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Sorry, that wasn't clear - I meant your comment that it was a heavyweight treatment of a leightweight theme. Which I could not agree with more - with no disrespect of any kind meant to the setter. It's a really clever puzzle - just really, really hard.

Can anyone help me with 2d? Am almost done with the grid fill.
Thank you

2d, first word is synonym; extra word is inserted after 'that'.

This was really very hard indeed. I'm content to leave the two or three I can't parse, given the amount of time I've spent on it!

I have a full grid, a title and have done the endgame. That said, I have little idea what was going on in the down clues and my answers are largely guesswork. Clever puzzle indeed, too clever for me I fear.

Hi, am new to this site. Only just found it. Can anyone help. Have a full grid and found 4 of the signs but the 5th and top one eludes me. I assume the last word of the contest starts at 9, which means 2nd letter of 16A has to be E. Any help much appreciated.

Just after posting I found it. Quite obvious really. I thought this was a lovely puzzle, albeit with some very dubious definitions. By far the most difficult for some time. Congratulations Smudge.

After a two day battle I have a full grid, creators, the contest, the secret signs - everything at last. In fact I could 'put it to bed' but for the fact that I cannot reconcile 7 down and that is driving me nuts. I believe that it picks up the 4-letter place from it's lower neighbour but can't see what that transposes to. A hint would be appreciated just to bring some closure!

Oh hold on - it's not just that you add 'ine' to it to make adenine or rather ade-9?? Surely not!!!

Planks, in each pair of down clues the removed word from one needs to be compared to the added word in the other. In each case the differences will be of these two types: (i) two single letters; (ii) a single letter and a word denoting a number. The single letters will be either one of those needed to make TENETS SURELY or A, J, Q, K denoting Ace and court cards; the numbers are the other cards below Jack. The cards are part of the thematic contest and are added to the letters in the top line to make the title.
Knowing what's needed to convert each cell in the top row helps to sort out the wordplay. For instance, I was completely baffled by 7/23, but knowing NINE was needed to turn E into N I was able to work out what had to be added to 7d and where.

S_pugh, ADENINE is added after 'including' to 7a, which justifies BASE as the basis of the wordplay. Thus the commonality is ADE. NINE is used for the top row and N from ADEN, removed from 23, contributes to TENETS. It's fiendish but it works.