Listener 3986: Terminal Suspension by Schadenfreude

I'm writing this on the morning of the 4th of July, and in true American spirit, I'm watching cricket and blogging about a British crossword, woohoo!

Terminal Suspension by Schadenfreude, who is the champion of setters that I can get most of the way with, and completely fail to finish. Last December brought "Misprinted Choice" which was way out of my comfort zone (though I liked the puzzle when I saw the answer), before that came three crosswords that lead to nearly-empty grids. So here we go with Terminal Suspension.

For the third week in a row I had preamble understanding issues. Lots of clues need a letter removed, but I can't tell if it's all of them except the six that need a misprint, or just the ones that don't need a misprint or need a letter moved up to the top of the grid. Across clues are entered normally and I know all but the last six need a letter removed, so let's get a start on those.

16ac gets me started on both the letter removal and the puzzle - Aragon looks like he needs to lose an A to make argon, and we have GAS,P.Y. Even though I'd looked at it once, that made me twig on 11 - it's rarer and we have ARE(a) bordered by (B)rooks. In 17, SNOTS looks like it needs to lose a N to make SOTS, and INsomethingANTS becomes INTEMPERANTS. I'm liking these across clues, the clue surface makes sense after the letter removal. 23 is a subtractanagram, 25 is LETO. Yes, I'm a clue-solving machine!

At least until the bottom half of the grid, which turns up depressingly empty at a first run-through.

A decent start on the downs, though I'm convinced that all of the clues have extra letters, it doesn't take me until much later to realise that the ones that need to have a letter moved to the top don't need a letter removed from the clue. Anyway, PROY, MENSE, GRIOT come quickly, and I have my first letter in the top row, the I from GRIOT! I have GYNIE for 6, meaning either a G or a Y go to the top, and 20 is ALDIS LAMP - the ALD are in place, don't have any other checking letters. 22 is a complex anagram of SHOOT-EM-UP (nice clue), and I move the H to the top row. Some thinking and I have WRYBILL for 11, so a W goes to the top.

What now... I can't get anywhere with the first letters - since I thought I had to remove letters from most clues, I have B---ANDT-ILI-NE---C-C-A-L-U-M---N-.

What now?

Odd thought moment - the bottom row is unclued (and not mentioned in the preamble). So there'd be no way of knowing if you had to remove the last or second-last letter if that was the one to go. So maybe the last letters of the downs stay in, and then I've got PE-P at the end of it, and LITTLE BO PEEP would go across the bottom! Woohoo! A Word Wizards search of W---I---H turns up WEEPING BIRCH as a possibility. It's the sheep and their tales!

It finally hits me that I don't need to remove letters from every clue, and so the phrase becomes BOYSANDTAILSINEACHCOLUMN (hmmm, though that makes the remaining word in 13 MONE?).

This gets me a grid that is almost full, there's a gap around that annoying 37A (where it seems I have to read pages of Chambers to find it). BOYS AND TAILS looks like a possibility, the first column has (reading down) YBILL - so the tail of BILLY has moved. The last column has YSOOT. Can the tails be at either end? That wouild give me ROYT in the third column, NSEA in the second. OTM? OBIN is in the sixth column, but the R is further down.

Well done, Schadenfreude, you've got me again. I have a nearly-full grid, a grasp of the theme, and can't make it to the finish line. I had a lot of fun, and I thought I was going to get there, but this one has just stumped me in the end-game.

Current tally: Listener 11, George 13. Current streak: Listener 1