Ally
London
I don’t comment very often but this one was so good that I have to. It revealed itself in layers – I suspected a rebus fairly early on, but because I got solving the northeast corner quickly it was a while before I even reached the clue for DOWNS. At that point I went from “this is a fun little trick” to “this is genius”. It tapped into a linguistic quirk I’ve always found interesting (is there any difference between up for something or down for something?) and I like that all the down clues cover polar opposites while the across clues cover similar/identical meanings. Then some fun phrases (“yay me”, “oh be a pal”) and fun clues (“contents of some boats”, “hides a tear, say”) helped the puzzle hit my sweet spot. Great stuff.
This theme was a bit disappointing because, while you could definitely consider the FUN FACT to be a fun fact and a fact about fun, and PUB TRIVIA also worked both ways, the others didn’t. The “Did you know?!” part made no sense as a clue for BANK STATEMENT. There was the makings of a good idea here but ultimately it didn’t work.
@Beth in Greenbelt maybe I didn’t explain this very well, but there is a clear difference: FUN FACT was a fact about fun but also a ‘fun fact’ (an interesting bit of info). But although BANK STATEMENT was a statement about a bank, it was not a ‘bank statement’ (a list of financial transactions).
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