Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Have a full grid and the complete set of extra and missing letters (from the Across and Down clues respectively) but can make neither head nor tail of them ! Can spot quite a few prominent words in the grid but am still at a loss how to proceed ...can anyone offer me a gentle hint ?

I couldn't make sense of the letters, but I got the theme by spotting one of the four representations in the grid. Now I realise a had a wrong letter in the across clues' extras and a missing one in the downs.
Assuming you have the correct across letters, (it's a proper word) think about the preamble "what these letters do".
I'm still looking for the fourth representation in the grid.

The main PDM has finally dropped ! ! Thanks cloverjo for your comments, MUCH appreciated. I had got a very odd set of letters to start with (ONYDM as the extras), so your pointing out that they "made up" a real word helped enormously ! I now have the FULL set (apart from the Down letters representation) so am thrilled to have finally finished it. I imagine the fourth representation you are / were stuck on was the same as mine. Bear in mind that characters do not mean just letters , if that's the one you are stuck on ....

Thanks, Lavengro. Yes, I just got the final one. I'd seen the word and thought it was a bit tenuous but hadn't noticed the crucial bit, until now.

I have a full grid but am baffled by 1 across. The answer from the wordplay is obvious and fits the crossing letters but I can't find a definition that makes sense. Is this the first of the "extra" letters clues? I have 4 others and a b or f or h or m or p or r or s or w would make a word. Even then I'd be no wiser as to what's going on. In the downs I have a four letter word but have no idea what to do with it.

escuan: re 1 across: Drake is Sir Francis and the others are his co(mpany), so the first candidate for redundancy is the one. My guess is that your others are the same as mine and the resulting word from extras is a synonym for leap. The second word doesn't seem to me to be an English one... so I must have made a mistake.

I also made a mistake with 1a that baffled me at first. Does the answer you're thinking of fit with 3d and 4d? If no, but it does with 1,5 and 6 down, you might have made the same mistake as me.
This is the first of the clues with an extra letter.
Once you've sorted that out, see my earlier post replying to Lavengro, about "what these letters do".
The 4 letter word from the missing letters in the down clues was not so much help, I found.

I am struggling to get the theme. I can't link the five letter word to a work even with the hints given. Can anyone show me where to look next? Thanks ever so much.

What got me on the way is spotting a (cryptic) representation of a work in the grid. The first one I spotted is in the lower left corner area. Then I realised what the preamble meant by "what these letters [the across clues' extra letters] do". Then two more representations popped into view. Have you seen any words hidden in the grid?

Cloverjo - all I can see is WINDOW going up - is that significant?