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I have an almost complete grid, and have the location given by the extra letters. But I just can't see where to go from there, or how to draw the five lines to form the arena. Any help would be appreciated. 6 across and 9 down are defeating me, and I can't see the wordplay for 11 across, though the answer seems obvious.

escuan, 11ac requires removal of a 3 letter word for energy from the outside of an Asian country to give the obvious answer. 6ac is one of the answers that only appears in an etymology, though it also appears in a hyphenated Shakespearian compound word. The wordplay is two three-letter words, and the answer is a homophone for the obvious answer. For 9dn think of Mandela. You should see a significant 10 letter phrase in the grid

Escuan, I dislike wordsearch and the thematic phrase is quite obscure, and also is foreign : I would perhaps have missed it had it not been for a useful tactic which is to examine the rows or columns that have the most bars. Another bit of luck was to identify an error I'd made in 1D thanks to one of the three thematically located objects (probably, like me, you'll need to google the game to find these).

Thanks Mersault - no need to go to the pub today! My only slight irritations were that I was looking for nine dots (my mistake) and the replaced thematic phrase made only nine new words in the related columns and left one unchanged; I cannot see that either the new phrase or the unchanged four letter word could be wrong? Good to have clear instructions although it did not seem necessary to unscramble the extra letters to provide a thematic location (and I didn't!).

Hi Notrab, I'm pretty sure that you'll have the correct replacement phrase, simply a translation, and yes - the second letter remains unchanged. You're right about the extra letters; for the cells where both an across and down clue contribute, if the former are always listed first, then there is no unscrambling to be done at all.

Could someone explain the wordplay for 1dn please?

Demeter - 4 character word for leaves used in thatching (first letter is extra) followed by 2 character letter.

.. entry means made of strips (not an everyday word!)

Thanks!

one of my lines is asymmetrical in the grid but doesn't appear to be so in the relevant Wiki entry. Can anyone reassure me?