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Unclued, the omitted letters give 6 words of information followed by 3 words of instruction. The fourth of the information words should be in the plural, and refers to the letters of the sixth word (wherever they may appear in the grid).

Still struggling to get started on the game!

Thanks Meursault. I'll give that a try. For some reason I thought there might be a hidden word that had to be used to get started- such as allel.

Unclued, I'm in the same boat. As far as I can make out the first three words are "start cells have" but then I have three letters which don't have an "s" at the end (I can't as yet see how you get an "s" out of clue 32ac) followed by the first 5 letters of centre and the last word is "generation" but what's inbetween makes little sense and I don't understand the wordplays of 10, 12 and 15 down (or "young things" in 40 across).

Barretter -
Your first 3 words of the information are okay, they are followed by words of 7, 2 & 4 letters. Then the instruction is (5,6,10). The letter omitted from 32A is E.

40 Young things = (F)RY
10D MARRIED with ARR replaced by ON(E)
12 D(C) & IVAN
15 G(O), RA & TED

10D Take the word for 'having spouse' Remove the abbreviation for arranged and replace with another word for single, this provides the extra letter, definition = rich 12D Current - think electrical, gives the extra letter, Russian ruler (the terrible) and abbreviation for special. 15D Unruly youths, the usual crossword answer for these, plus abbreviation for gunners - again the usual one, turn as in take a turn, have a ??, here is the extra letter, def. =ground 40A think of young fish, first of this word is extra letter.

Sorry! Mersault reply was not there when I wrote.

No need to apologise at all, Essira.

Is there a check to know whether the first generation is correct? My live cells seem to be random.

Thanks Meursault and Essira. I did have "e" for 32ac but I was using the wrong minor award for 33a (companion rather than member) and for some inexplicable reason was using the wrong letter of the two signifying "gold" in 39 across for the extra letter, so I now have the message, but have no idea what it means nor how to proceed. Hmmm