Terminal Suspension by Schadenfreude
Puzzle explanation
Little Bo-Peep found her lost sheep without their tails, which were side by side, all hung on a tree to dry. Thus the tail letters of twelve sheep (ewe, ammon, sheep, ram, teg, bident, Soay, hog, lamb, argali, urial and mug) are hung on a weeping birch (which would have catkins, like “lambs’ tails”), the sheep lined up on the Downs by Little Bo-Peep.
Misprinted letters in the last six across answers — (m)algre, eme(u), Teo(s), (m)aim, wo(o) and a(n)na — spelt “musmon”, a type of sheep. Extra letters in clues spelt “body and tail in each column”. Down answers yielding “weeping birch” were: 11 wrybill, 1 name, 18 time sheet, 34 sprat, 4 griot, 29 indene, 6 gynie, 30 yah-boo, 20 Aldis lamp, 9 rimus, 32 curiae, 22 shoot-’em-up.
The relevant part of the rhyme, which could be found in books of nursery rhymes, eg, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, although not The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, was:
It happened one day, as Bo-Peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails side by side,
All hung on a tree to dry.
Locating this was not essential for completing the puzzle.
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