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Thanks Wakeling. I’ve just methodically cross-checked and discovered I’d missed entering two of my 5 letter words. Not sure how I couldn’t see that earlier. I must’ve gone googol-y eyed with the grid staring!

Apologies to all I've just realized that my so-called 'unclued entry was actually a clued entry that I hadn't solved. I've only just realized by checking off the misprints and noticing an O missing from the extract.

Sorry for wasting people's time. Brain's gone to sleep,

Orson - thank you. I can now recognise the third representation.

That earlier error was also partly the result of miscounting the number of six-letter words right at the beginning, making me think the unclued entry must be six letters or a six-letter entry appeared in the centre. Had I not made that careless blunder I might have made quicker progress earlier.

My highlighting would appear to be different from Orson's. I have four, not five blocks of cells, 14 cells altogether. I can see another arrangement involving 15 cells but it would mean that the two items wouldn't really match each other in their mathematical representation.

On second thoughts, perhaps only eleven cells need highlighting. The unclued word 'contains' the theme. It is not necessarily the theme itself. so the contained theme word of six letters is represented in the crossing six letters and the numerical representation elsewhere.

The lack of any cell tally for the highlighting in the preamble seems all in accordance with the setters ungenerous approach.

Murky, the unclued theme word is 10 letters, not highlighted. There are 16 cells to highlight altogether.

Orson, the preamble states, "An unclued entry contains the theme." A six-letter word is 'contained within that ten-letter word. Highlighting the six-letter word appearing across that ten-letter word, plus 5 cells containing a numerical representation of that six-letter word, appears to me to comply with one interpretation of the preamble.

I fear another puzzle with an ambiguity, as we had last week.

Hi Murky. I agree with orson that the theme is 10 letters. I’m sure you’ve found the powerful element of the letters to be highlighted...

Has anybody managed to locate the source? I know the extract and indeed the source. But I cannot see that it “appears consecutively among the initial letters of the clues (also in normal clue order)”. It doesn’t affect the outcome but it’d be nice to place the final jigsaw piece.

Scrap that. I’ve found it. I’d thought it was going to somehow span all of the clues. But I’ve found it lurking in the middle

Merenz, the source starts with the first letter of the the third across clue.

I had almost everything in my original 14 cells but forgot that another number needed adding, but it doesn't look too elegant to me, which is why I began to wonder. I stll think there's an unfortunate ambiguity in that word, 'contains.