Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Relatively gentle fun, four of the answers reverse engineered from what the extra words had to be. Took a while to sort out which of the thematic items to put together, but once you see it, it's both obvious and really rather clever of Mr E. You have to assume, I think, that the non-participants include one that's sometimes a participant,
The title's rather good, too, I see.

I think 26 works on a syllabic basis.

Not sure if the language used in 27 extends that far North?

Well, after a couple of hours, I think I have a full grid (but I can't figure out 23d, even though I have a choice of two words to delete), and I also have the song and the description of the thematic formation - now grid staring (AGAIN!!!)

Then of course 23d shouts out at me - still grid staring though

I was not familiar with the song at all, is it from across the pond?

I loathe grid-staring as well, so by way of a hint, I did find it useful to circle all the less common ones and look for patterns.

Long grid stare after a relatively quick grid fill, the stumbling blocks being being 23 and 26 down. I have parsings for both but am not keen on either. I suspect this puzzle will divide opinion - I quite enjoyed it but not my favourite.

I agree with Zabadak that the title is clever.

no need, tatters - it occurred to me an hour after going to bed, so I had to get up to check. How sad!

ixion - your geolinguistic observation is correct, but you'd need to be well up in the dialects to know that. "NE" does not include what is usually called the far north. Doric might have been better in the clues as it would have thrown solvers towards ancient Greece.

Still (after a break) grid staring. I assume the non-participants are one higher than generally thought and, in the famous words of Eric Morecambe, "not necessarily in the right order"

Gitto… that’s the assumption I’ve implemented (an extra, a la Eric Morecambe) . Took me a lot of grid staring to identify ‘the rest’ with a number of garden paths traversed along the way! Got there in the end and promptly kicked myself.