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Hit a brick wall here. May I have a nudge on a clue to get me going again, please?

35a. Muddled brain once absolutely filled with silly joke (9)
I believe there is an o in the answer, possibly 3rd letter, but not sure.
There be a phrase or word to take out before solving.

You are right about the o but wrong about there being an omission.
Silly indicates how to treat joke, which is surrounded by - i.e. fills - a slang(ish) word for absolutely that could also be a vessel or an act of violence.

Thank you for your reply, but I'm none the wiser!
How does "muddled brain" work in the clue?
Thank you.

That's the definition

The answer is an obscure word. It will help you to know that SMACK can mean "absolutely".

This one's a real stinker. I've got the answer to 1d for example and I know it has to be changed before entry but it seems like a random anagram to me. And this clue makes no sense to me at all:

Messenger's drive to stop working entirely in Scotland (5)

I think the letters A, D, E and P are involved, though not necessarily in that order.

29a I've not finished this EV yet, but think it might be CADEE . The P is a clash.
CA is drive, and DEE a variant of DIE in Scotland.

It is CADEE, whilst try turning the part of the body in 1D.

Any ideas about 7? Despite the one letter missing, ostensibly an 'a', the clue baffles. 42 needs an additional (third) letter, I believe - any thoughts on this? So far, I have 6 of the nine removals plus three seemingly irrelevant ones (all single words and only one phrase, which could indicate errors somewhere).

7 is a version of the Bible. It's in Chambers in the entry for Italian.

Belated thanks Orson - perhaps you or someone could provide confirmation or otherwise: the (only) seven redundancies I have are double, split, fallen, slipped, broken, hole in the and turned. I'm still missing two though I've got another six possible surplus words (small, starter, rubber, pink, round and in parts). My grid seems to be complete (inc the hole) at this stage though clearly something is amiss. And the 10th - does it change a solution?