Carol,(posted 8672 days ago)If you have the Anchell books, you probably already know that grain is a characteristic inherent in the formulation of the film and cannot be much affected by developers. That said, it is possible to "knock the edges off the grain" by using developers that contain silver solvents, which dissolve some of the silver of the reduced grains and redeposits it in the area immediately surrounding it. This gives a smoother, but somewhat more "mottled" look (which I find unattractive personally), and is done at the expense of accutance. HC- 110 is a high-accutance developer with little, if any, solvent properties. It will not give you the "fine grain" look of developers with silver solvents (e.g. D-76 1:1 or Microdol-X). You should be aware, however, that by using such developers to mask grain you trade away a little sharpness (accutance). Try some to see if the trade-off is acceptable for your application.
Another possibility to mask grain without the loss of accutance incurred with silver solvents is to use a tanning developer (PMK Pyro is my recommendation due to its ease of use) which smooths the grain two ways. First, it forms a dye image which is inherently less grainy, and second, due to the added density of the dye image, it is not necessary to develop the silver image as much, thus also reducing grain. Photographer's Formulary stocks it in pre-mixed stock solutions.
If you really need significantly less grain, and PMK is not your cup of tea, then the best way is to change to a finer-grained film or larger format. If you need the speed, then T-Max 400 or the Ilford Delta 400 will have a bit (but only a bit) less grain than Tri-X. Slower films may be impractical, but will definitely have better grain. The only way is to try some out. Hope this helps. ;^D)