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With a full grid and several minutes staring at the grey entry in the middle I'm stuck. Is the theme the missing bits of the two over-long entries, and if so are these letters to be omitted from the grey bit? Too much GWIT for my liking. Will the PD about the "sequels" once this hurdle is overcome? Is life too short?

I see they printed the explanation (though not the solution) to last week's a week early, 3 days before the deadline for entries arrives.

If you Google the central grey entry, the second or so result should clue you to a character and to a series. This should explain the deletions from the longer entries. As long as I'm here - could you perhaps nudge me for 9a, 14a, 29a and 1d?

9a take first letter from a golf stroke, then a 4 letter bird + 'd'
14a the belt is military and 2 words (ending in 'e') - remove 'brown'.
29a Latin for 'day' + US railroad
1d is thematic 'came out quits' - and remove you-know-who.

Many thanks, drxx.

I rather enjoyed this. I'd been disappointed with a few EVs recently and had stopped doing it but needed something to keep me occupied while having a coffee and waiting for the Guildford shops to open.

Nice one Artix. 👍

(Now, back to the complete head-scratcher that is eXtent's E grade Magpie puzzle....I may be gone some time!

Loved it! Thanks Artix 👍

I have the answer to this (I think! A Scots word for "great") but can't see the wordplay. I took "ray disrobed" to mean removal of the outer letters of a synonym of "ray" but that doesn't seem to work.

5a - Ray disrobed Glaswegian great (4)

It's 14a, brendan - try 'd' and 'w' either side of your answer (I had to look it up).

...sorry, it's 12a.

OMG! Will I never learn 🤬I saw that but didn't bother to check the definition because I couldn't see any way in which it could possibly mean "ray".

Many thanks Drxx, much appreciated.