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Thank you loge. Grid filled apart from ambiguities. Still work to be done! What do the asterisked cell letters mean?

I feel I'm gradually getting there.

Are there 11 clues with extra words?

Hints to 5d and 35ac would be most welcome.

I understood from a previous comment that the asterisked cells always contain the first and last letters of the character- but the suggestion that the second asterisk is an A scuppers that!

Dylan, the asterisked cells only contain the first or last letter of the character when they're part of a description of a thematic scene. Not all rows contain one of these. There are 8 clues with extra words.

5 down O + common word for "really" (4 letters) with last word missing, then a word for spring which more commonly means with what we're all desperate to get cut when lockdown finishes...

35 across is A Neb inside a dialect word for raven

Correction to second para5 down O + common word for "really" (4 letters) with last LETTER missing

Thanks Loge, really helpful!

I enjoyed this once I figured out what was going on.

Only loose ends for me are the wordplay for 27 and 35. Some hints as to how the wordplay works for those two would be appreciated

Thanks

the raven is crake in 35

Smellyharry, 27: twiddle a two-letter sol-fa note and add a 3-letter instrument. 35: crake is a raven, the rest is obvs.

Thanks both. Was thinking of te 2 letter abbbrev for nebraska, not the three. All makes sense now.

I appear to have completed the grid, with the full name of the creator (7 vertical 7 horizontal ) and the 8 scenes (all horizontal), although not in the normally accepted I to VIII order. I in row 1, II in row 5, III in row 3, IV in row 4, V in row 8, VI in row 9, VII in row 7 and VIII in row 11. I've also managed to locate the matching extra words to describe these scenes. I am now worried, because I've done this with absolutely no recourse to any alphnumeric tomfoolery, but simply by logical substitution. Does this mean I must have erred somewhere? Did anyone else locate either/or cells which could only be definitively resolved by using the A = 1 system, or am I just lucky?