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I think moving the first one leaves a Scottish spelling of an English word.

Hmm, not in my app.

It’s there in a different tense, but searching for it as in the clue yields no results.

It must be that one though, just checking I’m not being dense! Thanks

Don’t think it’s in the app but the Scottish spelling of the noun/verb is in there so by extension I guess the word is ok

Thanks candledave, that was my thinking too. The other instances of the letter can’t work, so must be fine

To take an example: In 1 across the cell requiring two letters could be the 3rd cell or the 5th cell. So how do we know what letter to put in the 4th cell. Would someone help with this please?

This puzzled me too and the instructions didn't seem to help. In the end I decided I had to keep both options until I got a steer from other answers. On the left-hand side it turned out only one cell in 9 across could be the cell with two letters, so that was the determining factor.

Thanks, mack, for replying. I agree that with 9 across the problem doesn't arise. So I am still stuck but won't ask for any further hint as that would probably be too revealing.

DM, the endgame removes any ambiguity.

The first sentence of the preamble is, I think, deficient, which slightly spoiled an otherwise excellent puzzle. Where an across entry would require two letters in a cell, there are in most cases several cells that it could be, and to say that “only the letter checked” must be entered really doesn’t resolve much. Once the penny dropped, I simply used the words it was now clear we were heading for to help me determine which cells would be the ones in which I would have written two letters, and I replaced the ones checked with the others to show the outcome. The resulting across before and after were nonwords. I was also a bit disappointed that one of them was in the singular, when it is plainly plural in the source. Still, lots of fun otherwise and I got there in the end. I am amused to think that a strict reading of the instruction means anyone who didn’t send their puzzle in has not in fact fully completed it 🤣

A few clues were fiendish, a few very clever, and some delightful. I haven’t quite cracked the wordplay for the second part of 18, “… master, replacing head’s debut on …”, if anyone can nudge me across the finishing line with that please…

Mooncow, the wordplay is A + (slang word for the head , with the first letter replaced by M)