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...actually, both the T and R are essential for the long down entries - but you'd lose them both taking out the other option.

We certainly agree on that, bananabean - 'fatally flawed'!

...all three!

There's more to life than this! After reading everything the main correspondents have written here my solution will go in the post tomorrow omitting only the 5 letters in Row 3. If I win the Fitzbillies book you will be the first to hear about it!

Admittedly at the end of the poem the hunted is not present, but it's only the hunter that is specifically stated to have vanished.

I think you have every chance, cockie.

I've had a change of heart, because this isn't a puzzle for general consumption and its audience is probably more eclectic than is typical, and perhaps less likely to enjoy the usual crossword shenanigans (moving letters around the grid, highlighting etc).

Having looked again at the 'Instructions', everything is fine if you've managed to fill the grid and you've made the obvious adjustment (leaving real words in that particular area).
The title simply operates as an additional mechanism (as crossword titles tend to do) for solvers who managed to fill the grid without fully solving the tricky clues for row 3. The reference to the title in the 'Instructions' gives solvers another chance to discover the subject - they should see the possibilty of 'Shelter' jumbled in row 5, remove it and spot the anagram in the residue (it's really quite generous of Nimrod, rather than an attempt to confuse or complicate what is, essentially, a reasonably straightforward exercise). And if anyone has missed the full significance of the silver zone - they've still got a completed entry to send in (Editorial genius!).

I just omitted one of the protagonists in row 3 when I submitted, but I can't see how the wordplay works in the first clue of column 9. So if someone could enlighten me I'd be grateful.

All I could think of was that you "elevated" a reversed word by replacing the middle letter with the preceding letter in the alphabet. But that doesn't sound right.

Overall I found this crossword extremely hard, and was on the point of giving up. I think Nimrod's offerings are a step up in the difficulty rating from those of Schadenfreude. I seem to remember a couple of years ago the magazine was asking if people found the crossword too difficult!

'No 1' in this sense (I think) is 'myself' = ME.

I think you're right about Nimrod's puzzles being harder but that suggests that Schadenfreude's were considered not hard enough by the subscribers who responded - I think that's unlikely (part of the difficulty I'm experiencing with Nimrod is a certain looseness that was absent in all of Schadenfreude's puzzles).

Yep, that makes more sense, thanks @drxx!