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Some pretty obscure references in this month's offering. In particular, 21a will leave non-Scots bemused, and I had not heard of one of the theme words. Where would we be without Google?

Tricky for sure. I have the eight themed items but I make it 17 (not 15) clues where letters are ignored in the wordplay.

Jono, I made it 16, not including the unclued 19a. For logical reasons that seemed right too, so I didn’t spend any longer on it

Thanks Quisling, I was including 19a, so I think we agree :-)

Yes, I also make it 17 inc. 19A

I have 15 including 19A - I originally had more but given that we were to find 15, I was able to parse some clues so that the "missing letters" weren't missing after all. And, the 8 thematic words appear as they should in my grid, so I think I'm OK in that regard.

This was a quick solve for me, unusually. 21a was indeed obscure but the wordplay seemed obvious and given 24d the solution wasn't hard to come by. I had not heard of one of the theme words (surely it must be the same one, buzzybee) and initially thought I had made a mistake but then google showed it was indeed the right theme word.

LOI for me was 8d oddly enough as the word is new to me (assuming definition is the last 2 words of the clue)

Unusually for me I finished this on day of publication (Generally I have a first pass then come back at the end of the month) When the penny dropped on the theme, the 2 unclued names were easy. However I'm not entirely sure on wordplay in 9 ACROSS. Can someone explain

Clue: They discovered designer's initaial in each tile (9) I have the answer of course - last 7 letters being obvious.

Can I also check that 2 DOWN is a famous polling company

Kiwi solver, re 9a.
If you can see the last 7 letters, look more closely at the first word of the clue for the first 2. Def. is 'tile', in the sense of a hat.
For 2d., that's what I have, but I haven't finished yet ...