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Heisenberg, in 27a the first word of the clue indicates one letter; then you want a synonym for 'difficult' as in a difficult problem, ignoring the first letter. That unchecked fourth letter is needed for the endgame, so you might get it when you make the necessary adjustments and see what emerges.

Got the missing letter for 27a through spotting the message. If someone could explain the parsing I'd be grateful.

Thanks dryden - indeed, it is becoming clearer.

I hadn't realised that "starting late" = missing the first letter.

Got there in the end. Yes you cut them out but keep them to use later. Also the site is the full name of the building (5 words).

The site could be one word, four words (which has a certain unity) or five words. Many solvers might miss the first of the five words because of its detachment. Why, oh why do setters do this? Where there is the possibility of ambiguity why the hell can't they say how many words are involved. I get very irritated over this sort of sloppiness.

Getting very irritated with yet another Crossword where clue solution is easy and the end game tedious. After three steps I have two holes on the grid, two halves of the grid and one half above the other. Any clues on where to go from here welcome (probably to the pub!)

I was thinking of going to the same place, Notrab, so I'll answer your question while I have any sense left at all. You've got the right half above the left half, now look at the lines of characters vertically in terms of 6 groups of 3. Some slight adjustments need to be made to the positioning of each of the 6 groups.

(1) Are the removed letters abbreviations representing certain objects, and are those objects to be placed at the top of the grid per the experiment? Or at the bottom? Does their removal leave holes?

(2) Can there be any single answer to the annotation, or are we to take the preamble at face value and do our best?

I'm not sure how this one gets marked at all. So much ambiguity.

Thanks Mersault. That gives me the name of the building and its location. I have no clue what to do with the two cut letters or how to comply with the rest of the instructions and am bored beyond caring! Off to the pub - better make it an Italian wine to comply with the spirit of the crossword.

I've been trying to fathom out what the two spare letters might represent since yesterday, looking up possibilities in modern and classical languages for weight and elements/compounds/alloys etc.
Him indoors has just looked over my shoulder and commented that it's a case when size doesn't matter - and I think he may just be right - doh!