Whew! A week and a day, so I don't suppose anyone is still attending to this thread, but what a great crossword. As usual, the preamble is precise, and as usual, I disregarded the part of it which would have helped. Glad to see this site not revealing much at all, this week, but still full of enthusiasm. An extended sequence of thanks, ******** (no significance to the number of stars).
And now to download 4190; arrgh - more counting! Well you can't quite spell "CHOCOLATE" but I bet "MOAN" will be spelled more than once in next weeks thread.