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Many thanks for parsings, rogissimo. Definitely correct. I must up the opinion of 10 to just below COD level,

Brendan, our experiences with this puzzle seem to have been very much alike!

Repeated thanks to Philistine. It's been a good puzzle week in the Guardian: Jack on Thursday and Vlad on Friday both stellar, P. following suit in the Prize slot.

brendan - agreed re 8d. I wondered whether ‘may be’ was an indication that the clue only works if you pronounce the solution word in a very unusual (i.e. wrong!) way…

I'm rather permissive about clues, but agree that 7 is dubious: it was one of the few easy ones, so I wrote in the solution w/o thinking. And 8 does appear to contain a couple of possibly superfluous words.

(…or perhaps if you say the three words that make it up quickly and indistinctly). I also think that the definition is pretty loose, and that as a result the clue as a whole is sub-par for Philistine. I certainly needed all the crossers. I’m willing to lay a small bet that chrise won’t like it - and, if I’m right, on this occasion I’d be inclined to agree with him 😉

8d - Just to clarify, I think "Chinese maybe" should be 2,5 not 2,4

I'm not sure I understand what the issue is with 8d. Isn't the whole answer a three-word homophone for "juvenile Chinese?"

Rainman, I agree with that straightforward parsing. The "may be" part of the clue might be considered dubious, but on reflection can be justified by the third word's being more general than "China".

That sounds correct for 8d, as usual I was over thinking it!

My error was reading letters 5 and 6 as they are written rather than as a homophone.

I found this more difficult than average also. I think it felt even more so because the first three went in so easily.

I think 7 is actually fine. Take “oddly not seen “ to mean remove the letters in the odd positions in the last two words.