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Thanks keepatit. I'm sure I've probably missed the relevance of the title, perhaps looking at it with fresh eyes tomorrow will help.

I thought this was very good, although as noted by S Pugh not as good as I’d been led to believe by the other place.

I thought the clues were excellent, the end game very neat and the 9 exclusions were pretty clear. Unlike last week’s absolute car crash of a puzzle, in which I have one clue left but no idea of theme or most of the adjustments.

Fortunately the end game gave me the first letter of 41d, which I was up to that point missing, but I don’t understand the answer, would appreciate an explanation. Also the reference in 17 to Pushkin? Thanks.

And as often happens, I figured out 17 seconds after I posted. So just 41.

If you look up 'director' in Chambers, you will see that the third definition is for a word and 41d is a common abbreviation for that. Run = 2-letter word and the 3rd letter is an abbreviation for a word meaning 'see'.

Pushkin's verse novel is EugeNE ONegin.

Harry, for puzzle 4520, the theme is John Donne's poem 'To His Mistress Going to Bed'; the poet's discovery is 10 letters on the NW-SE diagonal. All Rs change to Ls, and vice versa, various terms from the poem can be found in the grid. The extra-grid letters spell Donne, as do the misprints. The corrections spell 'hands' and anagrams of the extra words (reworks, discretion, proteins, sniggle, wasp) all give synonyms of hands.

Puzzle 4521 grid entry was quite fun, Not as much cold-solving was needed as I first feared. Now, with a full grid, I'm staring at a top row with a date significant to protestants. Which is somewhat underwhelming. Then if I add 180 years (have I got that right ?) I'm looking at the year of the first Trade Union Congress...Looking at row 7, I think that only 2 columns need to be shifted. Is that correct ?

Hi, Meursault,

I discovered that last Tuesday (18 September) was the 150th anniversary of an event one of whose names, when translated into English, is the same as the name of the event that took place in the year significant to Protestants (alluded to in the clue for 39dn). If you follow the instruction given by the extra items in the across clues (the second word of the instruction is very important here), and deal with the ambiguity correctly, you will see that row 7 is a hint to something that emerges in a different row.

I should have said row 7 in the original grid.

Thanks Wintonian, I see now that row 8 is relevant. I haven't engaged in cutting and gluing for many years, but I can see where this leads. Talking of sequence changes, did you see this ?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/21/enigma_live_crack_honours_poles/