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Is it hair?

indeed

Thanks. So now I have instruction, theme word and almost full grid. How do I use template? Do I transpose the text on the Gris and select same letters? Or different letters? Or something else?

That's right - selecting letters "hidden" by key word letters.

Got there in the end ! Very enjoyable. Couldn’t have done it without all the help found here. Many thanks everyone and happy Christmas!

I'm sorry that my post, 23, wasn't clear. I do have the second word of the instruction, I just have no idea what it means!! More help to this dunce, please

I, like Dylan, cannot see how to decode the message. I have completed the crossword and have the instruction and the theme word. Assuming that the keyword is the sixth word of the instruction, what is the next step? I have organised the rubric into a 13x13 grid, but I am not sure whether I should replace the letters of the keyword in the grid with the corresponding letters in the code grid. Can anyone clarify the procedure for me?

Hi Dylan and Casanova, hopefully I can help you at this attempt, I don't have too much time., and likely won't visit the site again for the next couple of days. The template, now organised into 13X13, represents a key to a code already entered in the main grid. It's just a case of which cells in the main grid you need to highlight. The 6th word (penultimate word) of the instruction is 4 letters (I think already mentioned on this thread) and should be considered as its constituent letters.

One option, from this point, is to physically remove all 41 occurences of those letters from the template (similar to last week's puzzle) and see what is shown in the main grid when you overlay the template (provided they match for size !).

Coincidentally, I recently watched again the story of John Nash, I think it's called 'A Beautiful Mind'. Much of his delusional experience was that he was asked by the CIA to find embedded Russian codes in newspapers and periodicals. Which was quite hard to watch really, but it is a similar form of coding to that of the theme.

Make a note of any of the letters from the sixth word that appear in the main grid. Work through line by line left to right and you will find the first word starting ARIST.......
Hope that gets some more of you across the line!

Thanks Mersault and Unclued. I was on the right track, and had even at some point seen aristo and then abandoned my endeavours, but I
get so frustrated when I am so close to completion. Anyway I have had a break and will now return to the puzzle.