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Apologies for 'their' but my spill-chucker overrode my spelling! Bet Poat designed that too!

Newbie here.
I've had an idea. One instance of the treasure has an extra letter in the middle, belonging to the word 'lift'. The treasure was enclosed in a ceramic box. If you cut round the word lift (except for the top) and lift it, there is the treasure albeit with a space. But the letters are consecutive. Probably will be laughed out of court...but cannot find anything better.

Really struggling with this. Have a nearly full grid, but cannot get 12 or 14, or parse 21 and 26. As for the clashes, I have seven but they don't seem to spell anything sensible. Anyone have any ideas?

I have a horrible feeling that the preamble has to be highlighted. It is totally ambiguous because it could be read as both the ultimate goal AND search area have to be highlighted. Why not just say ......highlight its ultimate goal in the grid or even...highlight its ultimate goal. Anyone thinking of submitting my advice is - don't bother. Try Saturdays Inquisitor which has a refreshingly new type of grid entry method!

I think the preamble highlighting is probably correct. The letters are consecutive as the space character is not a letter.

Ugh!

xij - 12 wife = rib. 14 a giggle is teehee.

21 I think refers to the Doors and Beatles. I don't have 26 yet.

xij - 26 is 'UPMOST' parsed as follows; 'O' from 'deo' held by 'PM' for premier and 'S' for soprano in 'UT' which is first note in scale.

Just a thought. I always get the Listener from the Times website and copy into Word. Say in my printout search and area in the preamble straddled two lines..........Totally unfair! I wonder if the setter had to ensure that those two words were on the same line in the paper.

Given how clever the rest of the construction is, I am reluctant to accept that highlighting the instructions is the right way to go without a more specific indication -- every 17th letter of all the clues concatenated, perhaps?