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Highlighter, the author doesn't come into the endgame, the title does of course as do the other hints.

Thanks Nick,

I've just added together full title and the other hints to get the composite volume...

Thanks highlighter; I had figured that the extra words would play a part, but any attempts to do anything with them have resulted in so much gobbledygook. I'm confident about my parsing of the clues though...

Hi Tandethsquire,

If you look at the extra words, they all have the thematic character in them. You literally have to follow this character in each of the words with the following character to find what you're looking for...

D'oh! Thanks, highlighter.

Can anyone help by explaining what the further information in the message actually means?

Josephine - the total number of cells in the 3D structure is 34. There are two groups of 10 and then 14 made up of the title + OW - upside down the W makes a letter M - that was a nice touch. I began by finding the two blocks of 10 cells built from the two sets of words in capitals. The blocks are located middle top and bottom. Hope that also gives anyone else who is struggling a bit of a push!

Josephine, I think it means that the number in the message is the number of cells the shape has to cover.

I'm so puzzled by this in many ways, but I have a more basic question, first. I've been through the dictionary but can't find a word that fits the clue and the letters I have in 22a. I have TA?SE. Have I gone wrong somewhere?

cloverjo: TA?SE is correct. The 'alleys' are marbles and the 'cat' is the the cat o' nine tails. Hope that this helps.

Thanks, carpox1. Back to puzzling over the rest of it.