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Oh haha, I get ya now Brendan 😆 all’s well that ends well!

That was a really great puzzle. A complete mystery right to the end - when it all fell into place.

Not clear of my parsing of 22 and 24.
Certain that my answer for 24 is correct.
22 has 3 letters forced by way of crossers and theme.

This makes my third word of message though fitting questionable.

Thanks, Brendan. From various posts I can now read the hidden message and get the relationship with the extra letter words. But I still don't understand what the 'thematic modification' is (although it will presumably explain why I can't make sense of the first letter of 21d, for example). I've now got 11a (thanks). I can make a guess at 3d from the crossers (two possible words) but can't parse it. This is driving me crazy. Maybe my complete unfamiliarity with the entity referenced by the theme is the problem.

Ilippu,
In 22 the extra letter comes from a 3 letter word for rent.
In 24 the extra letter is from a 2 letter abbreviation for infrared.
Does that help?

Castafiore,
3d is an anagram plus one letter. Think how you might change one word in the clue to make it work.

Thanks jono.

Re-checked my 18 and 20, both seem to be correct.

Looks like my 26a parsing is not correct :-(
Again I think my answer is correct.

26a parses 4,1 where the 4 is a (not very common) word for three and its last letter is the extra one.

Sorry Jono, I just don't get it. Which word in the clue is the definition?

For 3d I can find a word that fits, an anagram of one of the words plus a single letter from another. But it seems unrelated to the clue. I can think of a way of changing the first letter of what I presume is the definition, but that doesn't relate to my answer.