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Thank you for your comments Ionexch and Grunger. They certainly give me food for thought. Reversing the second word of the title means that the object is finally returned.

But why return OBJECT, not THE OBJECT?

throck

I agree - surely the reversal would apply to the 12 letters, so I am thinking it is not a reversal.

gruger

do you mean you have shaded the first 4 and the last to give a key word, but is that the outcome? Possibly.

To me, "in the available space" rules out any swapping with other rows in the grid, so we must be looking at placing THE OBJECT in the bottom row. That leaves us with interpreting "eventual." That depends on which of the accounts we are looking at. Obviously the explorer's is the last, which would require some clever word-play. I don't think any of the accounts stop with it in the vault, though that was my initial justification for putting THE OBJECT in plain text in the bottom row. Are those two letters in the bottom row meant to help us or mislead us?

I was thinking along the same lines but would add that, as at the end of the story, only two people: the author and recipient of the letter, know the location of the object which is otherwise lost to the world. In the puzzle, the object is lost to the grid except for two checkers. This does not explain why solvers were not just asked to enter the title under the grid.

Agree it looks very strange. On reflection i think the title was missing i.e blank at the start and then appeared i.e was entered at the end. That is what I have gone with
Why just two letters entered the last row still beats me

No twists....just THEMOONSTONE along the bottom row in the solution today.

The bottom row of the solution is missing in the PDF version I downloaded today.

Orson ..the bottom row was missing in my online copy too....but i saw the solution in an online library copy of the newspaper (press reader ...free from my library) bottom right hand corner in the solutions bit.

Very disappointing that 'as a representation of the eventual outcome' means just enter the title. Solvers have wasted a lot of time on this.