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Not finished by any means, but steady progress. I have two questions:

the preamble suggests that every down answer has too many letters, but in fact many of them seem ok for their number of spaces?

I have an answer for 19Ac which fits some checked letters I have, and fits the definition. The wordplay, however, eludes me.

Thanks in anticipation for help

I am finding this very hard, even with what I think is a largely correct gridfill. Guessing I need a big penny drop moment to push me further forward.

Re the "too many letters", Dylan, the rubric does state that "1ac and 48 are unfilled". 19ac seemed straightforward to me, if utilising a number of obscure synonyms... but I still can't be sure it's right because it seems to make some nonsense crossing words!

Dylan, 19a is a 3 letter word for lump in a heraldic term for a colour. Otherwise, I am bamboozled by this so far.

I'm massively struggling with this one. Can someone give me a hint for the method of entry of the downs, please?

It is a massive help to find 1ac. I did this by using the letters I knew, or had a good suspicion about, and then searching using TEA. The entry is confirmed by the starred letters. The dropped letters are also significant, and so is the word 'dropped'. I still have the bottom half to finish, but that should not be too hard. It is a very clever puzzle.

I can absolutely tell that this is a puzzle that I will spend 4 hours hating and swearing at until the air turns blue, before finally realising how it works and thinking "goodness, actually that was amazing".

What is TEA, foinaven? A search tool, or just an invigorating cup of the drink?

Really struggling with this. I've solved loads of down clues but have no idea how to "sort" them. What "order" do I need? Not alphabetical. Not reverse.

fgsltw - there is no order to them. The letters go where they will fit with the across clues. That's what's making it tough. It may help to get the theme - but that eludes me at the moment.

...but there is a tipping point when you have so many of the letters that there is only one, or a few, possibilities as to what "real word, phrase or name" can be formed by the down entries. Even if you're not certain about these, it helps to pencil them in, in order to solve the remaining across clues.