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orson - the central 25 squares are definitely NOT encoded themselves.

Thanks, unclued. I've been waiting since yesterday for someone to say that. It makes a massive difference as I've been looking for a key that will encode to whatever the answers also encode to.

I'm totally confused now : as far as I can see the last letter of 33ac is L and the first letter of 36ac is L, and you can't have two letters the same in a Playfair square so one of them has to be encoded to something else, or have I got 36ac wrong?

I have liaise there

And shtetl

Snap!

Are we looking for a 12-letter keyword?
Or is it a phrase?
Does it start with P?

So I assume the clue answers do have to be encoded. Presumably this will give a real word at the start of the square. The Y in WYCH at 41 will surely be Z but I am not following the logic re IP at the star of the square. May have to give up.

Aha! So IP has to move one along giving a word beginning -IP

Got it! Not long after unclued's help which stopped me looking in entirely the wrong direction (and bananabean). It would have helped if the preamble had said that the Playfair square will appear in its proper form in the middle and not in some encrypted way.