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Thanks very much, got it. Tough clue when so much of the answer is unchecked.

I believe those are red herrings. Forget the asterisks for now if you can. The message is key. The penultimate word of it is a six-letter plural. 7d has the same anagrind as popped up in the corrected clue a fortnight ago. Not the last word

Cockie @40 - my way into the endgame was very much the same as Dodgepot describes. You will also find that the "TEC'S CRIME TITLES" is not an irrelevant random phrase.

Thanks again dodgepot. I'm pretty confident I have got the message correctly but what to do with the last two words has me stumped.

Indeed jbird54, it was those letters that led me to my false assumption that the dedicatee was the person already referred to!

Greengage, if you have the message correctly you will see that it asks you to treat different cells in different ways. Mindful of the name you’ve already identified, that might suggest a path forward

An obvious way to represent the 6 grey cells suggests itself for sure, dodgepot, but the others - for me - not so much. Dim sum, as a a partly Latinised Anglo might say....

Thanks Dodgepot for your clarification earlier.

Maybe look at the spacing of the circled cells, greengage. That might suggest something

Will do, thanks - after dinner!