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Deviant, it's 1 letter taken from each place. You need to look at the 5-letter word in line 3, not the answers.

Seems you've gone wrong with your letters. It's 4, 5, 4 as said before. And they are three common words. Yes the last one could imply two in a way.

Deviant, it's a bit difficult to be diagnostic. What are your final 4 letters on line 3?

I don't think I've gone wrong. It's a fairly typical Listener message; I just can't see anything that makes sense from words or letters.

The last word of the message refers to the part of the clues that are defined by the first word of the message

I initially led myself up a gum tree looking at certain letters of the answers rather than the clues.

Deviant...

Highlight the "last word of line three" of the "1st and 2nd words of line three", acrosses then down as is normally the case.

Granama1, I was doing the same thing for awhile.

MPRS, I guess you had the same thought that SSPELOO.... wasn't very enlightening! Sadly, it's not the first time I've confused clue and answer. Sigh.

With (more than) a little bit of help from my friends, I've finished. I didn't think I would. So thanks to all who have contributed above.

It was indeed a brilliant construction. I thought there were some very difficult clues; 39 across, 11 down and 35 down in particular. Only one question: was the word in the third row from the bottom needed and did it add anything? As far as I could see there was only final solution - or, once again, have I missed something?

My thanks to Twin and lights out on a very wet sandbank.