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Gitto, don't forget that the clue to one of the jumbled answers has an extra letter. If I've identified it correctly, it comes between your two vowels.

Got the grid (apart from the ambiguity, which I've identified) and worked out how to unscramble the coded stuff, but am a loss to understand what to do with the first word given by the extra letters. Playing around with the necessary letters in the first row of the special bit - which seems a reasonable interpretation - gets me nowhere. What am I missing?

I think that approach is perhaps too open-ended to be reasonable.

I'm sure that's meant to be helpful, drxx, but it's too shrouded in mystery for me.

Well that was very satisfying and quite a challenge at every step. Thank you setter.

I've pretty well got the top 3 and bottom 3 rows, and the two sides, but the centre is a big blank. Any tips please eg 23ac, 26ac, 14d, 17d?

Thanks

I can't help you much as I have only one of those. 17d has an extra letter in third word. First two words indicate a word that embraces a two-letter abbreviation. Definition is last word.

Murky, you are referring to 14d NOT 17d.

I am struggling with the final step with this. I have made 3 assumptions which seem logical to me. The extra letters give a transposition code word and method and that the ciphered text has, coincidentally, the same number of letters as the summation of the code word. Am I barking up the wrong tree as all the online tools for deciphering what I have, whether it be RR,RC,CC or CR give me nothing but garbage. If that gives too much away I shall ask Norah to remove it.

Sorry. Yes, My parsing is for 14d, not 17d.