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I'd already decided 'loaf' was a misprint for 'leaf' since I needed an E for the last word of the instruction.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'penultimate paragraph'. My copy of the puzzle from the Times website has a preamble of only one paragraph.

I'm still not sure what exactly I'm supposed to draw and where, but I'm not asking for help. If I can't work it out after studying some online stuff I'll abandon it. To be honest, if experts with the requisite degree of maths knowledge are not completely agreed about the endgame, then I'm not going to be sure of anything either. It seems to go way beyond the level of maths that I'm conversant with. I'm not convinced it's a suitable as a non-numerical puzzle. I've not seen anything quite as abstruse in fifteen years of Listener solving.

I’ve been struggling with this off and on, between garden and grandchildren. Having just read the posts on here and discovering that it’s a maths thing, I shall throw in the towel and enjoy the sunshine instead. Quadratic equations and the like are for people far more clever than me!

Well, I think I finally understood how far the X should move and why, though quadratics with no real solution, and Argand diagrams are still a foggy mystery to me.
I'm still a bit confused by something in your message, Woodlouse. I see that position of the Xs before the change as +/- 5.5 , not +/- 6.5. Surely the latter would place them on the top and bottom rows. Thanks for your advice, anyway.

Hi Planks, though there is some knowledge of mathematics involved, it shouldn't be too much for anyone like yourself who regularly completes the Listener puzzle. We're back to a certain children's author who perhaps liked children a little too much...
https://userpages.monmouth.com/~colonel/fourriddles.html

I'm not sure what happened to that link, but here's another one. Then search for the titles + 'riddles'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasmagoria_(poem)

This puzzle is nearly defeating me! I need some help with the top left corner - 1ac, 11ac and 2dn. Many thanks.

Thanks for the encouragement meursault, I may take another look while enjoying my newly-tidied garden later.

murky, you are correct about that. woodlouse's post was wrong on that point.

Hi, unclued,

1ac is one of the answers that includes an empty cell. You need to replace the A in the first word with an I, and the answer is a three-letter abbreviation.

For 11ac, instead of PJs, you need a more sophisticated type of clothing, usually worn in the evening. The wordplay leads to a four-letter synonym for “bows” (you’d probably wear these with the corrected definition), in which the I is replaced with UX for “wife”.

2dn leads to a gorgon. Anagram (actually reversal) of RUE, followed by a famous type of lock (for a door).

Yes I was wrong, they were going from 5.5 to 6