XIMENES CROSSWORD No. 756

Tribute to S. B. Green

I need hardly tell you that this puzzle was given the welcome it deserved, and I was very glad that so many solvers thanked Mr. Strange for suggesting the idea: I hereby pass on your thanks to him, very sincerely coupled with my own. I was also delighted that the competition drew dug-outs from their hiding-places and gave a chance to many who do not enjoy writing clues: my analysis of the 100 in the paper will have shown you how successful many of these were. Now I’ll attempt a history of the puzzle and competition.
 
COMPOSITION. I was terribly lucky. I had very little time: I only heard of Mr. Strange’s idea on June 25, and I wanted to get a proof to brood over by June 29. Two 12-letter words, no tens or elevens, two nines, and four short words—this was far more than one could have hoped for, since I set far more long words than short for competitions. Secondly, I hardly had to alter my first tentative arrangement of the 15 at all. I decided at once that if necessary symmetry must go, but it proved easy to preserve it except in one intractable place: I also yielded to the reverses and STOCE—there was no time to fight against them. The luckiest thing of all was GENRE. You probably thought I put that word in deliberately: actually 25, 9 and 10, already fixed, faced me with NRE as an ending. I thought of unchecked letters or a reverse: then suddenly GENRE dawned on me and I put it in, without thinking of the anagram. Even when writing the clues I started with an oxygen respirator, and only later did the anagram strike me. One final coincidence:—PERI selected itself: I only discovered that it had been a competition word when looking up old clues—then I couldn’t resist the red herring. I see S.B.G. was a runner up that time: I wonder if his clue was better really than the winner’s?
 
CLUES. Mine were either old (to save time) or very hasty. Hastiness was in any case appropriate, and must have helped solvers to find the real clues: several mentioned this in their comments.
 
SOLUTION. A good many wrote “sadirons”, and one “salients” for SAMISENS: there were two “serfmerchants” and a “serameramine” (I’ve just asked Webster about these, and he says not): there was a “Colette” and a “poletto” for POLENTA (Colettes, or Côtelettes, à la Claudine? Hardly for breakfast.) Mistakes outside the S.B.G. words I disregarded as irrelevant. The most amusing one I noticed was “pré-nose”!
 
YOUR DECISION AND MINE. One or two people thought yours was a matter of luck: it was, I think, about 100 to 6 against anyone succeeding by luck. Those who had all the slips and used them couldn’t get EDDYSTONE from them, because it occurred in No. 5, and slips only began at No. 11. So either a back-number of the puzzle, or a very long memory, or the sort of luck one doesn’t often have was the only substitute for judgment. In working out the odds I’m assuming that I could hardly have set a 2- or 3-letter word or a Webster word and that the clue to GENRE was obviously mine.
 
The order was far more chancy. I wish I had said that I should judge entirely on the contents of the lists and use the order only to settle ties. I didn’t say so, for the simple reason that I didn’t decide to judge in that way till after the puzzle had appeared—remember the hurry. It was certainly the easiest method for me and, in my view, the fairest. Later I shall work out which of the 15 who spotted all 15 got nearest to my order, but it’s only of academic interest.
 
I shall say no more about S.B.G.’s clues: you have between you said all there is to say, and they speak for themselves.
 
DINNER
Several people have asked me to give some account of it: I shall have to be briefer in doing so than I was in my oration at it.
 
The Ximenu:—Hors d’oeuvres dimanche avec harengs rouges. La tasse du Général Nolige: petites cravates Ximènes. Poulet sept cent cinquante: haricots verts Astoria: pommes en appendice. Bombe Playfair clef perdu: Milles feuilles Observer: Crème double entendre. Petites allusions épicées. Café consosolatoire. Wines by courtesy of the Observer. And it was all just as good as that implies.
 
The Toast List:—H.M. the Queen: Cdr. H. H. L. Dickson. Presentation to Mrs. X: Mrs. J. Robertson. Our Guests and Presentation to X: Mr. R. Postill. Responses: Mr. Michael Frayn, X. Toastmaster: Brigadier W. E. Duncan, to whom and his committee very many thanks for a splendid evening. After meeting, some of us, four times and much cheerful and even flippant correspondence, we really feel we know each other now, and I hasten to add that I feel the same with regard to many who haven’t been able to come to the dinners.
 
I’m going to give you one excerpt (though he has already this week threatened to set his solicitors on me in connection with his clue in No. 757) from Mr. Postill’s witty and far too flattering speech and the finish of my wife’s.
 
R.P. “… I remember in the early days admiring the clues of Mr. D. P. M. Michael, who is with us to-night. He was then Major Michael. I pictured the brilliant career, the Colonel, the General, the Field Marshal… And then one awful Sunday he was plain D. P. M. Michael. I pictured the court-martial, the disgrace… But now I know he is a respectable headmaster like myself.”
 
M.M. “… He’s unbearable when he isn’t occupied, and I’m most grateful to you for occupying him.”