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A conventional Guardian cross reference would be written as 24 or 24A, never “24 across” so that’s a hint something else is going on…

thanks both. 21d is now probably cod.

i'm probably overthinking 11d, but google tells me there's an actress with an appropriate first name called Love, but love should be capitalised in the clue...

Chris, the "love" is a synonym of "zero" not a person - definition is "nick" - as in 'arrest' or 'nab' etc.

ah!
my solution works though, apart from the obscurity and the capital letter. i assume you hadn't heard of Jil Love either!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jil_Love

That's inspired Chris,

I haven't heard of her but you're right, if you take her first name around "Drake essentially" you do definitely get a "nick":-)

Boatman sets the prize next weekend. So another opportunity for me to mention that I’m quoted in his new book 😂

Re 11d, I too was trying to shoehorn Jil or Gal into the solution until the penny dropped. Took me a while to get on Brockwell's wavelength but all very enjoyable. Also took me a while to spot the 24/21 device.

Would someone smarter than me like to explain the parsing of 2 dn and 25 ac?
Thank you

2dn is Revolutionary (3), Chinese (2), New Year (2), for each (1)
25ac is 3 plus 5 (anag of ended) around a motorway.

(I hope that helps, quocunque, though I don’t pretend to be smarter than you!)