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Bananabean, my earlier post suggested that the title merely draws attention to 'shelter' plus the (boo) jumble referred to and the preamble's 'in accordance with' is pretty broad - but have just had a thought, which I'll sleep on and get back!

Err...where can one find this puzzle? Is it an alumni thing?
Thanks.

Granama1, I don't do these puzzles. I've just Googled 'CAM magazine' and the relevant one came up immediately. I clicked on that and got the latest issue. There was a 'download PDF' on one side - clicking that takes you through the mag, the crossword is near the end.

Thanks Malone, I hadn't noticed any reference to a magazine in the thread.

Granama1, thanks. I'd seen previous references to these, so had slightly more information!

The crossword is on page 47, granama1 - I think you can put the page number into a search box and go straight to the puzzle after you've uploaded the mag (which takes a little while).

My thought turned out to be no use; I'd repeat what has been pointed out already: that removing any more letters does not leave real words in the grid.

This is a truly fine puzzle, apart from the Preamble. The sentence "Leaving real words in the grid and keeping in mind the puzzle's title, solvers must deal with the situation in accordance with the conclusion of a work ..." can be interpreted to mean that when all is finished the grid contains only real words. But that is very far from what is meant. The "Leaving real words" applies only to the real words where the solver has had to "deal with the situation" - in other words where the overlaps occur. The rest of the grid remains a mixture of real words and jumbles. The possible interpretation of erasing the other antagonist would mean than 8D was not a real word; equally the possibility - strongly hinted at by the title - of omitting the other letters in Row 5 would mean that 7D was not a real word. The difficulty has arisen, I suspect, because Nimrod is himself a crossword editor, and there is unlikely to be an editor at CAM who can make a judgement that the Preamble is not as tightly-drawn as it should be. This is not meant to detract from the excellence of the puzzle itself, but merely to suggest that a second pair of editing eyes would have been able to eliminate the ambiguities in the Preamble.

Yes, we can't remove any more letters - the preamble ensures there will be 40 letters in the silver zone on completion. But the title tells us that something sheltering in row 5 must be eradicated - and this could be achieved by moving letters within the silver zone or changing some of them. I've been playing around with these possibilities, off and on, but I'm beginning to think I'm wasting my time.
What keeps me going is the belief that it should be possible - the silver zone is messy as it stands, and could use some realignment (and three key letters are already in alignment - two of them attached to the longest down entries, words that really can't be changed). It's easily possible to make the silver zone a better representation of the 'five-word subtitle' - but none of my attempts left 'real words' throughout the grid.
What really puts me off is the phrasing of the 'Instructions' - especially, 'Leaving real words' because there isn't any chance of achieving that with the across entries starting in rows 5 and 6, and I think I'm losing faith in the challenge (and if the solution contains any non-words - the 'Instructions' are inadequate).

Cockie, you have made the good point that the instruction "leaving real words" may only apply to Row 3.

The title suggests that a 7-letter word is removed from Row 5 and the last line of the poem implies that the thing that was also a snark disappears. I see what you mean but I am not convinced. There is a good case for removing letters from 19 cells.

drxx, I don't see why the 40 letters in the silver zone cannot be reduced for the final submission. Indeed I think some of them must be removed or you haven't heeded the title.

I repeat what I wrote earlier:
Surely for any good puzzle you will know when you have solved it? Here I do not know.