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Thank you for the gentle hints. All clear now and very neat. Thank you, Lionheart!

I thought I was close to finishing this puzzle, but alas, no. I have solved all of the clues, discovered what is in the circled cells and found what the "mean" letters spell. I have split the grid so that the seven entries which cross the centre-line can be fitted in, which leaves some gaps. I am not entirely sure about this last move, but it seems logical to a certain extent. All I need now is the five words and despite looking in various places, I cannot find them. Would it be within the rules of this thread for someone to give me a subtle hint as to where I should be looking?

Very easy to find a quote saying what the mean character thought about the circled word.Then you just need to choose the right five words and you should be sorted quite quickly

Many thanks Jordan. I have it now.

A merry Christmas to you and all other contributors to this forum.

Ah, the joys of the post King's Speech lull. All finished except one clash and I thought I had parsed everything so a bit of a mystery. Its the second letter in the mean character. I would be very grateful if somebody could give me a hint where to find it. Thank you.

It's on a straight line connecting the 4th and 6th letters of the mean character but is in neither of their columns

Thanks, Jordan. I got all the letters from other clues and forgot that I hadn't parsed that clue.

Lovely, puzzle. Thanks, Lionheart. Merry Xmas, all.

DUPLICATE POST BY EARMANIAC

I am almost there,but my 19a and 30a are not non-words.Any hints to where I might have gone wrong

I think you're right. Those entries did turn out to be words. The instructions were a bit inexact.

This fell into place nicely for me over, er, the thematic period, though I too took a while to figure the fifth word out, and that’s a small weakness in an otherwise very elegantly constructed grid.

I found a few of the clues a little chewy, and although I’m confident of my answers I’m struggling to pin down all the wordplay of just a couple that I don’t think have been mentioned so far, so if anyone can give me a nudge to put my mind at rest I’d be very grateful.

36 “Left star turns in musical set about now”, I don’t see where the last three words fit in: the clue would seem to work fine without them.

15 “East London’s strapping miser reformed”, I don’t see where East London fits in.

I saw the discussion of 37 “Made it hard to find hotel for festival’s beginning”. My only puzzle with this is that what needs to replace the festival’s beginning is not in fact attested in BRB as an abbreviation for the clue word as far as I can see, though it would be logical enough. Have I missed something here?