Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

I should add that you need to take care in 5dn which letter you put in the unchecked cell and which you put in the intersection with 1ac, to ensure that you leave a letter that can go in the cell numbered 2.

Thank you for the nudge. All has now fallen into place or should I say "got fell in!"

This puzzle came really close to being brilliant, but was let down by a few technical flaws, which is a shame. The quotation is not vital to solve it (though the D-word is a useful hint), but the six circled letters were, since without those the unclued words are utterly mysterious. So to put the circled squares so heavily dependent on the very unclued words that you can’t guess until you have them was, I think, unkind.

A question for those with Brewer’s to hand: there’s been discussion of the problems with 23a (which seems to have been docked its terminal ‘L’) and 10d (inexplicably pluralised) — does the relevant, if hard-to-find, entry in Brewer’s confirm those variants (no L, plural)? Or do they appear to be a setter’s slip?

For me, this puzzle admirably embodied the last three words of the quotation!

PS could anyone pls throw me a clue to the wordplay for 6d? “German Monopoly department set up”. Just for my satisfaction, because it’s niggling at me!

Mooncow, for 6 D....

German is the usual.
If you reverse (set up, it's a Down clue) the rest of your entry, you have a five-letter word which Chambers defines as 'a system of government monopoly'.

Mooncow, I have the 15th edition of Brewer, published in 1995. All the unclued answers are consistent with the entries in Brewer, omitting in some cases the definite article. The entries confirm that 2dn is one word, though some online sources give it as two words. It also gives 10dn as a plural and 23ac as a seven-letter word, omitting the final L in the actual name.

As the preamble refers specifically to Brewer, I suppose we have to use the entries in that book, even if they are incorrect.