Ximenes Competition No. 119 Ximenes Slip | ◀ 118 | 121 ▶ | Other competitions
No. | Date | Clue word | Clue type | Clues |
---|---|---|---|---|
119 | Xmas 1949 | UMBLE-PIE | normal | 15 |
Award | Clue writer | Clue | Explanation |
---|---|---|---|
First | W. K. M. Slimmings | 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 |
Second | E. O. Seymour | It is humiliating in the Diet to make a mess of Internal Affairs! | 2 cryptic defs.; pie = a mixed state |
Third | F. E. Dixon | Could be rein-deer food, i.e. be plum pudding! | anag.; rein (rare sing.) = kidney, see reins; pudding = entrails (archaic) |
HC | D. Ashcroft | Horner’s dish? That is to be plum wrong! | anag. of i.e. be plum; horner = trumpeter; cf. plumb wrong; ref. Little Jack H. |
HC | C. A. Baker | I’m always given to poor hands: my heart’s not in the game any more | 2 cryptic defs.; hands = employees, see Brewer’s |
HC | Mrs N. Fisher | I call this meagre bird an apology for a meal | (h)umble + pie3 [see comments] |
HC | S. B. Green | Uninitiated utterance of the Diet of Worms? | cryptic def.; i.e. worms eat dirt (q.v.) [see comments] |
HC | N. Haycraft | An inside job by cook? The copper seems almost mortified | i.e. (h)umble pie; pie5 = coin |
HC | Mrs L. Jarman | “Oh my lungs and liver!” State where found (David Copperfield, Chapter Seventeen?) | cryptic def.; ref. Heeps’ tea-party |
HC | T. W. Melluish | 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] |
HC | R. Postill | 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] |
HC | A. E. Smith | 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 |
HC | Miss R. E. Speight | The proper course to take if you have to apologise (at a stag party?) | cryptic def.; i.e. eat humble pie |
HC | Mrs A. L. Stevenson | Plum be blowed!—in short that is not the kind of dish little Jack would have relished! | anag. + i.e.; ref. Little Jack H. |
HC | A. H. Taylor | The “mess of meat” that David sent to Uriah? | cryptic def.; ref. D. Copperfield and II Sam. 9:8; “mess of meat” = royal present |
Runners-Up in competition 119: