Reluctantly used a pair of needle nose to gently spread. So far, seems to work. Thanks for this helpful post.

 

Sorry if I have confused anyone. But after I installed the 19" blade as described above by using needle nose to expand the metal receptacles, I opened the 24" driver's side blade & found it to be identical to the one that I removed.

So, I checked the boxes & while they are identical, they weren't the same by the part number. As the author of this wonderful post so rightly pointed out, both start with 45. The one that didn't fit, had the prefix of 44.

Lesson: Don't assume that what is ordered is what was sent.

 

I ordered a set of Trico on Ebay. I looked closely at the numbers on the blades and I believe there is a date code that indicated they were from 2012.
10 years old?!! They look ok. I wish Jag would have used a standard size.

 

just go to wally world and get the 4 dollar blades