XIMENES CROSSWORD No. 119

UMBLE-PIE

1.  W. K. M. Slimmings (New Maiden): If the bird’s off, you’ll be having the doctor in most of Christmas! You certainly won’t like eating it (MB in (y)ule + pie³).

2.  E. O. Seymour (Gerrards Cross): It is humiliating in the Diet to make a mess of Internal Affairs! (2 cryptic defs.; pie = a mixed state).

3.  F. E. Dixon (Dublin): Could be rein-deer food, i.e. be plum pudding! (anag.; rein (rare sing.) = kidney, see reins; pudding = entrails (archaic)).

H.C.

D. Ashcroft (Fleetwood): Horner’s dish? That is to be plum wrong! (anag. of i.e. be plum; horner = trumpeter; cf. plumb wrong; ref. Little Jack H.).

C. A. Baker (Wishaw): I’m always given to poor hands: my heart’s not in the game any more (2 cryptic defs.; hands = employees, see Brewer’s).

Mrs N. Fisher (Stroud): I call this meagre bird an apology for a meal ((h)umble + pie³ [see comments]).

S. B. Green (NW10): Uninitiated utterance of the Diet of Worms? (cryptic def.; i.e. worms eat dirt (q.v.) [see comments]).

N. Haycraft (Beckenham): An inside job by cook? The copper seems almost mortified (i.e. (h)umble pie; pie⁵ = coin).

Mrs L. Jarman (Brough): “Oh my lungs and liver!” State where found (David Copperfield, Chapter Seventeen?) (cryptic def.; ref. Heeps’ tea-party).

T. W. Melluish (SE24): Bible digested by cassowary now returned—eaten with regrets. (N.B. Not Timbuctoo—between Caius and Rugby) (anag. of Pible in emu (rev.); ref. M.W.W. II.3.7, and nonsense verse ‘If I were a cassowary’ [see comments]).

R. Postill (Jersey): It needs pluck! One slip, and the sword swallower’s had it! (i.e. eat one’s words (s moved in sword); pluck = entrails [see comments]).

A. E. Smith (Farnham Royal): Dish that David might expect to have to eat at Uriah’s (cryptic def.; ref. D. Copperfield and David and Uriah, II Sam. 9:8).

Miss R. E. Speight (Rugby): The proper course to take if you have to apologise (at a stag party?) (cryptic def.; i.e. eat humble pie).

Mrs A. L. Stevenson (Kilmacolm): Plum be blowed!—in short that is not the kind of dish little Jack would have relished! (anag. + i.e.; ref. Little Jack H.).

A. H. Taylor (Peterborough): The “mess of meat” that David sent to Uriah? (cryptic def.; ref. D. Copperfield and II Sam. 9:8; “mess of meat” = royal present).

COMMENTS—248 correct and very few errors: the difficulty of the clue-word, not of the puzzle, must have kept the entry so small. I have seldom taken longer to make my final decision. The clues I really liked best all had weaknesses, and in the end I steeled myself to pass them over and relegate them to H.C.s. The ideas that appealed to me most were (a) Mrs. Fisher’s “apology for a meal” and (b) Mr. Green’s “Diet of Worms”: but (a) I don’t like “meagre” for umble without an h, and who is the “I”—and (b) “uninitiated utterance ” seems to me weak: there is no need to refer to the omission of h—“umble-pie” appears to be the more correct form—and, unless I am being dense, there is no special appropriateness in an u. u. to the D. of W.; if there is, I should have liked a note! Had I been lucky enough to hit on either of these ideas, I should, I think, have left it as a straight clue, perhaps with a query: both are quite good enough to stand alone. Mr. Postill’s clue is attractive, too, but it would be a very queer “slip” to say or write “sword” instead of “words.” Mr. Melluish is brilliantly ingenious again, but I think his clue would be horribly difficult [the clue refers to a dialogue between Caius and Rugby in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which the former pronounces ‘Bible’, ‘Pible’, and the 19c. nonsense verse, variously attributed: “If I were a cassowary / On the plains of Timbuctoo, / I would eat a missionary, / Coat and bands and hymn-book too.”]. The three winners are less brilliant in conception than any of these, but, rightly or wrongly, I ended by preferring them. It would be interesting to hear what other solvers think: my opinion has to be the determining factor, but it would still be interesting! Probably they like their own better still!
 
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