XIMENES CROSSWORD No. 174

ANACREONTICS

1.  J. H. Dingwall: Car so ancient, it needs reconditioning. Try Cowley works (anag.; ref. Abraham C., English poet, and Cowley car plant).

2.  A. Robins: “The Poetry of Clubs”—a tract on physical jerks (an acre on tics; ref. The Anacreontic Society, a gentlemen’s club; Indian club exercises).

3.  T. E. Sanders: Lines offering free passages for transoceanic crossing (anag.; cross = mix).

H.C.

E. S. Ainley: Free compositions of transoceanic provenance (anag.).

A. H. Ashcroft: It is these festive songs, which, accompanying the dance, can make the can-can tire so (anag.).

C. A. Baker: Though we may praise the pleasures of wine, our reactions can vary considerably! (anag.).

J. A. Blair: We have much pleasure going by foot, but not since a car is ordered for us (anag.).

Maj H. L. Carter: Odes with cancerations perverse! (anag.).

G. N. Coulter: Stanzas written in a small field on some skylarks round about (acre on in antics).

E. C. Double: Verse of transoceanic origin (anag.).

J. A. Fincken: Form of Grecian cantos eschewing gravity (anag. less g, & lit.).

Rev J. G. Graham: Some of the things Robbie Burns put on paper would have shocked a cannier Scot! (anag.).

R. J. Hall: Festival measures, which take care no antics become unruly (anag.).

D. Hawson: “Can-can,” “Eros,” “It,”—the Greeks had a word for them all (anag.).

Mrs L. Jarman: Not exactly the naicer cantos! (anag. & lit.).

C. Koop: Lyrics on Love, Wine—possibly on Circe, Satan (anag.).

Mrs F. Laing: Poems which might have earned an ancient “Oscar?” (anag. & lit; earn² = curdle).

T. W. Melluish: If the King supported one of these efforts of Cowley, someone would be credited with a plot (an acre on tic(K); indic. of singular; ref. Abraham C., English poet and Royalist).

C. J. Morse: Verses made by a Greek who was a prince among jesters (a Creon in antics, & lit.; ref. mythological ruler of Thebes).

D. A. Nicholls: Such free verse could be made the subject of a transoceanic exchange long before 1941! (anag.; ref. transatlantic calls between Churchill & Roosevelt).

Mrs M. G. Porter: Results of making a frolicsome creation scan (anag. & lit.).

G. W. Pugh: Gay love lyrics of transoceanic origin (anag.).

E. J. Rackham: What is the content of these poems? “Erotic” can answer in brief (anag. incl. ans., & lit.).

A. R. Read: Rough transoceanic passages which are free on certain specified Greek lines (anag.).

A. Rivlin: What crude reactions can these wanton verses cause! (anag.).

RUNNERS-UP

M. Anderson, M. L. Booker, T. A. L. Cairns, D. A. Campbell, J. C. R. Clapham, F. A. Clark, A. E. Clayton, Cdr H. H. L. Dickson, F. E. Dixon, B. Donne-Smith, Mrs N. Fisher, C. E. Gates, S. B. Green, J. J. Holloway, F. G. Illingworth, G. G. Lawrance, P. W. W. Leach, J. P. Lloyd, C. R. Malcolm, E. L. Mellersh, D. P. M. Michael, W. L. Miron, L. D. Morphew, M. Newman, A. P. O’Leary, R. Postill, E. R. Prentice, H. Rainger, N. J. Reed, W. Rennie, B. Ridley, Mrs J. Robertson, O. Carlton Smith, F. B. Stubbs, J. Thomas, L. E. Thomas, J. Thompson, H. T. R. Twyford, Capt C. Tyers, Mrs K. Walling, J. F. N. Wedge, H. T. Young, J. S. Young.
 

COMMENTS—255 correct and a fair number of scattered mistakes. LACIE, while not a really widespread stumbling-block, caused more errors than any other word: once again the subsidiary clue, lac-i.e., should have saved those who didn’t know the reference—to Alice: she was one of the three girls who lived on treacle in the well. The N.W. corner of the puzzle proved tough.
 
The great anagrammatic possibilities made the word set an easy one to clue: much ingenuity was shown and the standard was again high. The discovery of two one-word anags. to a 12 letter word is interesting: one elated discoverer claimed it as a record. I once used one that beats it by one letter, if “schizothecals” can be passed: it is the plural of an adjective which I think might he used as a noun by zoologists! I’ll leave you to find what it is an anag. of—I don’t suppose you remember the puzzle, which appeared several years ago, before the present series started.
 
I will take this occasion to illustrate a syntactical weakness in anag. clues which is fairly common. “Can creations so tortuous be described as free verse?” The word “can” here is made to do too much work: syntactically another “can” is needed for the anag. sense, at the beginning. Mr. Baker’s H.C. clue shows how this fault may be avoided.
 
The posts get steadily worse. I have included in the competition a number of late arrivals whose postmarks show that they certainly should have arrived in time: some were posted in the London area early on Friday and one in Guildford actually on Thursday! Circumstances made this possible for me this time, but they don’t always: the only safe thing is to defeat the prevailing inefficiency by posting even earlier.