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I loved this puzzle. Sabre's clues are always tough but very fair, with no wasted words. Once I had an almost-full grid and the four 12s I made letter pairs and started building some strings of letters that looked plausible. An unusual word appeared and a quick hunt on Google led to the source material. It then took me a little more time to complete the phrase, fill the blanks, figure out the modification and find the cells to highlight. I made steady progress but was never stuck. This is pretty close to a perfect Listener in my view.

And as soon as I post I find it.

thanks candledave
Solved 1 ac - now I'll go and have my cry.

D'oh - I have sorted the last of the 4 modifications- I had decided that the resulting entry needed to be a real word which was scuppering me!! So "just" the 4 word description to untangle... does knowing the 4 modifications help with getting to the description?

Can someone who has the four modifications help?
I have a good answer for 4d (definition first word) with 8 letters but it clashes with 17a. But how can it be one of the four, as the others seem to be much shorter than the grid entries.

It takes two to tango @Lumen

Lumen - it will become clear once you understand the nature of the modifications

Thanks RHSL I'll have another look. This is a hard slog and think I need some more substitutions to get closer to the fictional creature

I'm with lumen on 4 down. Got an unexpected clash. Struggling with 2 down and this bloody ferret at 14 ac. Is it safe to assume no more clashes? I cant find any satisfactory way of getting I's into Jocks head unless its a Caribbean country. Some help needed here. Even 12 down is worrying me. Does the answer also mean a coal mine?

Mullingar

Don’t worry about the clash at 4Dn

2Dn - a three word phrase for hair hurting (minus the i x 3) = Jock’s head.

14Ac - second def of ferret in Chambers app.

12Dn - yes