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Yes, that's a possibility.

I am guessing from OptO's posts about shading mirror image cells that his / her problem may be because they are assuming the line of symmetry is the centre of the grid, which it isn't.

Just shade the letters that aren't in the quotation and if the 9 the be erased don't immediately jump out you've got a problem with your grid.

sh, yes, I was implicitly assuming that if you have the 9 cells you must realize that the line of symmetry goes through the 9 and therefore the 33 must be symmetric about that same line. Maybe that should have been made more clear.

Buddy; re your query at # 77, what I meant is that if (say) the top left cell contained a letter not used in the quotation, then I would also highlight the top right cell

shade only the letters not used in the quote, don't worry about mirror symmetry at this step. You'll have a bunch of random cells, except for 9 which have a definite shape and show symmetry within those 9 cells (as noted earlier, its a face). The 33 surround those 9 along the same line of symmetry.

Late to the party again. This will be a continuing story as there is a wheen of work to do in the new hoose.

Thanks to Xanthippe for a fun gridfill. I thoroughly enjoyed that novelty. If the endgame is a a reference to what I think it is, however, I’ll keep a twelve foot pole between me and the theme!

Thanks Buddy. In my grid I have 23 letters which are not used in the quotation. Does the block of 9 cells include four of them?

My count is 24 unused letters for the grid total, 0pt0 - so, one of us has miscounted (but it could be me because I'm prone to error in that department).
I assume you're then counting the number of different letters (alphabetically) featured in the block of 9, and counting only 4. This must be wrong, because there are 6 different letters in the block of 9 - one letter is doubled and another is tripled (the two multiples making 5, plus 4 singles, 9 in all).

Or have I misunderstood your question altogether? (I'm sorry, if that's the case, but I'm heading out now - hopefully, buddy will get back to you in the meantime.)

Help, please, with the parsing of 24d and 25d. Also, of the two words removed, is the second one three letters long?

I've completed the other clues, and just need to enter the relevant pieces into the SE corner,

Thanks in advance.

Cass

Yes, the second word is 3 letters.

24d - word for control cycled
25d - hidden clue

0pt0 - I have 23 cells yes. The 9 you are looking for are 9 of these 23, not a block of 3*3