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Before making the alteration, 12a is SOES. It is tempting to change the first letter but then I could not see what to do with 6d and that is why I decided to change 1d so make SOSS. The next few moves are OK but then it seems to go wrong.

I appreciate what you say about 6d: It must be entered and exited and, so far as I can see, there are only two crossing across clues, 12a and 4a. Now the words which fit *e*ame are became, defame, rename and bename, so the alterations would be bc, df, rn, bn, but NONE of these pairs is at most two letters apart in the clue.

So this does not look as though it is going to work.

QAT lists REDAME - R/D would give L or U, but it is all a bit iffy. Well, a lot iffy!

The only possibilities I can see, bearing in mind the consecutive letters rule, are RELAME, REDAME,REGAME. The middle of these appears in Unedited English in TEA. Is that what you were considering?

Is Comsat okay for 25A ? The preamble requires 'real words'...

I have that, it's in the BRB and it was even used in music - the Comsat Angels (showing my age now!)

I got it from QAT (Quinaplus). The trouble is even following that admittedly dodgy line still seems to lead to an eventual dead end. I'm wondering now if I've mad a wrong assumption much earlier on than the 12th change ....

Thanks again, S_Pugh. It is in TCD, I agree, but what I was really getting at is that it begins with a capital and is a name. I forget, but do names fall under the umbrella of 'real words' ? Mind you, I don't see what else it can be...

Foinaven, I have issues with your sequence 13a, 2d, 22a, 11d, 8a, 21d, 19a, 5d, 17a, 18d, 25a, 23d, 12a, 13d, 1a, 3d, 11a, 14d.

11A doesn't exist.

I went to 16a after 3d so probably it's a typo as remainder of sequence look similar to another of my dead ends.

It was meant to be 16a, but in any case it seems to lead to a dead end.

Another good puzzle. It got easier when I realised you don’t need to make the changes in any particular sequence. The two changes in 13 are obvious so the middle row is fixed as are all the unches.
You can work back from the last change as well as forward from the first and there are a couple of options in the middle of the sequence which shout out. You can work either way from these.
The final thematic object is a classic.