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I had EO- instead of MAD, which didn't help. E and O work equally well I think (O may be a bit more of a stretch than A I guess).

Ok, please can someone put me out if my misery. Although I think I know what 40 refers to and what it is filled with, I cannot find anything to fill either the entry or the starred cells. What on earth is going on?

Also - 8d seems to be lacking a definition, and I can’t make sense of 20d

Thanks

The entry for 41, assuming you have it, is the definition for 40. It's not a word; it's a series of 41. The English word for this series is the translation of the location of the event.

The starred cells are the answer to the clue given by the extra letters in the down cell. An easier way to think of it is: it's the description of the event, 5 letters, the last two replacing the letter in the final cell using the system named in the circled cells.
I hope that makes sense.

8d is actually a double definition for words with the same meaning. The first 4 words including the extra letter in the 4th word are the main definition. Adding the last 4 words (ie the whole clue) provides the other definition.

20d The definition is the last 3 words with an extra letter in the 2nd of those words. The wordplay is the first 3 words with 'bar' in the sense of 'except'.

Thanks Mack. Wow, those are some leaps of logic we were expected to take! Never would’ve occurred to me to translate the venue’s name (just assuming it’s like eg Lyceum), nor do I know that definition of the translation, nor is it the obvious replacement in one cell. Would've appreciated just a few more words in the preamble there, but hey

In 20d, I have Scots bar for the first three letters. But then how does “caught” give the final letter?

Never mind, got there! Way more obvious than I’d realised, clues like that always catch me out…

Adeano, I spent a while trying to climb that route. The wordplay is a little simpler once you have the additional letter in the right place.

Yeah thanks, I made it in the end! I can get held up by expecting things to be more complicated than they are