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Certainly some difficult clues and figuring out the message from the extra letters was (for me) far from straightforward. My grid staring seems to have improved as, for the second time today, it only took 3-4 minutes. Of the two entries that need to be exchanged, one seems slightly tenuous when taken on its own.

I got a full grid and all of the shaded letters which gave a meaningful surface reading. I failed to get quite a lot of the letters for the message but could see two entries that could be swapped and which had a mutual connection to the title, so I didn’t do a lot of reverse engineering to find the message.

Googling one of the swappers with the key part of the shaded letters led me into the world of commercial laundry. I’m sure that’s not what Check had in mind!

Likewise I have a full grid and the 2 swap entries sorted which give real words . However no idea as to what the shades area looks like . I didn’t manage to untangle the missing letters into anything that was helpful . Any hints please for what I am looking for . As you say the 2 swap words make sense with the title .

Read the initial highlighting (the 22 letters missing in wordplay) and how the shape of the grid will be affected by that.

If you haven't got all of the unclued letters, the curve starts from 13a and goes to the end of 29d.

Thanks Drxx will give that a go

Once the highlighting is complete you'll see why the swap is necessary, aslac.

thanks to check for the puzzle.

Couple of gentler (but nonetheless enjoyable) offerings across the iq and listener this weekend - i may have time to actually read the papers :-)

Can someone help me with parsing of 42a though please.

A 3 letter 'trick' removed from ('qui[e]ts') a church office (8 letters).

posting helped with 42a)!