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As usual I fought my way to filling the grid, but still have a few questions about parsing. Above all 13. I have ditch as the definition, but then lost.

Hi MPRS,

It's a subtractive anagram/"it shifts" of "heartaches" minus "secret".

Thanks, Brendan. I should have realized, there being several of those in this puzzle.

I'm rather behind everyone. I have SUN and NEW for the first two answers of the extra-word clues (hope it's late enough to publish these!). If they are correct, I'm not sure how to derive another set of items, nor how to squeeze something into 6d and 23d, as suggested earlier.

Help please!

Those two are right, just carry on with other five!
Then seven abbreviations, all of 2 letters luckily, are inserted into the 7 down clues, mainly making new obscure words, so eg Word Wizard is recommended.

This has been a slog but I’m nearly there. Where does He go? Made sense of other inserts and suspect 24d is the unaltered normal entry. I’ve not managed to backsolve all of the extra words but it probably doesn’t matter.

He goes in 8d

Found it as soon as I posted!

Oh dear.
I was able to fill the grid without too much difficulty but am really struggling despite reading the helpful posts above. As a seal from a Welsh council sandbank I have no Latin or Greek and wonder if this is a barrier. Before I throw in the herring....

In post 39 candledave stated that one of the eight down answers is connected with the theme - we are well into sharing so could someone tell me which one?
In post 50 the ever-helpful Brendan has suggested two anagrams: one I have solved but is he pointing to an anagram of 'oneagains'. If so I can't find one.
Also I'm not seeing any relevance in the puzzle's title. Are we in to Chemistry (another subject that I avoided)
I've got as far as Dylan (post 74) and would like to continue.

Did others find this one difficult?

We are into chemistry and you might want to focus on 29d. You should find 6 thematic items in no time at all and a 7th will likely follow shortly afterwards.