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Indeed, Smithsax. Understanding that the dimensions are Pythagorean and precise, and not an approximation, saves an awful lot of time on the grid search, because it fixes the length of the quotations. It’s a subtlety that requires a little bit of mathematical understanding

Yes - easier from the solvers point of view but from the setters point of view it adds a level of difficulty. There is a requirement to find quotations with of a specific length before the label word which also need to share some letters in specific positions.

I had an ecstatic epiphany twenty minutes ago when I found the three quotations. But that has turned to dust as the three next words are not the same, and I still have no clue what the play or player is. Or why someone lobbed tennis at me as a clue.

No epiphany for me yet, but (and I've checked this on google and it leads to nothing relevant) but is STC anything to do with this - and congratulations to all that have completed this corker.

A relatively prosaic and pedantic question from me. Is the longest authorial name short by one letter, or do we assume that there can be variations in accepted spellings thereof ?

Turast, my names are 11,4,5.

I have now finished and feel pretty flat. Happy to help anyone else out of their misery.
A night's sleep lost. For that.

Still working on this one! I was trying to recall an online tool I formerly used that might prove useful for the across entries here. Somebody recommended it on this forum before.

It was basically an advanced anagram solver. You could choose the set of alphabetical characters to be used, the word length range (min and max), and enter the letters you already had. It would then generate a list of possible words.

I am in danger of needing help from the NHS!!!

I used universal anagram solver on this one, it was pretty good.
Anagram-solver.net