Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Anyone else trying to tackle this one? I have penciled in 8 answers (at the rate of about one per hour) and have come to a standstill. The puzzle makes for great surface reading, but a nightmare to disentangle! Any help will be very gratefully received!

I've managed to finish this with a great deal of help from online anagram solving software. My way in was inserting 4dn and 20dn both of which have their definitions in the book title ; this gives you a handle on 19ac which intersects with lots of down clues and narrows down the range of letters you are searching for.
The definitions for 11ac, 21ac, 1dn, 12dn and 26dn are also in the book titles.

Hi, Barretta (hope spelled correctly from memory!),
I had not even considered that we might be looking for real book titles, so thank you for that.
I will work with your other hints tomorrow - have to go out shortly - and may get back to you again!

P.S. Barretter (sorry!),
My answers to the Fish out of Water trilogy suggest there are 3 definitions in each trilogy of clues. Am I correct, or have I misread the preamble?

Yes, there is a separate definition for each clue.

Perhaps more accurate to say a separate definition in each clue, as, for example in "Fish out of water" they are "fish" "birch bark box" and "terminate".

As Barretter indicates each group of three clues has a definition (mostly single word but some are two or three) either preceded by or followed by a letter mixture (ie an anagram) of the answer. Once you have a few answers entered you can then start looking for the letter mixtures since you'll know some of the letters (helps if you have some of the first letters of the answers).
I started with 21a and 18d and got most of the bottom left corner fairly quickly, followed by the top left corner. The rest gradually fell into place though I did have some difficulty getting into the top right corner.
If you need any further help or want to check any answers do get back.

Thanks again, to both of you. I will attempt to crack on with it today!

Phew - finally completed it!