rad - When I enlarged the grid to redraw/check the lines I managed to hit all of (and only) those cells making up the phrase by placing the dot slightly south of the central position in the blank cell. My merest 'hit' was the first 'p' of the last word - it was just grazed.
I remember a similarly fine line (a spiral) having to be drawn in a Listener from years ago - that was pretty controversial too, and my effort was pretty hit and miss, so I'm happy to concede the point given my lack of precision in these matters. However, if the dot can be positioned to reveal the phrase then the preamble is accurate in stating, 'Solvers must place a dot...' (but I'm more than happy to backtrack from 'devious' to unfair).