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I have:-
(1) solved all the clues
(2) identified the ‘consistent groups’
(3) ‘used the title as a key to match these groups to the digits 0 to 9’
(4) ‘encoded each cell’s contents to a digit’
(5) obtained all the extra letters to spell out information
(6) used the information spelled out to obtain an instruction
(7) obtained gobbledygook from my attempt to carry out the instruction in (6).

The instruction at (6) seems clear enough (I’ve taken the word [number] to refer to the first [number]), but I must have misunderstood something. Any nudge or hint would be greatly appreciated.

Carpox - I'm in the same boat. But I can at least see what its all about - try googling the numbers as a string ignoring top and bottom lines.

I am nowhere near being in the same boat. I've solved half the clues and got about 18 clashes but no idea what the "consistent groups" means or how to convert the clashes to digits. So far it has been another tedious cold-solve. since letters already entered give no help towards other clues. A hint of what to do next would be more than welcome.

Escuan: the way I got into this was by noticing that the letter 'A' only ever clashed with 'L', and vice versa. I also saw that there was another group ('C', 'I', and 'K') whose letters clashed only with each other. In total, there are ten of these groups that can be labelled from 0 to 9 using the letters in the title, e.g. of the 'C', 'I', and 'K' group, 'I' appears in the title as the seventh letter, so counting from zero, assign the digit 6 to this group. And so forth.

Thank you, arcticpenguin, that did the trick. If you carry out the instruction on the first two elements, bearing in mind the Google result to which you refer, the rest follows. Incidentally, I was wrong to have assumed that the word [number] referred to the first [number], e.g. the fifth element remains as a digit.

carpox - I am still unclear on how to carry out the instruction resulting from the extra letters. e.g for clue 1E how does one get the digit?

So far I have a couple of cells where F and T clash but neither of these letters are in the title, so how does that work?

barretter - there is a third letter in that clashing group which is in the title. Some of the groups have three letters and some two.

Thank you Carpox. I can now make some useful progress.

sussex: The first letter in the grid (row 1, column 1) contains a clash between ‘P’ and ‘E’. ‘P’ and ‘E’ form one of the groups, and ‘P’ is the 9th letter in the title (where we start counting from zero). The corresponding ninth letter in clue 1E is the ‘i’ in ‘devils’ and that is the contribution from 1E to the next instruction.