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I've only just started this, so no questions or answers I can provide.

But just wanted to say this looks like a delicious puzzle, with a really impressive construction.

Actually, I do have a question.

In the fourth column, one of the clues is (5) whereas the spaces are only 4.

I assume this is a misprint, as I can't see anything in the preamble?

Cruciluci, I took it as a misprint as the answer, 4 letters, seems to fit in nicely.

I've had a swing and a miss just reading the instructions. When it says "9 letters forwards or backwards from the letter shown", which letter is it talking about?

No idea, sorry (couldn't be bothered to look). For me this is another decent puzzle ruined by maths (and it follows too closely on the heels of the last one). I'm stopping the 'i' delivery from today - I did the same with The Telegraph after a similar run (and look where that newspaper is heading now...).
Anyway, all of the misprints found (and I took my 50-50 punt on the highlighting}.

Laertes, it's poorly worded. Instead of "the letter shown", just put "that letter".

There's no indication of where the letter will be, same as usual misprints.

Drxx, I have to respectfully disagree. If the clues simply had 'a misprint', that would be usual; the mathematical aspect, if anything, narrows the field to confirm clues more readily.

laertes, "the letter shown" means the misprinted letter. So if the number was 3 and the misprint was roPe, it means three letters after P or before P, so the correct word would be roSe or roMe.

is anyone else in CAPTCHA hell today?

When maths is needed to do a job that language can do perfectly well, I can do without it. A simple alphabetical A-Z instruction +/- would have been OK without the jargon.
I think ediitors, setters and online solvers hugely overestimate the appeal of maths for most pen+paper crossword fans (but they're so full of missionary zeal they just can't help themselves}.
At least we can show our feelings by removing our support - and hope to get hold of the puzzles without that support... for as long as they last.

Thanks for the explanations :)

I'm sure this would be entertaining if I could be bothered. Unfortunately, I can make no sense of the rubric, so I'm not going to try. Poor.