XIMENES CROSSWORD No. 68

ANTIGROPELOS

1.  Mrs L. Jarman (Brough): Made to go round the Calf of Man! That got the P. and O. liner’s goat (anag.).

2.  K. Reed (Derby): Permutation in pools great advantage while grounds are waterlogged. (Advt.) (anag.; ref. def. in C. “Prob. this barbarous word was orig. an advertisement”).

3.  C. R. Malcolm (SW7): To avert water on the knee I am searching, look you, among formic acid sources (I grope lo in ants).

H.C.

E. S. Ainley (S. Harrow): Rain-leg-poots, look you? Not quite; rain-leg-boots? Yes (anag.; Welsh pronunciation).

J. Coleby (Chester): Corrugated tin legs, a poor protection against cats and dogs (anag.).

C. B. Daish (Swindon): Required by Dr. Foster, for operation—50 guineas (anag. inc L g; ref. “Doctor Foster went to Gloucester…”).

J. A. Derbyshire (Newcastle): On egsploration they’ll keep your legs dry (anag.).

Lt J. K. D’Eath (Stanmore): Sloe gin prevents water on the knee if taken with a port (anag.).

T. E. Faber (Cambridge): Try looting spare parts: it’s one way of getting mudguards! (anag.).

P. G. W. Glare (Cambridge): For a certain preventative against water on the knee, treat leg with rat poison (anag.).

H. C. Hills (W. Drayton): In manner hesitant I grope, lost for a clue. Why not spatter with dashes? (hidden).

S. Holgate (Durham): Pants spattered with oil and gore. You need a pair of waders (anag.).

Mrs D. M. Kissen (Lanark): Recommended in classic advertisement to cover a multitude of sins when intoxicated? (cryptic def.; i.e ‘shins’; ref. def. in C. “Prob. this barbarous word was orig. an advertisement”).

R. C. Macfarlane (Edinburgh): Substitute for gumboots. Any solver with long toes should try a pair (anag. of long toes pair).

Mrs B. A. Mallett (Lowestoft): “Understanding” covers doing without a dictionary (P.S. Roget alone gives it, oddly enough) (anag. leading to antegropelos [see comments]).

D. P. M. Michael (Newport): For two pins they’d brave the storm themselves—they could be large pins too! (anag.; pins = legs).

A. P. O’Leary (Rugby): Queer form shown by Tranmere’s win at Deepdale. P.N.E. 0 goals. T.R. 1. Mud defied! (anag.; Preston North End, Tranmere Rovers).

D. I. Randell (Woking): In which legs, a portion anyhow, are covered (anag.).

J. Riley (SE12): Postal region supplies them for protecting the male bags (anag.; bags = trousers).

T. E. Sanders (Walsall): For two pins I’d have these mudguards although they may be loose and parting (anag.; pins = legs).

A. H. Taylor (Peterborough): For keeping the legs dry, try the “No-slop Gaiter” (anag.; ref. def. in C. “Prob. this barbarous word was orig. an advertisement”).

F. L. Usher (Leeds): To keep the leg free from wet mud try scrubbing it longer with soap (anag.).

H. D. Wakely (NW3): A kind of leg-wear, best identified by following up the clue from Poirot’s angle (anag.).

Comments:—176 correct—not the low record which many expected: there have been fewer on seven occasions. Now for that terrible 26 ac.! Macaulay’s Naseby, No. 301 in Golden Treasury (World’s Classics ed.), 6th stanza:—“The furious German comes, with his clarions and his drums, his bravoes of Alsatia, and pages of Whitehall” (our italics); and a proem tells us that the poem is “By Obadiah Bind-their-kings-in-chains-and-their-nobles-with-links-of-iron, serjeant in Ireton’s regiment”—with such a name he certainly deserves the epithet “long-winded.” Most people guessed the right answer, but some few zedders failed. VORAGO caused far more mistakes—more, indeed, than any word for some time; yet it and its parts are clear in Chambers: vorago, a gulf: vo (s.v. voe), a bay: rag, a rock—and nothing else.
 
Solvers commented freely on the exceptional difficulty, many tough ones asking for more; but there were some whom S. B. had better avoid on dark nights! It was interesting to notice what a difference the lack of anagrams made; there are seldom more than five or so, but solvers have learned to rely on them for a start. No. 69 will have shown that they have not been banished for ever, though perhaps their number may vary more in future. Another cause of difficulty was the “trap” of “tiny” as an answer to 30 dn. Believe it or not, this was a complete fluke: X. noticed It for the first time when reading the proof—and let it stand! At least 90 per cent, of the clues submitted were anagrams. These had not been barred, even by implication, though a few entrants thought they should be: the latter were judged on their merits, with a slight allowance for the extra difficulty involved, and they have a fair representation in the awards. Mrs Mallett’s spelling is, as she neatly says in her anagram, backed by Roget’s authority, and was, of course, also allowed as correct—though it probably isn’t!—in other entries.
 
Some runners-up:—Dr Aspinwall, C. Allen Baker, G. Bowness, Rev B. Chapman, Mrs Crawford, J. H. Dingwall, J. M. Doulton, D. F. Duncan, E. G. Durham, G. W. H. Edgcomb, E. H. Evans, Maj Giles, E. Irving, C. Koop, E. L. Mellersh, F. E. Newlove, C. Pease, Rev E. B. Peel, J. A. Plowman, R. Postill, T. A. Quinn, A. J. C. Saunders, S. P. Shanahan, Miss Telfer, J. Templeton, H. S. Tribe, E. Ward, J. M. Wolstenholme.
 
P.S.—An Irish solver points out that “this year is the centenary of the word antigropelos—see Smaller Ox. Dict.”