Charged Conservative with expensive cover up (5)
I believe the answer is:
raced
'charged' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to competing as well as being past participle verbs.
Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'conservative with expensive cover up' is the wordplay.
'conservative with' becomes 'c' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'expensive' becomes 'dear' (similar in meaning).
'cover' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'up' shows that the letters should be reversed in order (in down clue: letters go upwards).
'c' placed into 'dear' is 'decar'.
'decar' reversed gives 'RACED'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for raced that I've seen before include "Ran fast" , "Cedar (anag)" , "went at speed" , "Competed" , "Ran competitively" .)