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No one seems to have had a problem with 11 ac. I have all but the two unchecked letters and there are not many words that fit. "Boy Soldier maybe" gives a sensible word but this doesn't match either of the last two words, one of which should be the definition.
And this even before starting the shading!

Raggedy...
One of those 2 words, followed by the question mark, is a possible example of the answer.

At post 39 , Melbourne refers to the relevant column having a unique characteristic. I have found a column with such a characteristic, but I am not sure whether it is the right one. Is a popular radio panel game relevant?

I feel I am missing out on the fun here. A shrewd guess at the necessary column has produced three words which I can duly pair up with the removed words. There is also a relationship between the three highlighted words and the chosen column. Am I expecting something else? Presuming that the six-letter entries that got split up are also part of the PDM but can't see how. Think I have enough to submit but it feels incomplete as it stands?

cruncher - don’t think you’re missing anything

Ok. So what was the point of splitting up the six-letter entries?

I think there are five possible reasons:
- the construction meant a limited choice for possible letters and some of the three-letter words did not lend themselves to good clues;
- it's a way of defeating those who use sites like Quick Solve without solving the clue;
- because some of the letters are unchecked, the clue has to be fully solved;
- it provides an additional challenge;
- Miles seems to like the twists: for example, he often goes for less common definitions.
Or maybe I'm missing something.

Extending this approach to longer words would make an interesting future puzzle.

I am stuck. I seem to have chosen the wrong column for shading. I chose a central one with 9 different letters thinking that maybe 3x3 related to the title. I chose to colour in all the letters that appeared in that column everywhere in the grid (I used 3 different colours probably unnecessarily) i now have a very pretty but as far as I can tell a meaningless grid with 84 shaded cells. No words are emerging. Im hoping that submitters already have their grids in the post and you could see your way clear to giving me a nudge or possibly a push in the right direction. Ta

There is one column that has a unique quality

Mullingar, I tried looking for a column with a unique quality and came up with half a dozen options. It's obvious in hindsight but it wasn't to me at the time. In the end, I resorted to putting the grid on a spreadsheet and deleting unneeded letters, column by column, which was tedious.
A couple of hints:
Gitto's comment that you need to use all the cells from about 2/3 of the grid. At an average of 30 letters per word the letters can't spell out words letter by letter.
Deleting letters from some columns leaves isolated letters in corners of the grid with no obvious connection to the others.