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I have a full grid and all the misprints and spare words, despite not being able to parse 17, 21, 40 across and 30 down. Is it too early for hints to these?

17: East Asian is someone from an area near Japan. Stick from Wellington is a 2-leeter word

21: towards=2-letter word, which goes around a 3-letter officer

40a: 4-letter group of workers with AN being replaced

30d: I think it's: Scot's expression of concession + a letter + 2-letter word for 'with' + letter representing one of the musical sharps. On the other hand, others are making glowing comments about 30d, so maybe there's a better explanation.

Have completed the grid but for 26A/27D and 31A. As a result I am missing one or two key words in the instruction.

Think I have the 5 words but can't get excited about them.

One of my least favourite endgames has to be messing around in the grid with no idea of the theme, so I won't be wasting any time on this one.

Congrats to anyone clever enough to finish.

Some nicely hidden typos.

PS My policy of not spending more than 15mins on any endgame paid off handsomely on 4853 which I would never have completed in a month of Sundays. Again, congrats to all those who did solve it.

Well I hope the parsing is something more extraordinary than a reference to a sharp. Given that any letter from A to G can be a sharp, or indeed a flat, that doesn't seem very precise

Cruncher - the Key of G (Major) has exactly one sharp in its usual key signature. So in this clue 'with one sharp' clues "in G"

Ah...that IS quite clever!

Got there in the end via a tremendous fluke of googling three words. One of which was wrong, But it led me to the other 2 letter changes of the 8 required. And the very final step is very clever and explains everything.

BTW, I don't think you should have to have an in depth musical knowledge to parse a clue.

Thanks Buzzb (at 22). In 21 across, I had dismissed the two letter word for towards as Chambers does not give them as synonymous.

I look forward to seeing the solution in 3 weeks' time, it sounds great!