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They may not, eraserman, but they have them. 34d is ru(b)les and 39d is on(e)

Thanks Loge and Quisling. I spent more than one 6d trying to think of 4 and 5 letter words!! Gnrrr!!

Thanks Quisling, I think I follow that! I had it as "one by one, we would be fired" meaning that the letters of WE are removed separately, but that makes 5 self-contained and doesn't account for the ellipsis. Your explanation is probably much better than mine, though the wording in 6 still doesn't quite work for me. Something like "...and the other would be a long time" works cryptically even if the surface doesn't.

That makes sense, Quisling. Thanks. I had o instead of i in the monkey, thinking "on" not "one", and relying on a web search hit that seemed to agree. Also could not quite parse the plural "rules" that now makes sense.

Well, this is a bit annoying. I have the hidden message. I've solved and entered all the clues/answers and now have a grid with a few gaps and a set of candidate letters...none of which appear to produce anything sensible in any combination! I assume it makes something to do with Plain?
Haven't a clue how to parse 39a.

I'm not at home so don't have the puzzle in front of me but from memory is 6d not
on)e on(e ?

have you looked on the bottom row ...that will tell you how to fill in the top missing 9 letters split 1,8

🤦‍♂️ Of course it is, Ginge! Should have seen that. Still, I rather like Quisling’s Byzantine explanation.

Granama1, in 39a, first word is definition. First three letters of answer are given by "for one, Truro" (ecclesiastical), and add the extra letter into the last word to get an archaic definition of the last four letters

Hi Kirky, I have the message at the base but I assume I'm doing something wrong. Does filling the spaces result in real words in the down clues? If so some of them can only be certain letters eg 3,5,8 & 10 I think. But then I can't make anything sensible.