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Yes, DJA, I enjoyed this puzzle very much. There was a while after solving about a dozen across clues when I was thinking, "And ?", but then intuition came more to the fore. Different types of solving within the same puzzle. I think that's 4 straight good puzzles to start 2018...

I've almost filled the grid, discovered 1A and what has to happen in 48A to give the final position ... but do the dropped letters have any significance? If so I can't see it.

Yes, the dropped letters have meaning related to the theme (otherwise 10d is ambiguous). Write them underneath the grid column by column.

Finally cold solved all the clues, got the theme for 1A (thanks to buzzb), now only got 48A to do, but I can't make any sense of the 2,4,3,5 letters. I also have a possibility of a 2 word phrase - is hunger anything to do with it?

No hunger isn’t anything to do with it.

You can email me if you want the instruction. I don’t mind sharing but people might not want to know on here just yet.

Daniel.angel@btopenworld.com

Thanks dj, but I'll persevere for now, I must be nearly out of all the anagrams for the instruction!!!

One of the words in the instruction is prominent in a leading place in the puzzle.

Thanks Meursault - only just saw your post as after Daniel had confirmed that I was on track with the + entries I thought I'd see if sleeping on it helped. It didn't! You have confirmed my * entries are right - knowing word 1 is an article was most helpful as it helped a lot with word 2. Now I have an idea of the theme (which I've heard of but know little about) I'll see what I can dig up.

Could someone please confirm that there is a blank in the top row so that I can sit back and marvel at a positively brilliant puzzle.

Yes 1 blank