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Hi Notrab, I've been missing also, and with no great desire to pursue the puzzle further, I've only looked in occasionally. I think the right-angle turn is a NO. It seems you've a choice between seeing SEARCHAREA as a string of contiguous letters in the grid (in which case, as IonaCarr points out, the options are very limited...ARCH ?), cutting some part of the grid out, or of considering 'Search Area' as a broader concept. In which case you have the whole of the grid, or perhaps the whole of Ampthill.

I've no commitment to either.

My advice is : don't get drawn in too far. The original contest was ridiculous, and wasted a lot of peoples' time, and I don't see anything different here...

Hi Mersault. Good to hear from you - I did waste lots of time on the original and was very disappointed with the outcome (which I still think was a fiddle!). I do not send in completed puzzles so it really does not matter. My enjoyment comes solely from anawerimg the clues - which I thought were very good - and the bottle of Amarone I am about to enjoy
Cheers!

In an attempt to push the number of posts ever closer to 100, how about this, from another successful solver on AB:
"I thought this was a magnificent puzzle, and I wonder if some solvers, jumping straight to the identity of the goal, have neglected to dig deeply enough to uncover all that is buried here. Well done Poat, ignore the grumbles."

IonaCarr, I'll collude with your push for 100 though it might be more fitting for that honour to fall to a truly excellent setter, as has happened sometimes in the past. I'm not sure that this setter really qualifies...

I question the wisdom of still trying to find a definitive answer, and suggest that looking for it on the other site is an act of desperation (there's nothing about them that suggests to me that they have a clear answer about anything...you'd hope that not too many more tyro setters come from that source.)

Yes, I considered : clay (ceramist is there), cow-clap, £5,000 - various other items either encountered or sought.

Meursault - ain't nobody here but us chickens now, so 100 looks unattainable.

But as a Parthian shot, one more quote from a further AB solver(there seem to be four of them):

"This is a challenging Listener, and superbly compiled. The final end-game does yield to persistence and logic, and is completely valid, fair and unequivocal."

It doesn't read like gamesmanship, does it? What is it that none of us here are seeing?

We've got to reach that 100! Are anagrams any use? COLLAPSIBLE MYTH is rather appealing. That doesn't set any POLYMATHIC BELLS ringing, so I'll SPLOTCHILY BLAME myself for raising the issue and retreat into my SHELL COMPATIBLY.

Ionacar - I think the others have gone to Ampthill in search for some new ideas there....
By the way, I still cannot see why highlighting HARE in the preamble could be marked wrong by the checker as finding the letters in the GRID is not specified. Most people (including me) don't know - or care about - the rules for submitting entries.

I wondered about AERA (AREA reversed) in row 6, which would be in the 'shadow' of MAST (also reversed) in column 7, to represent digging at the spot indicated by the cross.

But then 'area' is in the preamble, and I don't see why those words should be reversed.

I also wondered if the italicised lo in clue 24a might be a hint at this spot, as it didn't seem to be required for the parsing.

More straws ...

Having been away for the weekend, I didn't start this puzzle until last night, and sailed steadily through to the CLOSEBYAMPTHILL acrostic. But then I couldn't make sense of the very final step. After reading this forum, I'm a bit relieved that no-one else has an absolutely convincing solution either, though I like buster's idea of the drawing of a (rather abstract) hare by highlighting all the various forms of SEARCHAREA.

If I may be excused for "raising a hare", I wondered whether "four consecutive letters" could refer to "consecutive letters of the alphabet". I noted that, in the third row, the letters Q, R, S and T appear consecutively (though not contiguously), so they fit, in a rather forced way, the "four consecutive letters in a straight line" requirement. On this basis, the "search area" would be the whole grid. But this would be such an anti-climax that I can't believe it's correct.

I took those italics to be emphasising the contrast between magician and logician, but maybe they have some deeper significance.