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An excellent puzzle. Almost complete despite not having the required volume. Stuck on 1 down (3-5 perhaps?) and not entirely happy with 10 across although I think I have the answer.

...also not entirely sure about 38 across- an alternative spelling?, and 19 across?

Hugh, 1d. is a man's name. Yes, it's (3,5)
10a. is 'board' (6), with one ship (3) replaced by another (4)

I think 38a entry should be shown as (4,2)
19a answer is (4)

Thanks Mattrom. I've got 1 down now. I shall dwell on the rest!

Hi all. We have the theme and 9 thematics. We still haven’t got answers to 7A 9D 13D 30D
Been staring for an hour with no progress. Any pointers gratefully received. Many thanks

Mshealey, I usually say it's better to give the clues (to widen the chance of getting help!), but there's probably too much thematic stuff going on in this puzzle.

7. The first word is the definition. There's the usual 'succeeded' and then an exclamation.

30 D. The answer is defined by the first very short word in the clue...

The other two are thematic and it's hard to come up with hints. I'll try...

I do not own said reference book.
Anyway can someone explain how to change the dozen thematic clue answers, into the grid entries. Clearly some contain different numbers of letters.

DFG2, some of the thematic entries are more gettable than others. 33D is a very common saying ,and 26 D and 14 A re pretty well-known too. I think most of them have entries lengths which differ from the answer length.

I agree, Malone, 33d is the most common example. I’m impressed you thought 14a was. It wasn’t on my radar. Indeed, I thought for a long time that the answer was missing an initial “a”.

They are all gettable without the reference using Google, but 9d might require a little digging, even with only one unchecked letter.