Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

All done now, I was just being my usual thick self.

32 across is my bete noire. Got confirmation of the solution from Collins on-line. I can neither parse the solution nor see how to extract the replaced letter.

Subject a little bland for this old rocker!

I have never said this before (honestly) but the posting fairy has appeared from nowhere!!

That fairy seems to work for me quite a lot as well!!!

I have full grid except for 1d if anyone can assist with a steer.
I have the song, and know what the 13 cells must be, but I can't decipher 'After filling the grid, solvers must use these letters to replace others..'. Not sure what letters.....the 35 letters?

Hi Lumen,

1d - 4 letter "revel" goes inside "Guinea" once the extra letter has been resored - definition is "African troubadours"

Thanks Mattrom@6,

I have the definition but it's the wordplay part I can't fathom but, as I said, it's early days so I'll go back to it from time to time and see if the fog will clear:-)

I enjoyed this as an alternative to the usual gimmick of simply restoring a missing letter. The latter to me often feels like "try all 26 letters in all N spaces of the word until you get one that sort of means what you want it to mean". It was nice to have an alternate means of finding those letters through grid entries.

Can't imagine how challenging this was to set. Requiring most of the grid entries in standard order to have the required one letter substitutes must have been a challenge.

Thanks for the fun eXternal.

18a - and finally the fog has cleared:-)

I've been lurking here for a while: having finally found one I could do relatively quickly I've registered.

This one was made a lot easier by spotting the song title early on.