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You’re welcome, Jockie. Bruckner led me to Simpson back in the day. On CD, of course, said Jack the dinosaur…

Not for the first time I have a full grid and not the faintest idea what is going on. I can't parse 16,23 and 37 (and am sceptical of my answer to 16).

I have tried googling first, eighth and tenth extra words as suggested (do they begin with s, c and e?) and I get nothing useful.

Obviously recognise the hidden message but no idea how it relates to the grid.

Ho hum

SH, I Googled all my spare words, and, to my surprise, got an answer.
Try reading 16a. in reverse.
37a is an abbreviation of a Latin word for 'book' (3) + an old word for 'through', (with apostrophe) reversed.
My idea for 23a seems too obscure, so I'll leave that for someone else.

23A, the first six words are the definition and the rest is reasonably straightforward, albeit uncommon, wordplay.

I got the answer before I understood the definition, but the BRB does confirm it.

Struggling with the final instruction to draw two straight lines through 8 cells. Are the letters in the 8 cells significant?

Helen, yes.

Hi all,
I didn't manage to get a copy of the Times yesterday! Does anyone have an image of a blank grid and clues I could pinch, please?

Finally solved 28a - only after correcting my wrong answers at 5d and 21d though!

Within the constraints of squares on a grid, the image looked pretty good to me. As for extending the highlighting, I've gone with shading that copies the original.

Thanks for the help, have now finished, although it's far from clear to me what 'extending the highlighting to where the group originates' means exactly. I know roughly what it means and as I don't submit that's good enough for me.

Also impossible to draw two straight lines that look remotely like they should as far as I can see - would have thought it would have worked better with the first omitted letter being at least one cell higher.

It's a meh from me.