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saoralba, if the discussion you're alluding to was between dryden and myself, early on page 2 of the thread , there were two strands.

1. In 32ac the unchecked second letter needed to be moved for the grid fill to work. This was incorrect, caused by use of the noun, rather than the adjective as the answer. Using the adjective the grid fill works fine, and the unchecked cell remains the same. It has to, because there is no instruction to alter any cells which do not appear in down answers except in cells I to VI.

2. In all but two across answers, the letter which would go in the unchecked cell if the answer was entered normally was the same as the one entered in the jumbled answer. The two exceptions are 32ac and 40ac. It would have been elegant if all answers share this property, but they don't and nowhere is it a requirement.

Please explain why you think that MINI as 40ac does not work?

keepatit - I'm certainly well out of my depth here.

1. Surely, in 32ac the unchecked second letter remains the same, regardless of whether noun or adjective is used. In my reading of clue and answer, that second letter cannot be used in the final grid.

2. Using my answer to 40ac (HORN) I was able to retain its third letter in the final grid, as per the absence of instructions to do otherwise, and thereby arrive at a recognised word. Please explain how you arrived at MINI!

Maybe I'm the one out of my depth, saoralba! This was my (probably flawed) reasoning:

1. In my solution the unchecked second letter of 32ac is the final letter of the answer, i.e. Y. The original entry is PYISK. The earlier discussion wanted to use the K second, to give EKING in the final grid, but it needs to be in the last cell because in 35dn, GLISK, neither the G nor K appear in 41ac, 43ac or 45ac, so they must be the first two letters, and only K, not G, appears in the answer to 32ac. Thus the final grid has EYING.

2. HORN must be right for 40ac, but in the original grid I have it entered HONR. Unjumbling 1d , 27dn and 31dn turns that into MINI.

Ah, I think I've detected my own mistake. I was so relieved to be able to start entering the final versions of the down entries that I decided there was no point wasting time trying to fabricate jumbles for all the across entries. So, when I had almost a full grid, I leapt to the conclusion that all the across unches were going to be the same as the corresponding letters in the across solutions *en clair*.

If I were now willing to do some spade work I could probably arrive at the right solution, but life is too short. Others in this thread have been advised (can't remember which post) not to bother with the across jumbles once the downs have been put in place. I wonder if they've been as stumped as I was.

Yes, that was a seductive conclusion, and would have saved a lot of time had it been true. It never even occurred to me. Only Dryden’s earlier post alerted me to it. It might even have been the setter’s original intention, but perhaps other constraints made it impossible.

Making slow but steady progress with this but I can't work out 19a -Liberal Democrat abandons bookkeeper for love that's rare beside the sea (7). An earlier poster mentioned that Democrat is the extra word and the def is a archaic word for coastal but I still don't get it. Any other hints?

A bookkeeper is a librarian.

.... and replace lib with love (O).

Of course! Many thanks.

Hello all, only 1 clue left to solve - 18d
Stimulant leaves father vacant again (4). No extra word and the 3 letters I've got from crossers are PAA, on the basis of putting 'unches' where they would normally go. Am I right so far?