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don't think I discovered any special method ... with Araucaria's alphabetical fill-ins there was always at least one across/down starting with the same letter and that letter would have two clues. Here there were two such but both 5 letters/8 and of course without the starting letters. Still, it was a beginning ....

Hi Prospero, look across the top row

ah, clever! thanks, muraria - I could have done with seeing that - though I had the bottom half filled before anything in the top. It would have stopped me trying to fit sherries into 7d ....

It's definitely "hidden in plain sight" and so much harder to spot when the clues are in random order....

I think solving it without discovering the "method" deserves a special prize - not that I've ever seen sight of the regular one ...

Yes, agreed, pretty tough, because both the letter count and position of the solutions were unknown. I tried doing this on a 10 hour flight with no internet access, so some of the more obscure solutions or references were acts of faith based on the wordplay. I tried fitting in some of my solutions according to the crossers, and voila! My epiphany occurred somewhere 10 km above Manila. A great offering from Pickers.

My “in” was to ask myself “why on earth has he bothered putting numbers in the grid, if there are no numbered clues”, after which question I realised there was only one answer.

I assumed the numbers were there to facilitate entering the solutions on the form ...

Thanks to Picaroon for a very clever challenge. It seemed insuperable at first sight but the preamble made clear, like the epilogue to The Good Woman of Setzuan, “…there must, there must, there’s got to be a way”. The porcelain mineral and the Italian starter showed me what that way was.

An excellent challenge I thought, took a couple of sessions. Picked up the ‘cypher’ in the first row fairly early on but it was only towards the end that I realised how it continues through the grid, an excellent piece of construction. That certainly helped with the last couple to drop in. Thanks to Picaroon.

I note the online entry simply requires the answers to clues which doesn’t really prove that you’ve been able to complete the grid, which is a bit odd…