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dodgepot - I think the temptation to avoid some of the 'grind' (that many solvers have found this) and opt for a grid-stare to complete the puzzle has been problematic. jbird54 mentions the precision in the preamble (as does rhsl) and this also applies to the disposition of the symbols themselves (as buzzb confirmed early on).
All of this I agree with - and that's what I like about the puzzle. Linking the misprints to the locations of the various elements also demands precision - unless you're absolutely sure of the corrections/misprints you'll struggle with this endgame.
Personally, I think the end result justifies the effort and the care involved.

Goodness, this puzzle seems to have caused some controversy. I didn't expect that when I visited the forum to say a heartfelt "thank you!" to Brock. I thought it was a really good standard that allowed me to make steady progress, with some challenging clues and a tough but ultimately very fair endgame. Hugely enjoyable!

I was helped in the endgame by spotting the square, which led to the first message (resolving a missing misprint) and hence to the Wiki entry. I then learned something new about the subject and everything fell into place. I was also greatly helped by putting each set of misprints/corrections in a separate column down the side of the page so that I could easily read them off. Without this I think it would have been much trickier.

Drxx, thanks for your help at post # 90. After extracting misprints to make the 3, 5 and 7-letter words I am left with W, E, X, U. It would seem from your post that my U should be a Y. Would this be right?

Noone can argue there's not circularity. Not sure from your messages drxx whether you have grasped this or not.

You can't work out the message unless you have the right three words.

You can't work out the three words unless you have the message.

There are a lot of options in the grid for the three words.

If you read the wiki article and guessed the right three words, great, well done. Lots of us didn't til our third or fourth try.

If you deduced the message without knowing the words, again well done. But that was not easy given the sea of letters.

For me it made the end game a complete pain in the arse. But obviously I accept others would have enjoyed it.

Smellyharry - FWIW, I worked out the message not having all 3 words. I fully agree with drxx that writing the misprints/corrections in a column, in grid order, helped enormously in working out what was happening. I got the '15' first, which gave me the third thematic word and completed the '19'.
For me at least the circularity was part of the charm of what I thought was a satisfying and clever puzzle.
None of this matters, of course, for others that didn't like it- each to his own.

0pt0 - I'm struggling to understand the letters you're left with because there doesn't appear to be a single simple slip or typo that would explain the confusion.
The misprint that completes the 7 letter word ('...G') is immediately followed by a key letter from your list, but you appear to have two additional letters before we get to it.
Similarly, I can't see a likely explanation for the 'U' you mention because there isn't a 'u' anywhere in that clue, let alone in its definition (although I agree with the letter you'd replace it with, because that is the last letter of the misprinted definition).

As you already know what the 2 key letters stand for - (and if you have the correct start to the message - the 3, 5, 7, parts) it should be fairly obvious what the missing two letter word would have to be to make a coherent sentence but as confirmation, here's the word/letter count leading up to the obvious thematic bit -
3, 5, 7, 2, 9, 2, ...

I made hard work of this. A full grid and the theme all worked out over the weekend but like others got completely confused by red herrings for the thematic words. I was absolutely convinced that the last 9 letters of 1a was one of them.
I gave up.
I decided to have another look today and carefully read the relevant Wikipedia article - and it all fell into place.
All in all a fair and challenging puzzle.

smellyharry - I fail to grasp a lot of the specialist jargon in these threads (especially the mathematical stuff like the ever popular ''sets'', for example) so I try to keep things simple - even at the risk of being long-winded.
Your use of ''circular'' seems (to me, at least) to be fairly typical of the advanced cryptic-crossword solving experience. A recent puzzle I did was tackled in your ''circular'' fashion by some solvers and in my ''linear'' fashion by others - there was a code/information/hints leading directly to the theme and then there was a long thematic phrase hidden in the grid that could be searched for. And there were plenty of clues in the preamble to assist both approaches.
I often have to make informed guesses about what I'm looking for when I flick through articles I find online but they're seldom wild guesses - when that's the case I think the problem lies with the setter, not me. In this instance I found the hints in the preamble to be very helpful and I didn't need an exhaustive grid-search to find them (and I didn't have to read screeds of thematic stuff either).

I'm sorry you hated it, smellyharry - but I'm also deeply envious of your following. I have to put up with loads of Listener puzzles I hate, but when I've mentioned it in the past their popularity has just soared - in fact the more I complain about them the more they seem to appear.

Drxx, sadly I had made some errors in my list of 19 misprints. I now have the correct letters and all is now clear. Thank you very much for all your help.

This puzzle is a masterpiece of construction, but whilst I enjoyed the grid-fill, I found the end-game less enjoyable, partly caused by my own silly errors.

Finally, I think it is a pity that Brock did not take the opportunity to ask us to treat 4 down thematically, which would have affected four of its five letters.

My first attempt at a The Listener, and thank goodness for this forum...I'm still trying to complete the grid before worrying about the theme and so on.

I am yet to get 10a, 19a and 16d

Don't understand the wordplay or definition/misprint for 6d even though I have the word itself.

Don't understand the definition/misprint for 5d (have the wordplay).

Any pointers gratefully received.