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I've also been left just with 9, despite knowing the definition from an earlier post. My guess seems right from the wiggle start letter in the centre and the neighbours I've come up with, but still don't see the parsing.

Look up the last four letters in Chambers, pka1

Thanks - I had the wrong word anyway but only 1 letter different in the back 4, and a light bulb went on. Now back to the wiggles.

Haven’t read the thread as still trying to solve unaided, but finding this fairly frustrating. The guidance for setters states

Puzzles where more than half the entries must be solved before entries can be made in the grid are more likely to be rejected as they fail to deliver the principal feature of a crossword.

I have spent 4 hours cold solving 25 clues. I am one clue short of 2/3 solved, and I have a handful of letters in the grid. This clearly fails the basic requirement of a crossword, in my view. We might as well get rid of the grid entirely and just have 40 or 50 clues to cold solve each week.

Hopefully once I get to 80% or so I might be able to stick a few in.

I'm with Smellyharry on this. I have 12, 14 and 15 to solve and still have too many alternatives to contemplate. Help with those final three might reinvigorate me!

Smellharry, I am sympathetic with your frustration but I had about 30-35% of the grid filled in with about 1/2 the clues solved. What worked for me was solving a couple of the long wiggles (which I found fairly easy to do) and making a list of which clue numbers intersected which others (e.g. 1: 4 & 5; 2: 6 & 7; ...25: 20, 21, 28 &29; etc. Then for the pairs of intersecting clues I solved, I penciled in the possible letters - e.g. 1 & 4 must intersect in either A or R. That (and the fact that wiggles cannot pass thru center cells (but can end there) allowed me to deduce where to enter a lot of the wiggle letters.

I am also still having difficulty with the grid fill. Still cannot solve 6. Also could someone please confirm or otherwise whether or not the first word of the 16 word phrase begins with the letters CAYD please. If not I have gone wrong somewhere.

Goshawk, 6 is an informal Irish term for an undeclared job, using NIX to denote 'nothing' (as in 'no tax to pay').
The first word of the 16 letter phrase is CAES** (a name), the phrase is 6,5,5

Buzzb - thanks for the encouragement. I suspect this is heavily dependent on which clues you have solved. I have solved the longest wiggle (9) but not the the next two longest. I haven’t got 10, 17,23, 24, 25 or 26 so I only have seven possible common letters in solved clues in the lower 75% of the grid

I normally like carte Blanche type grids as figuring out where and how to enter answers is normally one of my strengths. I will have another look but I am fairly confident I can’t get more than the 15 or so letters that I have in with the answers I have.

Hi Smellyharry, I don't know how much help you want, if any. Here are some hints. Wiggle 21 is a compound of 2 animals (eg catfish), the first being a 6-letter animal associated with searching. 10 is a late UK princess; 17 an Afghani tribesman; 23 a Bantu beginning X; 24 the name of a Greek giant is also plural of a dance and also plural of a prefix used to denote 100,000,000 ; 25 anagram THE and CR, 26 B followed by word for paintings