◀  No. 118 Clue list 25 Dec 1949 Slip image No. 121  ▶

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!
 
Many thanks for good wishes; a happy New Year to you all!
 
RUNNERS-UP:—D. Ambler, A. M. Bernard, Cdr H. H. L. Dickson, M. E. Francis, C. E. Gates, R. G. Gordon, D. Hawson, R. P. Irving, C. B. Joyner, J. E. C. Jukes, G. G. Lawrance, R. C. Macfarlane, H. E. S. Marshall, Dr L. B. Marshall, B. J. McCann, A. D. Merson, F. E. Newlove, H. Rainger, A. Robins, A. J. C. Saunders, W. M. Spafford, H. L. Tinkler, H. S. Tribe, Capt C. Tyers, J. F. N. Wedge.
 

 
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