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A work colleague of mine read this very book only recently, and my 7 year old daughter is certainly fond of some highly related books, so it's not quite vanished into the mists of literary history!

I've stopped worrying about the "above the grid" requirement now and am concentrating my efforts on trying to solve the question of whether Shackleton can possibly be fully human - how do you even come up with a puzzle as intricate yet elegant as this? He even managed to include all the letters of his name in the (pre-encoded) first row, for crying out loud...

Read the whole of D as instructions about what replaces separate letters in the row - two lists.

See it now. Stunning. Would not have got there on my own without help from this forum. I did get the correct solution a couple of days ago but discounted it because I could not see then why it was right.

You're not alone there, Smithsax. I think the problem has been that most of us have solved the puzzle the wrong way round - researching the source, guessing the common name and then encoding it, which of course gets you to 6.5 and days of head scratching but fails to explain why the replacements have to be made in the ninth row. If we had approached it as the setter presumably intended, which is first to apply the instructions contained in D to row nine, this not only produces "six each" but actually enables the common name to be decoded and deduced.

Only started a few days ago but most seems to be done. However, I am still struggling with the first row describing the expedition. The preamble says "letters in the first row must be replaced....". Is this ALL letters or just some? If just some - how many?

Are the replacements real letters or morse code? How does this affect the down answers? I really do not understand the reference to code options (six each) or 'blanks'.

A significant shove in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

D gives you two symbols for replacing some of the letters and tells you which letters to replace with that symbol - ignoring duplications you have 6 letters in each list. Anything not in the lists is replaced with a blank. Down answers will not make sense. Hope this helps.

dumbo99 - many thanks. I was looking for six of each of the symbols and not the six letters. The outcome now produces the morse representation of the name that felt should be there.
Again thanks

With all the help on here I think I have eventually got everything in place except the 23/25 part. Presumably it refers to NP and Nansens full name but failing to see how this fits in the grid. Feeling very obtuse but would welcome a hint to get me over the line.Thanks.

If you've sorted out that 9th row, uncle w, you're one of the few and not obtuse at all. I've tried things like dot (.) DICK dash (-) and various ideas for pole but with no success.

As for those 4 cells, I've gone for DC on the right as the initials of the leader and NP on the left, though I could be wrong.

Orson, if you are using Dot for dot, why are you trying Dick for dash when a more promising alternative is available immediately afterwards? Then look at the whole of D.

As for the four squares, the one on the right refers to the leader of the FIRST expedition.