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Quiz, what letter do you have for the 7th (unchecked) letter of 8 down? There are two possibilities. The last three letters of the answer mean a bar of metal as well as the obvious.

Quiz, the name you have includes the redundant letter and it is not an anagram of it - it's just backwards (over).

Gitto at 17. “Synonym” is actually a bit of a stretch for the first part of the second location. Just go with what seems obvious. The second part is a synonym and is also a name of legal significance.

Thanks, Gitto/Loge - that all makes sense.

Yes - loge, the search does get messy but I think the phrase in the preamble - ''no two groups sharing a cell edge'' - would have been much simpler if contact is to be avoided entirely ('no two groups touching'?). And if this is uniquely possible, why not highlight them?
gitto, quiz, I have also settled on a single contact - a touching corner between the bottom two groups. But if one corner is OK, why not allow several and have multiple possible highlightings? Alternately, if a corner counts as 'contiguous' I could highlight all of the groups without any contact between them at all and still satisfy the 39/40 condition (as it is, my groups all touch along cell edges).
Unless someone finds a better route - and there are umpteen possibilities - it looks like either/or for the contiguous groups but both (39 & 40) for the number of cells involved.

I considered “contiguous” to mean that all cells in the group were connected by a side, rather than a corner, and none of my groups touch at all, even at corners. So I’m happy it satisfies the preamble, but I couldn’t be certain there is one unique solution in that regard, which may be why highlighted is not required, and I’m not disposed to check. I found the final grid rather a mess, I’m afraid

What I meant was that I can only form one of the groups if two of the cells touched at a corner, whereas all the other cells within groups touch at edges. That doesn’t seem right but I’m not too bothered.

PS Does anyone know a way to skip the captcha on iOS Safari?

jack aubrey - I spotted the variant needed to reach the 40 tally and even with my shocking maths ability that left only one candidate for the box (before i went looking for the groups in the grid).

All done apart from the grid search which I probably won't bother with (I'm pretty sure I know the missing name). Just a couple that I can't fully parse.

16d - I have the definition, the missing letter and understand the wordplay for the first part of the answer.

26d - I have the definition and the missing letter but can't see the wordplay.

Thanks in advance.

quisling - I only managed to fully separate the groups (with contact along edges) when the tally was 39 - if you've managed it with the 40 tally I'll have another look... eventually...