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Particularly liked the “untouched”; now that was a clever touch!

I've got an about a three-quarters full grid but still haven't figured out what "untouched" means - great fun though:-)

Indeed, some nice touches. I made heavy weather of some of the clues - rusty after a week off perhaps?

Echo earlier comments.

Really enjoyed it - I found the clueing reasonably tough and still have some parsing to do but three distinct satisfying PDMs, the first two of which helped moved the grid fill along and the third was the endgame that was pretty straightforward but still much more entertaining than looking for a bee in a haystack.

A non-trivial “aftergame” too to match up the new entries with the removed words

Thanks eXtent.

Time to shelve this for a while, because my final solve is 33d which is driving me up the wall. I know the superfluous word, but I cannot make sense of what remains. I am also struggling to find one other extra word associated with one of the across answers. I am distraught that Candledave found the end game straightforward, as that too, still eludes me. No hints please - just hoping the magic of posting provides the necessary enlightenment!!

.............I'm beginning to think that if I post before I start, I'll finish the crosswords in record time.

Glad you got there. Didn’t mean to cause you unnecessary trauma but having read through the relevant wiki page, a couple of the entries did stick out somewhat.

Was really just a sigh of relief having spent 24 hours failing to spot a letter change in ‘Apis’ two weeks ago!

Candledave, the trauma was entirely self induced and nothing related to your post. I thought 33d was very devious but very very clever. As for Apis, I really did not like that crossword. I think it was drxx who pointed out that apis, in its own right, did not signify the relevant group - so spotting it took longer than the rest of the whole crossword - which is not my idea of fun.

I’m still working on the parsing of 33D to be honest although am sure the answer must be right.

I have a version of the parsing but doesn’t feel totally right.

Think it’s linked to the one remaining entry that I’m trying to find the definition for but not sure as no word within it seems to match.

I only solved 33d by writing it out without the extra word. I got just over halfway through one of the words when the PDM leaped out at me.