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H Darla,

7d - you're right, but look at the gap between the third and fourth letters and you'll see why the apostrophe S messes it up.

After you pointed that out earlier, I was bothered, but on a closer look, I was satisfied it worked. Remove the odd letters from "Lennon's" and you have three letters. Then remove the odd letters from music and you have the last two in the entry. The gap you refer to is irrelevant if you interpret "oddly not seen" in this way.

rainman - my problem with 8 is that I think that the 3 words are only nearly (or loosely) homophonic with the solution word (which I tried clumsily to explain without referring explicitly to the homophone at 14 above). I don’t normally have a problem with homophones (unlike some others), but I don’t like this one. Perhaps I’m being over-fussy.

darla - I got the solution in the same way that you have described (but was trying not to give too much away above) but I’m afraid I still don’t see how ‘oddly removed’ can be read as justifying ignoring the ‘s.
But I’m perhaps being dense.

Flew through this until the final two or three which were a little sticky and no surprise are the same as already highlighted.

Didn’t have a problem with the ‘s in 7d, applying the removal to each word independently. Similarly, I thought the homophone in 8d was fine and 10a went in on the first pass, so I must have been on the right wavelength for that one.

Good fun overall, though I preferred yesterday’s Vlad.
Cheers all.

jono - are you saying that the ‘s is just there for the surface? Or is it doing some other duty? If the former, then I’m with geeker @13 - I’m no strict Ximenean, but it’s a rule-bend too far for me.
And re 8d - do you pronounce the solution and the 3-word ‘homophone’ exactly the same? I’m pretty sure I don’t!

Hi rogissimo, I viewed the s as part of the first word, and as an odd letter it gets removed, then you move on to music and remove the odd letters there.

The second syllable of the homophone isn’t quite right, I agree, it’s requires more of an “i” sound than the “a”, but it didn’t bother me.

…which I see is exactly what Darla says @22. Sorry to repeat.

Thanks, jono. I suppose my problem with 7 is that I don’t see any indication that the two words should be treated separately. I guess you can argue that there’s no need for one but I remain to be convinced!
Not sure why the inexact homophone at 8 grates (greats, say) with me. Perhaps my two slightly fractured ribs are making me a bit grumpily pernickety.

…and for some reason I didn’t understand what Darla was saying, so apologies to you both.