Cookie Monster (Solution No. 3,281)

Boy this was a doozy.  I didn't get 14d Thursday, and it cackled and taunted at me from the page all afternoon and all night.  Once I got the answer, I had an idea of how it parsed out, but you really have to sit down and count "nom"s to understand it, and then, it's elegant in how entirely by the rules it is.

Some will complain about the difficulty, but it's the best straight cryptic I've solved this year.

Solution and annotation below the fold. 

Legend: "*" anagram; "~" sounds like; "<" letters reversed; "( )" letters inserted; "_" or lower case: letters deleted; "†" explicit in the clue, “^” selected letter or letters, “{“ relocated letter or letters, "¶" letter bank, "§" heteronym

Across

1a	BROKEN *HEART	Twist: inverted clue Here the indicator (“broken”) is in the answer rather than the clue.  *EARTH is the anagram of “heart” and “grief” is the definition
8a	PO(LYE)STER	POSTER (“placard”) containing (“includes”) LYE (“caustic”)
9a	C | APRI_	C (“cold”) + APRI_l_ (“month,” omission of last letter indicated by “endless”)
10a	<_TO YS_<	<noiSY OTters<
11a	UN(*INSPI)RED	Twist: coinage *SPIN I (anagram indicated by “livened up”) contained in (“inside”) UN-RED (coinage: “probably voting Democratic”)
13a	EM(PLOY)_EES	EMcEES (“hosts”) replacing (†) C (“100”) with PLOY (“ruse”) These make particularly easy clues to create since there are so many ways to do a replacement, but they’re uncommon
15a	AND | RE	AND (“also”) + RE (“note”) André Breton (1896-1966) was a French poet and founder of surrealism.
16a	*ARCED	*CEDAR (anagram indicated by “shaped”) Elegant to fit a type of wood here, but the traditional wood for crafting archers’ bows is yew, while string players’ bows are traditionally made out of a Brazilian wood called pernambuco.  Sabers, like most young musicians, has a fiberglass bow though.
18a	*TIDAL (W)AVE	*VALIDATE (anagram indicated by “corrupt”) with W (“ex-president”) contained (within”) How many The Nation readers were looking to anagram Nixon or Bush?
20a	THE O | RI(O)LES	THEO (“Van Gogh”) + RILES (“gets angry”) containing (“about”) ^O^rioles (first letter indicated by “leader”)
22a	~BRED	~BREAD (“money,” homonym indicated by “on the radio”)
24a	O | CHER	^O^range (first letter indicated by “bit of ”) + CHER (“singer/actress”)
25a	_EXT | *IRPATE	_n_EXT (“nearest,” omission of first letter indicated by “headless”) + *PIRATE (anagram indicated by “crazy”)
26a	*VEGETARIANS	Twist: cross-reference *SAVING A TREE (anagram indicated by “recycled”)

Down

1d	BELL | Y UP	BELL (“what might save you”) + YUP (“you betcha”) Younger solvers probably haven’t watched many boxing matches: being “saved by the bell” is when the bell ending a round sounds while a fighter is being counted out.  Depending on the particular set of rules in use, the count may be halted (in which case the fighter is not knocked out) or continued after the bell.
2d	OP-E}D}	}D}OPE (“idiot,” relocation of first letter indicated by “burying the lead”) Twist: an unusual relocation clue
3d	EL | TON	EL (“the Spanish”) + TON (“heavyweight”) I was trying to fit “LOO” or “CAN” into this one
4d	<HAR< *D-NOSED	<RAH< (“cheer,” reversal indicated by “up”) + *SODDEN (anagram indicated by “drunk”)
5d	*AC(C)EP | TABLE	*PACE (anagram indicated by “wildly”) containing (“around”) ^C^ARD (first letter indicated by “front”) + TABLE (†)
6d	TAPE}RED}	}RED} TAPE (bureaucracy, relocation indicated by “had the last word on top”) Twist: relocating a word rather than a letter
7d	FIDDLEDEEDEE	¶FILED (letter bank indicated by “multiple times”) Twist: letter bank (a Hot and Trazom favorite)
8d	PUT | REF | ACTION	PUT (“deposit”) + REF ACTION (“blowing a whistle, say”) This is one of those definitions by example that Hot and Trazom were commenting on in Word Salad this week.
12d	<WON | DER | DR_UG<	<GU_a_RD (“keep an eye on,”) + RED (“rosy”) + NOW< (“present day”), reversal of the whole thing indicated by “raise,” omission of A indicated by “lacking a” Something of a twist here too since the omission indicator is outside the reversal indicator.  If you tried to feed this kind of code to a computer you’d get a syntax error, but puzzles are meant to be solved by humans, not computers.
14d	EAT | NO M | EAT	This one’s the centerpiece: twisted even when the wordplay is entirely by the book. §EAT (“go nom nom nom”) + NOM (†) + EAT (“go nom nom nom”) Remember, “ignore punctuation, which is designed to confuse!”
17d	~CHEKHOV	~CHECK OFF (“mark box on a list”), homophone indicated by “for audience” Are homophones of Russian or Arabic names and other words that have to be transliterated fair?
19d	AIR MASS	AIR (“a tune”) + MASS (“a liturgy”)
21d	_ENTER	_c_enter (“football player,” omission of first letter indicated by “starts late”)
23d	ORC | A	ORC (“Middle Earth [scene of The Hobbit] monster”) + A (†)