Crossword Genius

A royal rep raved about a tense meeting that made things worse (10)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

aggravated

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'worse' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'a royal rep raved about a tense' is the wordplay.
'a royal rep' becomes 'agg' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'about' is an insertion indicator.
'tense' becomes 't' (grammatical abbreviation).
'a'+'t'='at'
'raved' placed around 'at' is 'ravated'.
'agg'+'ravated'='AGGRAVATED'

'meeting that made things' acts as a link.
This may not be right. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for aggravated that I've seen before include "Made worse" , "Made (offence) more serious (legal)" , "Worsened" , "made more severe" , "Annoyed" .)

I've seen this clue in the Sydney Morning Herald.
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