Spectator Competition: To the letter

In Competition 3361 you were invited to submit a passage or poem whose meaning was affected by some missing, substituted or surplus letters. I should have said ‘corrupted’ as, perhaps predictably, many of the mistakes were rude and puerile (not a complaint). Ideally the correct version could be glimpsed, giving things an alternative–universe quality. Shout-outs to Max Ross (‘Autumn makes me think of Teats’), Ralph Goldswain (‘I ask you to eject me with a lardslide’) and Janine Beacham (‘I ponder the toad not taken, the beauty of the red, red nose, and what hips my hips have missed. Ah, the powder of worms!’).

The winners receive £25.

To understand the human bind
Fred used the walking cure.
His famous crouch aimed to induce
A candied chat, for sure.

Fred listened hard while faking notes
And patients walked ad hoc.
Some viewed him as a living god,
Some as a smutty joke.

We’ve learned to see the fractured self
The triple way he did:
The egg, the grown-up superegg,
The prehistoric kid.

Today