Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Murky, I think you may have missed something, or my guess is you have an answer or two wrong? For you to know that the items are in the wrong place, you must have worked out what the words/phrases are, there is only possible postion for each element.

On reflection I've been a bit hasty. Apologies setter. There is a way of viewing the grid so that it makes some sort of thematic sense, though it still seems to me to give a distorted visual representation.

DSC, It's difficult to explain what I meant without giving things away.
Take the first word and what the symbols represent: the first two symbols at first glance are too far away from the second pair (thematically). I puzzled over this for some time as it had a bearing on where to look for the two-word phrase. I had no idea what that phrase might be, so I worked backwards from the final symbol, which I was sure could only be in one place.

In the end, as I said in my follow-up, I saw a way of viewing the grid arrangement so that things made thematic sense.

Sorry to nit-pick, murky, but woods and trees spring to mind!
I wonder what you mean by the second pair of elements being "too far away, thematically" since they can only be in one place. Logic tells you where to find the two-word phrase (the preamble's "next part of the sequence"): if you worked out where the last symbol is, you surely must have known where to place the other symbols, logically.
Your "A way" has to be "THE way".

Could somebody please apprise me of what the abbreviation/acronym "BRB" stands for. At least I now understand that PDM is Penny Drop Moment, but BRB has lost me. TIA.

The BRB is the Big Red Book, Chambers Dictionary.

Thank you, Malone. I would never have worked that out- despite being an avid supporter (and user!) of Chambers myself.

DSC, Obviously I haven't made myself clear, or we perhaps we are talking about two different things.

Once I had identified the first word from the unclued letters I knew immediately what the theme was, and I was pretty sure what the letters, and therefore the grid, represented. As I'm a bit clueless working with the this type of theme, I went straight to Wikipedia. I expected the position of the letters/symbols to conform to something appearing in the Wikipedia, but they don't, hence my confusion.

The grid represents something other than what appears early in the Wikipedia entry. A hint from a friend reminded me of an alternative interpretation that I had overlooked. Once I ooked at the grid in this new light I could see that the letters are correctly placed. The thematic link from extra words in the down clues is a bit general. I'd have preferred something a bit more precise maybe two thematic links.

Murky @68, this is precisely my niggle. The grid represents something else but for me the final penny has not yet dropped. Are you able to provide a gentle hint without giving too much away?

Very difficult to hint without giving the game away so apologies if this is a bit vague.
The grid does indeed represent the thing seen early on in the wikipedia entry in terms of the relative vertical spacing between the letters to be replaced though the starting point is different and the proportions are different. The sequence is the same. I contend that the replacing symbols should be the same as those seen in wikipedia giving two different replacement symbols to be included in each sequence.
I recognised this quite early so was able to pencil in the second sequence long before I finished the grid.