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Fair enough

As there’s this much debate, I can only assume that John Green will have to mark both versions correct as think a case can be made for both, so not sure how you could mark one or the other incorrect

isn't one of the single letters part of the shaded set? or have i not understood what is required

I'd suggest that those literalists who prefer to omit two cells from shading look again carefully at the preamble. "Letters at the....corners spell out a synonym for the force; the other letters ...make up two GROUPS....the rest of the perimeter contains a word describing the world of influence, followed by the SET of cells that solvers must shade." The quotation clearly identifies the characteristics of the world of influence, so those two cells must be part of the SET. There may be a substantial overlap between the SET to be shaded and one of the GROUPS, but there is nothing in the preamble which requires them to be identical.

No, they're both outside - and in a different direction.

...that was to 1esk19.

f ˚und it (far away from the keyboard) thanks to the inhouse IT dept.

As to the 30 or 32 problem, I sent mine off yesterday after plumping for 32. The preamble states "the SET of cells that solvers must shade". After some agonising and hovering with my marker pen I concluded that 32 covers the perimeter starting at 10d in the singular sense, 30 only covers it if it was plural. As always, I eventually came round to drxx's logic. However. I do think there is an unintentional ambiguity that may upset one camp or the other.

Ok. I see the use of the words group and set in different parts of the preamble allows the two corners to be shaded. As I said it feels correct and I had already shaded them on my copy.
I can also see that another entirely reasonable interpretation would be to leave the corners unshaded.
I hope both solutions will be accepted otherwise people who care about such things may have their solve run unfairly broken.
Perhaps it would have been useful to indicate the number of cells to be shaded in the preamble.

Additionally I regarded it as pointless circling the sixth member of the circles if the "world" isn't complete as you can't have one without the other.

Sometimes I think you just have to consider the intent and accept that the language might not be totally unambiguous. I wouldn't have been put off of drawing a line to enclose the 'world' either - if I was submitting.

However, as said before, it will be interesting to see the published solution.

(Magpie subscribers will probably know about the 'plectrum/take your pick' brouhaha - sometimes the setters/markers do expect solvers to understand 'intent'. I thought it was clear in that one what was expected, some others did and some didn't. Much debate. 😄)