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and it should be noted that a piece may (or may not) have more than one tab and/or indent

Thanks so much! That's so helpful, and now can hopefully really start making some grid progress :)

I think I have finished this, but not sure how the symmetrical highlighting is 'starting and ending' at the starred cells. Does that mean I haven't got it right?

Probably. There is an alternative symmetrical highlighting which uses all the correct letters but doesn’t start and end at the asterisks. You may have that one

To clarify, the highlighting works in the same way as the piece entry. Left to right, row by row. So start at the top asterisk and work right, then down a row, right, etc.

In other words there are no highlighted cells to the left of the top asterisk on the same row

That's great but I am clearly being completely thick as it doesn't seem to help me at all. Quite confused how this will work and only have nine unused letters. Maybe need to look again.

Finished now, slightly less impressed than my initial enthusiasm. Thought the concept was great and enjoyable, but gridfill a bit too straight forward then endgame a bit fiddly. And I also have no idea what the final image is supposed to represent,

I’m stuck on the endgame. I have two words from the clues, one much shorter than the other but no writer is jumping out at me from the circles. Might someone tell me which circle is not in the surname?

If you wrote the letters alphabetically it would be 5th.

The final step is taking me much longer than the grid fill.

Some thoughts:

There can be no doubt about the axis of symmetry, particularly since you know the start and finish (or vice versa)

You also know 33 letters which must appear and 9 which are on a list of extra letters which are later going to be deleted..

There are some letters which only appear once or twice in the relevant area of the grid, so you know that these must be on the route, and so must their symmetrical pairs.

One assumes that the path is connected (in the mathematical sense and also common sense.

However, I am by no means there yet. This is becoming pretty tedious.