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I am finding it nigh on impossible to fit in the eight letter answers into the jigsaw. Has anyone managed to complete this puzzle?

Reasonably confident it's impossible. Think the grids have been printed wrong. Contemplating flipping the grids L to R and seeing if that works.

It’s such a shame about the grids as I was really enjoying this one. I wonder if it’s a coincidence but identical double grids appear in the general knowledge crossword in Prospect magazine. The New Statesman have also done away with their extra page of Christmas puzzles and there is no brain teaser in the Prospect magazine. Such a shame. However, my prize for the best puzzle so far is the Christmas Spectator - an absolute delight from start to finish.

Hi, unclued,

The black cells in row 9 from the top, column 4 from the left, and in row 7 from the top, column 12 from the left, which are the middle cells of the horizontal blocks of three adjoining cells, should be respectively in row 7, column 4 and row 9, column 12 in both grids. So in column 4, the top entry has 6 letters rather than 8 and the bottom entry has 8 letters rather than 6, and the other way round for column 12.

Thank you wintonian. I’m just wondering how I can amend the grid.

Thanks Wintonian, that makes much more sense now. With that change in grid I have my 42 answers all filled in. Just need to crack the last 10 now.

Unclued - I just shaded in the two new black squares and tried to remember (and failed several times) that the black square 2 up or down from my shading wasn't really black.

Thank you so much Wintonian for rescuing us. It's a shame to solve all those clues and not be able to place them. I put tippex on the black squares to make them white.

I replied to the NS tweet advertising the Xmas magazine raising this issue. No response from them. I also emailed their comments email, again no response. Now that they've published the next edition I see all my answers were right and I was looking forward to seeing them in a grid, or an apology, bit no, they just say the grid is online. But I can't find it. So I emailed again and still no reply. I think this is pretty shoddy

The editorial team at the NS seem to pay lip service to their crossword. It doesn’t seem to be available from the website under “Back pages”. I think this is a shame because the standard of the clueing is always very high.