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quixote - look north from the 9 letter one and west from the other two.

quixote, this entirely eluded me until quisling’s explanation, and even then took me a few minutes to figure out. The first two words of the message tell us that the characters first appear at a particular number of Os. In the work this has one meaning, based on the metafictional structure. In the grid it has quite another. Each character “first appears” where the last letter was of a word which is a synonym of O in different senses. One runs across to the shortest, one runs down to the longest (before a letter is changed to make his name), and one runs across to the middle length one — and I had to crack out my dictionary for this one as neither the word nor its Ancient Greek origin we’re familiar to me.

Well, blow me down!!

Mooncow, Candledave, Quisling - I stand corrected - although my primary justification for my interpetation of the first two words of the message - their occurrence early in the work doing exactly what is required - is correct, I'd missed the extra layer of cryptic clueing pin-pointing the starting points of the thematic characters in the grid. I'm in awe of them that noticed/deduced this.

And I'm still, like most of you, I suspect, totally discombobulated by the....(what's the word for a multiple, rather than a binary, ambiguity?) ...about what to do 'graphically' to represent the fate of the characters in the destination. Coloured pencils is one of the least dangerous...

APOPIYOM!

'Coming up, Sor. Will ye have a fast one while ye're waiting for the slow one?'

I am struggling with the nine letter character. I have identified it through only four changes but I feel I need six. changes....

It's OK. I had an incorrect extra letter on 27d. Which happened to be the right letter fir the character. Double whammy!

For those interested, the solution on the Listener website says as follows:

“Alternative paths (showing DERMOT TRELLIS escaping) with either of the Es in 40dn changed to L were accepted, though these involved diagonal moves.

“For the nine characters (letters) inside the Red Swan Hotel being “destroyed by fire”, any illustration of fire or ash, however crude (including plain shading), was accepted, with the letters either erased (having been destroyed) or extant (ie, showing them being destroyed). Totally blank cells were also accepted.”