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A nice puzzle but I'm surprised no one has asked for any help with it.

I have ended up with five thematic entries when there should be only four. The problem is with a repetition in 10 and 19D. However, I have two thematic letters in 39 - but the preamble says there's only one in each location.

Also, a clue I can't parse is 25: 'Bit of circuitry involved in recognising letter shapes in the eye' (6). The last three words are the definition, the bit must be 'c' and there's a thematic letter, which would be omitted from the wordplay. That leaves four letters that don't seem to lead to 'recognising letter shapes'.

It's late in the week to be asking for help, I know.

Hi IonaCarr


There are 4 thematic entries so you haven't made a mistake- it mentions 4 in the preamble. 2 use the same letter.

I think there is a bit of a red herring in the puzzle that you may have fallen foul of.

20a is not just referring to something on the road (even though it uses the same colours)

The thematic items are hidden in the grid.

PS there is no thematic letter in 25d

Wordplay for 25d is

ULA (uncommitted logic array)- bot of circuitry

This is inside OCR ( optical character recognition).

A bit sneaky if you ask me,

In addition to djawhufc's comments 39a is also a "straight" clue; ra(info)rest.

Thank you both - my mistakes at 25 and 39 were the cause of more trouble than I realised. But now I wonder what 'hidden in the grid' means. I now have four thematic letters rather than my previous five, one of them appearing twice. Once you've identified them from wordplay there's nothing more to look for. Or is there? The internet doesn't offer any insight into the scale (or scales?).

Hi again ionacarr, look down the columns containing the 4 thematic letters with reference to djawhufc's comment about not just referring to the road.

Thanks - as often happens, I saw it as soon as I had posted saying I couldn't.

But it's an unsatisfactory use of the theme. The positively classified item is the absolute opposite, being the one component of daily intake that serves no useful purpose at all. All four items in fact should be designated the same colour. Plenty of other choices could have been made. The title seems weak as well.

How does the colouring work then? ....e.g. the item in column 1 came from 19d missing A so is that coloured in A ?

R would be a better colour for all of them!?

I think each word needs to be coloured with that of its relevant letter.

That's what the preamble means by mentioning- a colour suggested by one letter omitted in each respective entry.