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Brendan, great - and Yes to CCF.

Thanks Malone.

Of course I've immediately hit another snag. I've looked what she saw, but it doesn't come to thirty letters but 27? Does her 3 letter name form part of the 30?

I've completely misunderstood it. I realised when I went to highlight the first letter and there were several of them. It must have something to do with the missing middle letters.

Brendan, I got caught out with the missing middle letters. There's stuff earlier in the thread that should help you resolve it. I liked the five-letter word (in the phrase) being used to indicate what to do with the word before it...

Thanks Malone,

I was thinking along those lines (it's weird how whenever cryptic solvers see a word like that we immediately think "anagram indicator"!). but have yet to see it. I'll put it down for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes later:-)

Sorry, one last thing..

Someone mentioned earlier that the 2 cells contained the same letter, but the word before 'nasty' has no recurring letters?

Ok, I've just seen the word on the 6th row. So that's good, but... that means I'm at a loss as to what goes in the empty (like my head) cells,

both O to show where the nasty .... is lurking....
the middle O of the 3 in the column belongs to the nasty....not the w???
s???

Thanks xwordfan.

That gives me 9 letters for the 1st word + 11 letters for her name + either 8 or 11 letters (depending on whether or not the "the" is counted) - either way it doesn't come to 30 - Where am I going wrong?

Brendan,

12 cells in the down column.

Then 9 cells in row six, minus one cell because one of the letters is given by the down column.

Then 11 cells in the bottom row, minus one cell because one of the letters is given by the down column.

Or to put it another way, there are two cells that do double duty, each providing a letter for the down entry and an across entry