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Thanks wintonian and woodlouse, I am a wallie too. I’m a bit confused by 40d as the one that begins with L and ends in I doesn’t appear in my BRB, or have I got something wrong.

I'm surprised this hasn't been raised before so either I'm missing something or I haven't read all the replies properly. Shouldn't 14 be 13 letters, or do two letters have to go in one cell?

Catkin - 2d - anagram of RUE and then a common make of lock.

Can anyone help with 32a please? Poem to perform, current in Frankfurt theatres (4).

Catkin 3D does start with T. 1A has a space in its 3rd cell.
Xij I have 40d ending in G
Orson 14 has 2 letters in the cell common with 41.
Can anyone give me a hint to 33A and 21d. Thanks in advance

Bambi,
Last leter of first word in 33a is misprinted. Wordplay is the reverse of an adjective meaning related to horses, but with the initial H dropped.
21d - a poor definer, but 'post' = 'past'. Worddplay is E (base of log) in a word meaning groove (think bow and arrow)

Orson, 32a - common 3-letter word for poem for the wordplay. Two words differing in the last letter, a German river and word for theatres of Greek origin.

Thanks, murky. I didn't get the river because it didn't occur to me it might be a proper noun and so not in the dictionary.

Thanks Murky

Finished! Was it worth it? I don't mind a tough work out but what with all the double entries and the cramped space for the clues (which I like to annotate) the whole thing felt claustrophobic. How anyone did this before Saturday lunchtime or without having taken further maths A-level I shall never know. I must have spent the best part of a day and a half on it.

Funnily enough I was reading the relevant riddle last week. It's in a chapter on acrostics in Mathematical Magic Show by Martin Gardner.

Glad you made it, Orson. You're certainly not alone in the time you spent on it. It took me a good day and a half.

It's easy for a setter with specialist knowledge to think that the internet will come to the rescue of solvers who are unfamiliar with his area of expertise. But with complex subjects such as this puzzles involves, lay solvers need to find something that really illuminates the subject so they understand what they are doing, and that's not always easy to find. Today I found a very clear Youtube demonstration of the use of Argand diagrams. If I'd found that two days ago I would have found the endgame far less frustrating.

woodlouse@89, I have a gorgon as the solution to 2d which gives me 't' as the correct letter, changed from a 'p'. It looks like that clashes with the 'v' in MOVE in your instruction. Have I gone way off course? I can't pretend to understand the maths element in this one, so would like at least to get some clues right.