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What a weekend for puzzles - the Listener was quite brilliant and this Inquisitor is equally great - we've been spoiled:-)

I've solved nearly all of the clues and still have no idea what is going on lol.

Have you seen the author in the grid ...he does stand out....once you have him you can work backwards...i didn't really need all the missing letters for the work

Just finished this, slightly confused by the message spelled out by the extra letters. I see the last two words feature in the song, but the first four don't?

Hi Lumen,

I know what you mean but the preamble says "alludes to" so I suppose that's fair enough. It did cause me no end of problems though because I'd initially thought the letter in the word to be split in 40a was "perTused" which meant finding the song took way longer than it should. Google just kept showing me Not Perfect by Tim Minchin because, as you say, the first words are not in the song! Thankfully I did eventually see my error but not before much frustration 😡

I made pretty good progress with this over the weekend, recognising the song alluded to and spotting the title and singer. But I'm stumped on what the chorus is suggesting I now do, presumably to resolve the gaps. Hints welcomed.

Add me to the stumped. The unaltered grid already does what the chorus suggests 🤔

Hi Notnil, hi Bobbycollins,

I could be way off here but I think the original word "c....." that goes in "everything" gets changed to 'what gets let in through the "cr....."

I was initially unsure because in 5d for example you'd have 'evelry" but then I reread the preamble and it says that those "four grid
entries cannot at any stage be entered correctly".

That leaves the requisite new six words - 'chilly'. 'genie' etc.

Thank you, Brendan. I'm sure you're right. As so often, what looked incomprehensible for hours suddenly appears obvious when explained.

What a wonderful puzzle. Initially thought the non-words were a bit of a cop-out - until the message from the across clues extra letters became clear. What an impressive endgame. Not just clever but an interpretation that captures the spirit of the song.