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Congratulations to those who have already finished this puzzle: most impressive. As with most Sabre puzzles, I have stalled. I am at the same stage as Upsetter at # 4, i.e. I have completed the north-east and south-west corners (including 9 and 10 down), but unable to enter any of my across solutions in the other quadrants as I cannot solve 1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 14, 15 or 18 down. A hint for any one of these in each quadrant would probably re-start my grid-fill. Reference has been made earlier in this thread to the FINAL entries for some of these, but that does not help me at this stage.

1 down: the key is the meaning of the first word.
3 down: the parsing splits 2, 1, 3. The wordplay is fairly literal.
14 down: parsing splits 3, 3. The definition is the last 3 words.
For the southwest corner, if you have 5 down, there is an across entry where the predictable first two letters from the word play start the second entry in the seventh row.

Thanks Mattrom and Mack. Making steady progress now.

Sabre has beaten me hands down. I’ve suffered all six cuts - and been skewered on the point. My ancestor, who won a French Eagle at Waterloo armed with the very same weapon, would - rightly - be ashamed of me. I have retreated into the EV and IQ……

This was definitely too difficult for me. I managed to fill grid with help from here - thanks! I'll hold off looking at the solution posted online for another while i think...

I've seen the message now... Amazing how it's put together. What I love is when I look up a hitherto unknown word or meaning of a word in chambers and I see the exact wording from the clue!

In general I found the parsing of many of these clues very difficult,
especially the down clues. A lot of the across clues where easier probably to compensate for their unknown location.

What aids do people use for these puzzles? Online chambers with the ? wildcard?

I use the Chambers phone app.

Yes I wouldn't get very far without chambers on phone. I assume you use the search feature? Do many people just use a paper dictionary with no electronic aids I wonder

Managed to complete this. Are there not 2 final entries which are 2 words? Chambers has the olde one as 2 words...

Making slow but steady progress this week. It's amazing how much time watching 4 games of football each day takes.

I have reached a temporary halt. I can't quite finish off the nw corner.

For 1d I have -a-p-n and for 1a I have -m-n--

Could someone just confirm if these are correct as I'm struggling to see anything which might fit?