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How blind I was, crosswhit99. I thought the bottom row was telling me to show options but it's obvious now. Thanks.

I hadn't spotted the alternative decoding Orson, now that really is a red herring !!

I test solved the original in Dec 2013 which was much harder! As regards the redundancy - each word was only used twice in the clues so was very neat.

Not been able to spend much time on this as yet. Still battling with Grid A. Don’t have access to spreadsheets except at work in lunch hour and the occasional snatched 5 or 10mins. Could someone please confirm or otherwise whether I am correct with the following: O=5; K=20; I =21. Thank-you.

Yes, Goshawk, those 3 values correct.

Mersault
Many thanks for that confirmation. Had I got one of those wrong I would probably have abandoned the solve. At least I know I’m on the right track now.

No, if you've got this far, don't abandon. It gets easier. Assuming that to get to O, I, K you've already solved E, L, T and D,A : perhaps look at MIKE in 4D, giving options for M. Then 23D entry has just 2 options, P (if you don't already have it can be identified from 27A, and 16A resolves M.

Yes, Goshawk, keep going. From where you are, there's very little trial and error to solve the remaining letters. I'd say that you are nearly there in terms of time. Given that O=5, there is only one three-digit fifth power. This gives you the second digit of 6dn, and you can work out the first digit because 4ac is a multiple of O and can't end in zero. This quickly leads to U and Z, and the rest is just identifying an effective order for solving the remainder of the letters.

Oyler, thanks for clarifying that the redundancy was to give two occurrences of each of the 26 words in the NATO alphabet. I think there are 10 clues that are strictly speaking redundant in that they neither contribute to solving for the letters nor are necessary to fill unchecked cells, but in this sort of letter substitution puzzle, it's helpful to have the confirmation given by these clues.

And thanks for your contribution in reducing the initial complexity of what turned out to be a challenging but manageable puzzle.

I still can't get the message in grid B - any hints?

Hi, Beulah, Grid B doesn’t have a message as such. The 32digits form 16 two-digit numbers in a particular order, consistent with their location in Grid B. The other five entries are words formed by decoding the six digits in the left and right columns (they are the same word), a nine-letter word running along the top row from the second to the tenth column, a different nine-letter word running along the bottom row from the second to the tenth columns, and a four-letter word running from the second to the fifth rows in the middle column.