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For 17D, I’ve gone for another day of the week, and managed an anagram with +t. Does that seem right to anyone else?

no because the word play gives s on tag

I was thinking of M for male. But My answer doesn’t look promising for the 22 across.

To be honest I'm giving up on this for now. It's just no fun. As far as I can tell there is no clue for the anagramated words, no theme to link them, so how do you know whether they are right? It's just guesswork...

I'm with ReadHead. It's no fun. I'm fed up with this, alas :-( First Guardian Prize not done in about 25 years!

Me too. Worst holiday prize ever!

It must have been a massively difficult puzzle to compile, even with software etc, but not enough thought has been given to the solvability. The instructions are not clear, and the anagramising can be solved only via checked letters and guesswork. So I'm out. Well at least I have the weekend free now!

I've just started and am grateful for some clarity on the absurd instructions. It may all be a step too far for me. Are we sure that the 26 letters are A-Z and that some letters aren't repeated?

I've only read some of the across clues and just got one (14ac) for the left hand grid, which is fairly staight forward, but I'm not sure if I should now look for an undefined four letter word, which I then anagram and add a letter or the other way round. At this stage I'm not sure which letter I should add!

Why couldn't Maskarade just give us a simple two grid puzzle?

The 26 letters to be added are indeed A to Z. The first letter of the alphabet has to be added to the first part of 7ac. The second letter of the alphabet has to be added to the second part of 8 ac. The third latter of the alphabet has to be added to the first part of 10ac and so on alternating like that right to 24 down where Z has to be added to the second part of the clue.

A note on 17d: The setter his mistaken in assuming that there is a German day of the week named SONTAG. As has already been pointed out, the correct spelling is SONNTAG. However, to get the correct answer, solvers most work with the spelling SONTAG and add the extra letter (which can easily be worked out as W), so the answer will be an anagram of SONTAGW split 4.3.

Fairly certain each letter is only used once and they appear to be added in order, ie. add A to 7 across and Z to 24 down and alphabetically in between, not sure what is meant by "added alternately". So for 14ac in the right hand you're looking for a four letter word, and an F, make an anagram from the letters, get a word that isn't defined.

Not 100% sure all that is correct as I don't have all that much done but I have answers around the beginning, end, and middle and it appears to be holding up.