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@neophyte. Ah sorry, I gave 27a (the clue order gave me a few headaches - naturally associate later clues with lower in the grid and had to keep reminding myself and hunting up and down the list).

31a I'm not sure about myself. I assume it's a homophone for 'youth arranged'. The 'youth' bit is clear but the 'arranged' isn't, even if I try it in Ian's accent! It seems a bit more like 'youth defunct' to me unless the ending is pronounced 'did'??

Granama1, in 31a if you change a C to an E and read the clue again it all becomes clear. Your DID is correct and the youth is at the latter stages of being so.

Hi Gitto, carphone was one of the words that set my antennae twitching when looking for letter swaps.

It's just that the pronunciation probably depends on whereabouts you are from. TBH, with my origins, it'd come out more like 'dud' than 'did' or 'ded'. 😄

Thanks all. Should have thought of the homophones. I was too fixated on 2 possible words for youth, including a 3-letter one.

Have finally finished with this beast, but was very confused by the preamble saying "... a quotation by one of the writers ...", instead of perhaps "...a quotation by each of the writers ...". Also, my third quote has the relevant label as the "next word but two" after the section quoted, not "the next word". This seems odd, but it has to be right?

And in case anyone is wondering how to draw the shapes, remarkably a GU10 lightbulb proved to be exactly the right size to help!

@polyn Agreed, The slack in the 'next word' and the many possibilities in the switched letters + the 'one of the writers', while those things didn't detract from the admiration for the construction, did rather detract from the view that this was the very pinnacle of the crossword art.

mullingar - the jumbles are there to be able to produce the precise quotes in precise cells and the different clue order is to get the play from the changed cells as presume it was just too difficult to do that in normal clue order

What is meant by 'in the given order' in the fourth line from the bottom of the rubric? I have all the pairs but I cannot make anything sensible from them. I presume that 'read as two threads' means that the original letters and the alternative letters form a thread each?

This was discussed all the way back in post#29 of this thread. In given order means as printed on the page.

Foinavon - no. You need to take one of each pair as you work through them in given clue order, but not the same one of each pair each time.