it be the first of many!

Enjoyable puzzle, some tricky clues. Nicely done!

Cryptic 5x5 #32 by tuber

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