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Impressive endgame and good and tough clues. Yet filling the grid was rather a grind, with very little help to be got from the ones already entered. I wonder how the editors assessed this against the usual guidelines for checked letters? Take eg reel 5. That has 3 unchecked letters out of 8, but 3 of the checked ones are provided by 1d, so in practice it's much worse than having 5/8 checked, even without the fact that the checked letters are jumbled. It seemed stingy when solving.
Fortunately enough help was got by filling in the thematic bits towards the end.

Could someone give me a hint for 15 and 28 reels? For 15 I have letters that don't seem to work whichever direction I choose. I've double-checked my entries so far and can't see an error.

ukridge
Both defs at the end, both answers familiar words. 15 a charade, 28 has wordplay but no trickery, every element is either unchanged or is what it usually is in a crossword.

I have the wordplay for Reel 15 as 4 (leave) +5 (strong liquor). Reel 28 is the usual party doing the splitting with the final word as the definition.

Jamesm, I had the opposite experience. The quotation fell into place just in time for the Reels to open up, allowing me to skip a couple of the gnarlier short clues. The checked letters were a nuisance until then, though, and it all took time.

Still staring at the end game! I can't tell if it's related to the quote or source beyond the first block. There seem to be two or three ways to read the (incomplete) hints.

Barnacle. To begin the endgame, it is necessary to familiarise yourself with the third round of the first block, to see what the grid represents...

Thank you jamesm and barnacle

Artfully nudged, Lewap! Got there. What a pleasure that was.

Just to see if I am about to fall into a huge rabbit hole, is the fragment associated with the fourth partial clue four letters long?

BINGO!! The magic of posting works yet again. The second partial clue introduced me to 2 new topics.

Still no idea about the parsing of 10, but the completed puzzle is in the post, so my request for enlightenment is purely to permit sleep. There must be a kind soul out there somewhere …