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Those posting at Another Place are being remarkably quiet about the fact that - yet again - we have a big ambiguity about the final step. The grid-fill is fine, not too hard, and with an amusing and relevant discovery in the "extra word" letters. However the "method of entry" can be interpreted in two conflicting ways (three, if I struggle hard enough). The struggly one (which I reject) merely involves the retention of the two unclued answers. The others indicate action to be performed on certain letters, butis the action to be performed on the last two words of the instruction, or on that thing defined by the instruction? Each is logical. On balance I prefer the latter, but it's the ambiguity I'm disappointed by. This is the third or fourth time in a couple of months where this has happened - starting with that bloody hare. Are the Editors slipping?

Cockie, you're way ahead of me! I have about half of the clues solved, but not enough to start fitting them together. A nudge towards the 10 letter entry (which I think goes on the bottom row) would be very helpful. Also, is the first solution ACT, and if so why?

thanks

Dylan, it's ACE, act curtailed + E

Cookie I entirely agree with you about the ambiguity but there are 38 clues, so presumably one has to 'alter' the unclued ones too?

Probably the fastest completion I've ever achieved! I always marvel at how these compilers make everything fit together so well. Hope you all have a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

Sorry Cookie, have read your post more carefully now. I can see two methods of entering which are literally possible and a third which enters into the spirit of the thing. Perhaps we are just making it too difficult!

Like Cockie, I don't enjoy these tricksy endings because they introduce a lottery into what is presented as an instructive and entertaining mental exercise; that's how I regard the Listener and why I do it.
There's surely a fourth possibility here - the simple-minded but literally correct approach that would erase everything; but I'm not proposing that as a serious runner.
If you look at the letters in the grid, they seem to be nudging us towards Cockie's preferred option, but I'd argue that Tacet is not a note, but an instruction, like maestoso, so I favourthe last-two-words solution.

I can't really see any ambiguity.

The instruction is to erase everything but X, X is an empty set, therefore we erase everything.

I'm with demeter here. The preamble makes it clear that all 40 entries are to be altered, and we should not confuse notes with annotation. It's not the first time (and probably won't be the last) that the checker's task has been extremely easy -- and I dislike it whenever it happens.

But, demeter, the notes in the last two words are C, A, G, E. Further, the notes in the title of The Work are F, E, C, D. In other words - my ambiguity - how is the word "notes" to be interpreted. It seems to me that each of the three - four if you include the S&G reference, which is, after all, what the composer wanted us to experience in a performance, coughs, shuffles and all - is justifiable from the wording.