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Thanks Mattrom, that makes sense.

Barnacle - are you saying his second attribute would normally have happened in the place we are thinking, but unusually actually happened in the place given by the crossword? The only link I can find seems to show him receiving it in an auditorium in the usual place (which is not the place given by the puzzle)?

I hope I'm not losing myself here, but I'm thinking of the primary attribute. Primary in my estimation, at least. Others may well differ.

The locations reflect the highlighting

1. Does a character need to be added to the grid? Makes sense to me, in order for the third sentence of the preamble to work, but the preamble does not specify.

2. I can find various two-letter combinations in common among the across entries, one of which combinations appears to have a connection (though a little tenuous to me) to the theme. I’m also really confused by the ambiguity around one of the locations.

Riversk, I'd suggest continuing to think in terms of characters, not letters.

My pairings were longer than two letters. I can see arguments for more than one pair of pairs, but the end result is relatively clear.

Riversk, 23 contains a character which is conventionally not shown in the grid but does have an across clue matched to it.
I'm afraid I don't understand your second query.

So you don’t think we need to add the character to the grid? 23 is meant to have 16 characters - wasn’t sure if we needed to add the missing one. Thanks!

Don't take me as any sort of exemplar but I did put the 16th character in the grid in order to show - or at anr rate pretend - that I knew what Ifor was meaning.

I'm with you, Will37

I don’t see how the character could be a requirement, absent explicit instructions (and, as noted, it would not otherwise be required for one-word entries with similar characteristics). On the other hand, including it would certainly not reflect an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the theme, and I doubt it would be marked wrong by itself. I am also inclined to include it.