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I've been agonising over this point for the last 3 hours. Surely the penultimate word would have been better if it was "empty", its a bit like "sector" would have been better for the word after the 3rd abbreviation. At least my completed grid seems correct. A very difficult puzzle not helped, IMO, by an opaque set of instructions, more GWIT than clear.

CD @70, thereby lies a further ambiguity.

If you do not draw the first cell in the series but the following 5 it looks like you have drawn 6 squares, but you haven't - you have left an empty or final CELL to be dealt with. That gives you the option to draw one final square.

After all, the instructions refer to a cell, not a square! Ho-hum, like I have said before, the end game leaves a lot to be desired and, hopefully, a lot of leeway in the leniency of the checker. Visually both appear correct and that will be dependent upon whether the checker accepts that the solver has applied their own GWI(was)T to their submission. That would square up the fairness of the end game.

Gitto - I think that’s semantics - of course it’s six squares. It’s not five squares and something that just looks like a square and a cell is a square.

I think you’re overthinking things generally - go to wiki and just copy the picture - it’s not that complicated

CD, on the WIKI page every square has on arc in it - on the BBC page the first square doesn't. If you place an arc in the first square, that square cannot be the origin and the final cell. That is my conundrum, and I do not see that as semantics, more as a matter of fact.

ok

the setter isn't trying to trick anyone. Am sure if you do your best interpretation of the instructions, it will be fine

I truly hope so CD. i think what I have must be right and I will be very annoyed if it is not deemed to be. For me, pedantic marking should be IAW precise instructions, but the Listener does tend to introduce a level of paranoia at times.

I am getting very frustrated by the final stages of this puzzle. I have a full grid and I believe that I have correctly carried out the first and second instructions. I have no idea what the third instruction means and I cannot decipher the "extra clue". We are given the order of the extra clue's words, but that is not conclusive as two of the words have three letters and two have four. My three letter words both begin with the same letter, but the four letter ones do not. My best attempt at making these words into a clue results in the three and four letter words being in reverse alphabetical order. Am I on the right lines?

I struggled for three days with the end game so perhaps well placed to give advice.
The third instruction is crucial and involves you adding something in a particular place. That something is mentioned in the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on the theme.
Once there you can make a word by inserting two characters in adjacent cells. There are only two words that fit and one is the obvious correct one. I then worked back to the correct clue.
I made life difficult by adding the “thing” in the wrong place in the first instance. I took the last two words of the third instruction to mean the place where I drew the last bit of the construction but it in fact means the square after that.

I'm another who is nearly there but struggling with the instructions. Is the final 'across answer' in any way thematic?

I confess that I found the grid fill a rather unrewarding slog so filed the endgame under “life’s too short”. Given the comments here, I think it was the right option - for me at least.