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Hi Thom. Difficult to give a clue as to the lie but I can tell you the answer is a German word. Hopefully that helps

I suppose "ich bin ein Berliner" might be a good clue

Got it! Or at least got what it has to be. Thanks all

18d: the wordplay is an Italian musical word for 'or' without its last letter

Is the question 5,1,3,1,6,3,2,4,4?

Otherwise I don't understand how the right 7a works...

Never mind, I see my error in 1d

An excellent puzzle from Nathan Panning. Don't think that I've come across the device previously. I too was initially cautious of the preamble but it turned out as a really fun couple of hours.

Full grid but baffled over 'yes-no' question. Reading l to r, top to bottom 7, 9 and 15 give message 5, 5, 5, 3, 2, 4, 4 which make no sense to me in terms of the instructions.
No problem with answer 20 which sort of makes sense both with and without the unchecked letters.
Any nudges gratefully received.

I'm still not fully getting it either Stac Polly- although others seem happy enough. I would like to enter a dog...or dent a railway. Logic problems never were my forte

It's not well worded but the 4,4 refers to the last row and whether you fill the unches or not.

I thought this was a cracker. But I’m slightly embarrassed by how long it took me to notice that there were small differences between the two halves of the grid which made entry allocation much more straightforward than I first feared.