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Chaps on another site are heaping praise on this, so maybe I should just keep on staring at a complete (apart from the 3 empties) grid. I have 6A but the preamble makes little sense when it talks about the characters 6A etc. Does this word have a secondary meaning? Obtaining the third and fourth messages seems beyond me.

cockie,

Don't substitute the answer to 6A in "The characters 6 across . . "

cockie, the key sentence in the preamble is the second one.

First thing to note is that it says "6 across", while the previous mention in the preamble says 6ac. That is significant. Second thing is the mention of the punctuation and spaces; that should alert you to the sort of thing you are expected to do in each clue.

It's early in the thread to give the whole game away. I don't want to be accused of spoiling others' fun. Happily email me at patmark291 at yahoodotcom if you want further enlightenment.

I'm really struggling to fill the top right-hand corner.

I can't get 7dn, 9dn, 12dn or 16ac.

Can someone give me a (heavy) hint for one of these? I'm sure that's all I need to finish it.

demeter, 7dn, 9dn and 12dn are all thematically of a kind. 16 ac is hyphenated, and the misprint is in the first word of the clue

Thanks keepatit.

This is taking me longer than it should. I would guess that the extra messages are somehow hidden within the clues because there are some very strange definitions!

I'm a late starter today. Chaps on another site heap praise on anything...thank you setter, thank you setter...I sometimes wonder whether they have invented a new religion...but (like last week's) this is a reasonable puzzle. Shackleton is usually okay.

I thought the deception in the opening of the second sentence of the preamble was a cheap trick of the kind I did not expect from Shackleton. It was clearly a deliberate trick because the sentence is a very unnatural and unidiomatic way of saying what was meant. I wasted time trying to interpret it at face value and it just irritated me.

I've abandoned the puzzle (very rare for me) because I cannot make any thematic sense of the the three entries referred to in the third message. I've considered them literally and as cryptically coded items, but their relevance and commonality eludes me. I have an inkling of the theme but have found nothing completely coherent in the grid. After ages spent on internet searches and on grid-staring it's time to admit defeat and release myself from the torture.

I should add that I'm not asking for help.

Dryden, just to clarify my earlier message, when I described those three clues as thematically of a kind, I merely meant that they are distinct from the rest in one particular, as explained in the third message. Nothing more