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Another great puzzle from the ever-reliable Ifor.

Before I begin on the endgame can I get an explanation for ...

25a - 5 Got up in alarm, seeing gentleman’s return (5)

I've got "a change" and "a loss" but, assuming the "gentleman" is a 3 letter title of respect, it means I've got EN for "alarm"?

Sorry, an erroneous % got in to the clue - it should read ...

25a - Got up in alarm, seeing gentleman’s return

I give up 😡😡😡 - An erroneous 5

Please help before I have a breakdown!!!

Alarm - Siren
Seeing gentleman's return, change the Sir, gentleman, to Ris...

Okay, I'm not the sort of person to blame others for my mistakes (what am I talking about? I'm exactly that sort of person!) but look at this sentence on Big Dave's website, doesn't it look for all the world that the 3 letter gentleman is" inside" another word meaning alarm? That, coupled with Ifor's reference to abbreviations not in Chambers and I went down an Alice in Wonderlandesque rabbit hole ....

"reverse, the ‘gentleman’ within a word denoting an ‘alarm’

Actually, now I look at it again, it does mean exactly what it's meant to - but I'd reached the end of reason..!

Many thanks Malone - you may have just saved my sanity - what's left of it 😜

Thanks, Brendan, glad my input helped. I hadn't given the parsing any thought until you queried it! I know how you feel about how obvious it looks with hindsight, but I've had similar encounters myself.

PS I don't think I have ever seen Big Dave, or his website.

I'm a tad puzzled by the very last part of the endgame where we have to change a letter in a numbered cell - the problem I have is that there is an obvious number related to these guys but the letter already in that cell is, surely, exactly the one that should be?

Brendan, I could be wrong, but I went with what it decays into...

Thanks Malone, I see that and it would create an oo-er word, which could well be what Ifor intended, but I've read 4 summarised articles on Wiki about these guys and what they did and that number/letter combination is mentioned a grand total of once! whereas the number/letter combination that is already there is mentioned about 7 trillion times!

There is a letter/number combination that these guys are world famous for- I just don't see why would Ifor want us to change it? Just to create a "naughty" word! Surely not.

Please ignore my @9 - On further reading it is justified.