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Thanks RHSL, that's reassuring! Having seen the relevant Times crossword, the likely coincidence stood out-and I feared more than I knew!

I’m surprised there aren’t more comments asking for help on this thread. I found this really tricky and I still can’t finish it. Got the grid done and all the message bits but cannot get the names and the work to save my life

Grunos, are you applying the last two words of the message to the first and last letters of the extra words?

Darn it! No I wasn’t but I have now! Thanks ☺️

Slow to have a go at this, but very enjoyable. My only query is the parsing for the across clue beginning “husband…”. Can’t quite account for letters two, eight and nine of the solution. The role of “accepted” is ambiguous (single letter or envelope indicator?), but either way can’t explain all of those three letters. I have an obsolete word in the clue

Md, 'accepted' does provide the single second letter, and a synonym for 'like' provides the last two.

Ah, thanks Mattrom. I had “like” as part of the definition and so the solution ending in “an” not “as”. All done!

All done apart from parsing 6D.
Can someone help please?

Oldwolfie, 6d Def is 'tank tops are'.
Spies (5) with extra letter, in how you would spell the central parts of 'turret'

Thanks Mattrom.
I think I'd just stared too long at this!