How to remove last part of URL to avoid 404 - wordpress

Question

I realize there are similar questions but the cases aren't the same. I am looking for a way to remove the last part of a url that no longer exists, but is being linked to from some external sources, to reduce high CPU use. The url would look something like this:
http://example.com/2018/12/05/article-name/removethis
Where removethis is what needs to be deleted to avoid 404 errors. I have seen answers to change a part of the url to another, but not how to simply erase a particular string from the end of the url.
I am also reading htaccess documentation, but it is very extensive and I haven't been able to come up with a way to change a rewrite command from the other examples to do what I need.
Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

I think in this case you should specify what you need in case of error and that is various from one to another one and then go around with specific code to handle it as you want . for example the following code will handle error request level by level but of course it is limited up to /1/2/3/4/5 so , more than this levels will be handled by starting form latest one and so on :
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$ /$1/$2/$3/$4 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$ /$1/$2/$3 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$ /$1/$2 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)/(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)$ /$1 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ / [L,R]
So , the request http://example.com/2018/12/05/article-name/removethis will be http://example.com/2018/12/05/article-name/ if article-name/ directory is exist , otherwise will go to http://example.com/2018/12/05/ if 05/ directory is exist and so on .
Note: the code above could be summarized more by the following form:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$
RewriteRule ^ /%1/%2/%3/%4 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$
RewriteRule ^ /%1/%2/%3 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$
RewriteRule ^ /%1/%2 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)/(.*)$
RewriteRule ^ /%1 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)$
RewriteRule ^ / [L,R]