Not having been lucky enough to get a crossword to solve for a while I was slightly disappointed that this one was so undemanding. I got through it in under 8 minutes. Still it gave a gentle ending to the week, and it meant I didn’t wear out my brain before Saturday’s, which may well be more challenging!Across

1 S CRIB E - Crib within SE (South East) for Kent.

4 CAR PE T - PE being drill

9 SWAN (K) Swank is an old fashioned word for ostentation, the sort of term that would be used by Jennings, or, possibly, William Brown.

10 HE ELAND TO E E signifying Spain (Espagne)

11 Anagram

12 NEAR MI SS - anagram of marine , ss standing for ship.

13 ALIMENTAL - anagram, indicated by ’stew’.

16 SECT - select minus le.

17 AN CHOR IT E - ‘it in “an chore”. This was the first clue that I found interesting. It didn’t take long to get it, but it had a higher level of satisfaction in the solving than most of the others. An Anchorite is an early Christian hermit.

21 C OLD FEE T

22 TALL IS - a composer who pops up all the time in crosswords.

24 GRIN D S TONE The second clue to register on the satisfaction meter.

26 ENABLE - hidden in the clue.

27 ADD LED - for a moment I assumed total meant ‘all’ , rather than add.

Down

1 SAW BILL - reminded me of the persecuted man about whom prosecution notices are often seen.

3 B A H RAIN - brain round a H(ospital).

5 A VA TAR - originally the incarnation of a Hindu deity, now to most people it probably means the little icon that internet chatters use as an identifier when babbling messages across cyberspace.

6 PE DOME TER - I liked the definition of one that records the steps. Peter is the Tsar, and the dome is a vault.

7 TROTS KY.

8 REIN CAR NATION.

14 MACEDONIA anagram, the country is a republic in the Balkans.

16 S COURGE - nice definition, “pluck exorcising a” being cour(a)ge.

18 HO THE A D - a hod being a long handled box that bricklayers sling over their shoulder to carry bricks up ladders.

19 T AIL END.

20 W EASEL

23 L APE L ape being to imitate, and L standing for both 50, and Learner.

Nice puzzle from The Editor with a theme that revealed itself in two parts for me: first, cities then Italian cities. Plaudits for getting so many in, especially when so many of them end in awkward letters like I and O.

I know next to nothing about horse-racing so once I’d twigged the theme I had to use Google to check a couple of answers that I got from the wordplay (1a and 28a). There are still 4 clues that I don’t understand though.

A very enjoyable puzzle from a very reliable setter. It might be my imagination but there seemed to be a few more obscure words than there usually are in Beelzebub puzzles but I actually found this easier than a typical Columba effort; maybe because harder words meant easier wordplay?

The preamble stated that ‘before solving, one letter must be changed in the definition part of 25 clues, the new letters all being different.  The missing 26th letter is to be revealed as required by the completed grid.”

There were 41 clues, therefore 16 were normal.  It was up to the solver to deduce which 16 were normal and which 25 contained misprints.  

It took me one evening session to solve the clues. The Across clues contained significantly fewer normal clues than the Down clues.  The Acrosses had 4 normal and 16 misprinted, while the Downs had 12 normal and 9 misprinted.  

It took me a bit longer to deduce the last step and even now I am not sure that I have got it right.

I didn’t really think about which [particular letters hadnnot been replaced by misprints until only two or three clues remained.  In a few cases the misprinted words seemed to leap out of the page - e.g. java,  remote,  tap and hacks, but generally  the majority of the clues read fluently on the first scan through.

The missing letter is M and I can see a number of possible phrases to highlight.

e.g. M is same; Miss a M; Dismiss a M; or Miss M, but I don’t really feel happy with any of them.   

‘M is same’ has the attraction of being symmetrically located in its row, but I am not convinced!

I was hoping to highlight something that portrayed the letter M, but have so far failed to locate anything obvious.

Whenever I have done Schadenfreude puzzles before I have found the final step to be very logical, so I guess I have missed something this time.

Where appropriate, the clue explanations below show the new correct letter , the resultant corrected word, and the misprinted word  before describing how the answer is derived.   I have not understood all the component parts of 32 Across - STORM JIB.