Hunt and pecking with Loda

Loda time needed to complete this one! It appears Loda is a regular setter but has been missing for a few years so welcome back, I looked back over the list of Loda crosswords and didn't recognise any. Succinct preamble, but a daunting title and an asymmetric grid with LOTS of little words, and hence a lot of clues. Everything has a misprint.

Good news is it was clear early on that there weren't going to be clashes in the grid and we're looking for real, if short words. Like in "Motion" a few weeks ago, some words stuck out as ripe for changing letters, but what really got me liking this crossword were the first three across clues...

10) NILGAI - anagram of AILING and misprint of (L)ives in India
11) TRAINS - anagram of RATS IN and misprint of Grav(Y) - and a great surface in both cases
12) UP,AS - misprint of st(U)ff

However these across misprints are not helping me deduce the theme at all... I have a new system where I print off the crossword on Friday morning and take it to the bar at lunch, at the end of a lengthy bar session my across misprints looked like this...

LYU-NBY-FOY---XFY-NY-M

I had more of a problem with the down answers, but things looked more promising

-DVNN--T-EA--OSSMIS-R-N-SB-S-X

Looks like ACROSS MISPRINTS is a part of it... DVNN can't be right.

THE ACROSS MISPRINTS - B-S-X? BY SIX? ADVANCE THE ACROSS MISPRINTS BY SIX?

Looks promising, and would fix up 1 across - SNUB, p(A)rt in bar, that N is an A -b(A)le, and a few more downs are sorted out.

Across misprints are DE--VRO-KZD-SCWL-Z-G--, and advancing them by six letters gives me LY-NBY-... nope. Did Loda mean corrections?

LYU-NBY-FOY-MH-F--NYLM becomes REA-THE-LUE-S-DL--TERS - READ THE CLUES S-D LETTERS?

It's END LETTERS and 32 is bu(Y) and not bu(M) for TAKE. Good news - from getting those missing letters, I've now got a complete set of across answers, woohoo! And the last letters of the across clues read

ADDDOWNCAPANDANSWEREND

So I can finish off the grid by putting ANSWER in the top row... where do I put DOWN CAP and END (or AND). That's 10 letters and there's only 9 checked?

Is this like Conflict Resolution? Am I adding the capital letters in down clues to their answers? Do I include all the capital letters? Turns out no - and as I'm writing this I find that I don't have the notebook where I did this, but it told me what the unchecked letters were - and entering them in made words of the top and bottom lines

SEE ODD ANSWERS CENTRES TO DRAW and a G goes in the very middle box.

Odd answers centres There's not many odd answers in the grid.

A S I N F S O R I N F I N I T Y

Surely that's a sign for infinity? Use the G and the top and bottom row aren't answers, so they shouldn't be there! The odd-number-of-letter answers are spaced out where you can draw the infinity sign (for which we have to thank John Wallis).

That was a lot of work, and it took four really long solving sessions to get through but it was an admirable effort! I suspect Loda had a lot of fun hiding all these steps, in terms of number of things that have to be done to get to the finish, it reminded me of Key Cutting. The huge number of instructions helped me with the clues, I had a lot of gaps, but each step closed a few off at a time, even after entering in the top and bottom rows I had one or two stray letters to find. Great challenge, Loda!

And victory to George! 2009 tally: George 4, Listener 0. Current streak: George 4.

Let's finish it out with some ABBA - On and on and on...