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Addendum: the ‘in plain sight’ character *is* a named character of course - as per its clue - but it just seems a little too obvious, and the particular down clue bird is surely chosen for a reason.

Thanks both for your nudges on 18a. It was the antepenultimate letter that was causing the problem.

hw7, won't there be one cell too few to highlight if you swallow the herring?

Excellent point; Cockie is clearly correct.

Not to be too picky - hopefully, anyway - but the most satisfying reveals tend to be spread across several entries/bars - like the longest of the characters or the things the character tried, rather than just being an existing answer and nothing but.

Hello all. All done and understood except for the pesky counting. The only way I can reach 48 is to treat the three samples as singular, use the rising red herring and jettison one of our 5 letter tangentials. Is this a confusion anybody else shares? I don't submit but it seems an unlikely ambiguity

I don't think any of the 3 samples are singular (whilst the red herring is just that).

Unless I'm missing something which is not unlikely, plural samples, three tangentials and the professional focus gives 52 no?

Oh, wait a minute- shared cells. Doh!

Well, I keep coming up with 49 shaded cells with 3 plurals but I can't see anyone else having the same problem (one of plurals is a bit horrible and it's not how I would spell the word anyway).

On to the Inquisitor. 👍

I found the end game a bit unsatisfactory. There are at least four valid examples of the related characters (all real characters). There are two valid examples of one of the things each offering a different cell counts because of different overlaps.
Then the pleural or singular things.
I eventually arrived at 48 cells but I have a sneaking suspicion it could be done in other ways.
Some clever clues though so the grid fill was fun.