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Help appreciated . I have two clues I cannot make sense of : 14d GAN?B?U which I work out to be GANZBJU but doesn't appear to be a place name ; and 22D which must be ORAL by my reckoning but again doesn't fit in with the theme. Cheers.

Ganzhou

Oral is a town so is correct

Thanks djawhufc for your help . Unfortunately I had Brodna instead of Hrodna the B coming from magnetic flux density , incorrectly as it turns out. Didn't know ORAL is a town . Thanks again.

I've finished except for 7 (BARI?) and 28 (_A_N_UL). Also I don't get the comment about missing the big picture in the preamble.

LARI grid entry BARI; drug is LARI(am)

BARNAUL (anag ULAN BA(to)R

All I can see is that Bamako is a national capital whereas grid entries are regional/provincial capitals. Not sure if there's a bigger picture!

Thanks, kilgore. I was hoping there would be some significance in the unusual shape of the grid and that some big picture would emerge at the end.

Given the grid shape I did some searching to see if all these cities had famous castles, walled gates, etc. but could find nothing in common other than they were all regional capitals. Hopefully someone can find something more interesting since that's a pretty slender thread.

Given the word to be written under the grid, I wondered if the grid shape may represent a bull with horns. Not really convinced, though.

Add me to the 'There must be more' club. A very tough grid fill and no apparent end game (can't really count the word beneath the grid - you can't complete the grid without identifying those letter).

You'd think the grid shape MUST be significant - why else make it that way? But the only thing I could come up with is the same theory voulez-vous suggests, which isn't exactly satisfying. There has to be more.