steganography - The English Department

After walking through the computer science department, the tour entered the English department. The interior was very spartan, and the only thing I could see was a pinboard with the following items:

I tried to solve the crossword, but the clues were a puzzle in themselves.

What information does the crossword hide?

---

PDF with crossword, clues, rules and notice

_{Again, this story is fictional.}

Answer

The trick to this crossword is that

all the answers have to be entered as sound - each square is one phoneme, not letter. This also applies to clues - anagram clues mix up sounds, not letters, for instance.

The solution (or what I have so far):

(I've used the IPA to record answers.)

The highlighted squares spell out

foenimsnɒtgræfimsɪsðəki, or:
"Phonemes, not graphemes", is the key.

Note that

the clues only work in an Australian accent. For instance, 15-across is a container clue where "core fully" is supposed to sound like "awful". If, like me, you have an American accent, they would not sound similar.