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Brendan's nudge on 13d led me to finish the west side except 1d (hint, please?), so I now just need 27a and 28d. If my 24d is right (it fits the first word as defn, but I haven't a clue abiut the wordplay), then 27a with crossers at 1,3, 7 and 9 is not in the Crossword Solver's vocabulary. And I can make nothing of 28d.

Feeling tired today after a lot of singing yesterday, with an afternoon rehearsal before an evening concert of Vivaldi, Mozart, Mendelssohn.

pamd
I think you may have made the same mistake I did at first with 24d. There's another possibility that parses, though.

Apologies for duplicate post, above: it looked as if it hadn't been sent.

Hi Pam

Have you ever sung the Kyrie from Mozart's the Masss in C Minor - it's one of favourite pieces of music.

I'd have to check my spreadsheet. Was singing a Mozart D minor Kyrie recently with the amazing online Choir of the Earth!

Chrise was right and inspired me to find a new 24d with my 1 & 5 crossers, but I still can't parse it at all.

But the new 3rd letter made 27a solvable. I'd solved 28d recently by starting to make a list of thematics and noticing 8d and 16d.

I suddenly have an idea for my LOI, 1d: can "fans" be taken to mean letters 1,2,4,5 of a word (well, an abbreviated term)?

Pam,

24d - 3 letter "literally speak" reversed/'about' goes around/'covering' 2 letter "house" and 1 letter "oxidized lead" - definition is a word for "louts"

1d - the "fans" were considered groovy in their day (Jeez, I actually cringed typing that) and the word also a type of "whip" but plural, obviously

Thanka, Brendan: my mind was stuck on "patina" for "oxidised lead", I forgot the other sense! All now perfectly obvious.

1d: I was thinking of Comic opera duo, somehow removing the middle letter of their 5 letters to get whips. But perhaps not. Baffled.

Did you ever scat sing Pam? These are Jazz fans:-)

For a slightly more modern reference to "fans": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ2cEc_TCH8

That brings back some great memories Geeker.

After your song finished I went straight on to Up The Junction 🎵