  We present an analytical study of the standard two-party deterministic
dense-coding protocol, under which communication of perfectly distinguishable
messages takes place via a qudit from a pair of non-maximally entangled qudits
in pure state |S>. Our results include the following: (i) We prove that it is
possible for a state |S> with lower entanglement entropy to support the sending
of a greater number of perfectly distinguishable messages than one with higher
entanglement entropy, confirming a result suggested via numerical analysis in
Mozes et al. [Phys. Rev. A 71 012311 (2005)]. (ii) By explicit construction of
families of local unitary operators, we verify, for dimensions d = 3 and d=4, a
conjecture of Mozes et al. about the minimum entanglement entropy that supports
the sending of d + j messages, j = 2, ..., d-1; moreover, we show that the j=2
and j= d-1 cases of the conjecture are valid in all dimensions. (iii) Given
that |S> allows the sending of K messages and has the square roof of c as its
largest Schmidt coefficient, we show that the inequality c <= d/K, established
by Wu et al. [ Phys. Rev. A 73, 042311 (2006)], must actually take the form c <
d/K if K = d+1, while our constructions of local unitaries show that equality
can be realized if K = d+2 or K = 2d-1.
