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I’ve finished but with a couple of parsing uncertainties.

37A All 4 letters are checked so it’s “TAEN” (or “ta’en”, accounting for one of the apostrophes). In this context does “papa” mean "past participle"?

26A I have “-O-HS” and, insect-wise, all I can see fitting is “MOTHS”. The only way I can make sense of it is:
Colleen = Irish girl = Mo (short for Maureen). So “MO--S”, squashing “TH” which is a quarter of “thousand”; so “200” should read “250”.

What less tortuous reasoning am I missing?

Easier to help if you post the clues in full

Fair point, Jono, but in the case of 37A easier said than done. I'd need to copy the paragraph of instructions at the top of the puzzle for clarity.

26A, though, is a straightforward clue: "Colleens squashing 200 insects (5)"

MOTS are Irish girls. H is medieval Roman for 200.

26 a TH = Two Hundred squashed by MOS

Sorry, my medieval roman is a bit rusty.

So is mine, Stevie. I had the clue as you had it until I saw someone else give an alternative parsing. Didn't believe a word of it until I had a look at Chambers and found out it was quite right. We live and learn.

Thank you for that. I'd been using an elderly (1998) edition of Chambers which didn't give that definition of MOTS, a deficiency remedied in more recent ones.

On 37 Across, Taken is a synonym for visited. There are what appear to be extraneous words in a number of clues and papa is one of them. If these words have relevance, I am not clever enough to work out what it is, sorry.

Thank you, Todorovia. "Papa", I now see, is there as a distraction. It certainly worked on me!