![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Last-Bus-Book-184x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Whether or not you’re a fan of Colin Dexter’s first Morse<\/em> novel, Last Bus to Woodstock<\/em>, it certainly holds\u00a0plenty of interest for crossword aficionados. Dexter recalled how he started writing the book in 1972:<\/p>\n ‘We were in a little house halfway between Caernarfon and Pwllheli. It was a Saturday and it was raining – it’s not unknown for it to rain in North Wales. The children were moaning. I was sitting at the kitchen table with nothing else to do, and I wrote the first few paragraphs of a potential detective novel.’ (There are many variations on this story to be found in different interviews with Dexter, but the Welsh rain and the kitchen table are constants.)<\/p>\n We learn early on in the book that Detective Inspector\u00a0Morse is a keen crossword solver\u00a0during the following exchange with Sergeant Lewis:<\/p>\n By a quarter to midnight Lewis had finished his task and he reported to Morse, who was sitting with The Times in the manager’s office, drinking what looked very much like whisky. ‘Ah Lewis.’ He thrust the paper across. ‘Have a look at 14 down. Appropriate eh?’ Lewis looked at 14 down: Take in bachelor? It could do (3). He saw what Morse had written into the completed diagram: BRA. What was he supposed to say? He had never worked with Morse before. ‘Good clue, don’t you think?’ Lewis, who had occasionally managed the Daily Mirror coffee-time crossword was out of his depth, and felt much puzzled. ‘I’m afraid I’m not very hot on crosswords, sir.’ ‘”Bachelor” – that’s BA and “take” is the letter “r”; recipe in Latin. Did you never do any Latin?’ ‘No sir.’ ‘Do you think I’m wasting your time, Lewis?’ Lewis was nobody’s fool and was a man of some honesty and integrity. ‘Yes, sir.’ An engaging smile crept across Morse’s mouth. He thought they would get on well together.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n A little later, to the accompaniment of the Prelude from Das Rheingold<\/em>, Morse is reading the preamble from\u00a0the latest\u00a0Listener<\/em> crossword,<\/p>\n Each of the across clues contains, in the definition, a deliberate misprint. Each of the down clues is normal, although the words to be entered in the diagram will contain a misprint of a single letter. Working from 1\u00a0 across to 28 down the misprinted letters form a well-known quotation which solvers…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n At\u00a0this point he leaps to his feet and heads for the police station, realising that a letter to Jennifer Coleby which he had previously taken to reflect\u00a0a\u00a0depressing decline in\u00a0standards of literacy was in fact a cunningly coded message where the ‘carelessly’ omitted or included letters (eg an S missing from ‘asessing’ and an extra O in ‘loose’) spelt out the warning ‘Say nothing’. An ingenious device, although Morse does then have to spend a couple of pages at the end of the book explaining to Lewis (and the\u00a0more enquiring\u00a0reader) why Bernard Crowther\u00a0chose this rather unusual route to communicate with Ms Widdowson rather than, say, ringing her up.<\/p>\n Such was\u00a0Dexter’s\u00a0absorption in\u00a0his new endeavour\u00a0that\u00a0he took a sabbatical from the Azed competitions between April 1973 and December 1978; in June 1976, Azed reported: “Some of you may have wondered at the disappearance from these lists for some time of N. C. (Colin) Dexter, for many years a redoubtable competitor. I\u2019m delighted to report that he\u2019s alive and well and a close neighbour of mine in Oxford, where he is an examiner on the local exam board. He forswore crosswords for a spell to devote his leisure hours to clues of another kind, writing detective novels. Solvers who may care to read Last Bus to Woodstock<\/i> or Last Seen Wearing<\/i> (just published) will be amused to find many familiar names among his characters. NCD admits to some nostalgia for the less burdensome (if no less stimulating) mental challenge of Azed puzzles and has promised to \u2018return to the fold\u2019 before long.”<\/p>\n It’s\u00a0widely known that\u00a0Dexter named his two main characters after two regular (and very successful) competitors in the Ximenes clue-writing competitions in The Observer<\/em>. In his foreword to the 2001 re-issue of Ximenes\u00a0on the Art of the Crossword<\/em>, Dexter wrote:<\/p>\n For me one of the greatest delights of the Ximenean years was the camaraderie which had grown up among the solvers. During those heady years I regularly recognized several of the brightest fixed stars in the firmament: S. B. Green, R. Postill, C. Allen Baker, C. J. Morse, D. P. M Michael, Mrs L. Jarman, Dorothy Taylor (aka Mrs B. Lewis)… Indeed I used two of those names\u00a0as the principal detectives in a TV series.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n ‘Lewis and Morse’<\/p><\/div>\n Jeremy Morse, knighted in 1975 and chairman of Lloyds Bank between 1977 and 1993, was a highly-skilled clue writer, crossword\u00a0setter and\u00a0composer of chess problems. ‘Mrs B. Lewis’ was a pseudonym\u00a0assumed by\u00a0Dorothy Taylor, Lewis\u00a0having been\u00a0the maiden name of her sister-in-law; a very successful Ximenes competitor under her own name, Taylor was asked by\u00a0Derrick Macnutt (Ximenes) to join Alec\u00a0Robins\u00a0in setting the Everyman\u00a0crossword for The Observer<\/em> in 1963\u00a0in succession to\u00a0Macnutt himself. As an employee of the newspaper, she would thenceforth technically have been barred from entering the Ximenes competitions, hence the nom de guerre <\/em>(although her true identity was clearly an open secret within Observer<\/em> circles,\u00a0the\u00a0name change coinciding with fellow Everyman setter and Ximenes competitor Alec Robins’s\u00a0rebirth as\u00a0‘L. F. Leason’). She held senior positions within the Inland Revenue and was appointed MBE in 1971.<\/p>\n In the Ximenes competitions, Morse scored an\u00a0impressive 14 wins, 28 other podium placings, and 158 ‘best of the rest’ finishes (the last-named being termed ‘highly commended’ until October 1963 and ‘very highly commended’ thereafter). Miss Taylor in her two incarnations scored 11\/16\/101. Morse’s most famous clue is perhaps this one from AZ419 (click on the clue to reveal the solution):<\/p>\n Taylor’s winning entries include this\u00a0clue from X997:<\/p>\n J. B. Widdowson (second left)<\/p><\/div>\n What is perhaps less well known is that the surname of every character in the book was ‘borrowed’ from a Ximenes competitor. I read an\u00a0article where\u00a0Dexter was quoted as recalling\u00a0that the murderer (Sue Widdowson) was the one person whose surname was not that of a 1960s competitor, but in fact there are no exceptions – the perpetrator of the car park slaying was named after J. B. (John Bartholomew) Widdowson, the setter of 31 Listener<\/em> puzzles as ‘Bart’ and a Ximenes regular. Either side of his involvement in the war, Widdowson studied at St. John’s College, Oxford, where he was known as ‘Wally Widdowson’ to a group of friends including Edward du Cann, Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis. The photograph shows Widdowson (second left) taking part in a 1942 enactment of ‘In the Rear of the Enemy’ in the college grounds, along with du Cann (third left) and, kneeling front and centre,\u00a0the author of the ‘pantomime’ (as Larkin described it), Amis. Subsequently becoming\u00a0a school headmaster in Scotland, Widdowson had a measure of success in the annual Times crossword competition (although he never won it), competed in Mastermind<\/em>, was a very active member of Mensa,\u00a0wrote the Collins Gem Crossword Dictionary<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0and lectured nationally on the teaching of mathematics. He had a rather less spectacular\u00a0Ximenes competition record than those on the enforcement side of the legal fence, at 0\/0\/14. Perhaps his best entry was this one from X945:<\/p>\n Of the 26 surnames used in the book, a scan through the slips for the Ximenes competitions 856, 878, 1062 and 1119 yields 25 of them. The exception is Green, S. B. Green having died in 1963 (see below). The characters derived their surnames as follows (where two characters share a surname I have listed only one of them).<\/p>\n The victim, Sylvia Kaye<\/strong>: Sir Stephen Henry Gordon Kaye, 3rd Baronet of Huddersfield\u00a0(1\/4\/25) was educated at Stowe School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a Listener<\/em> crossword solver. His single winning clue was this entry for X962:<\/p>\n In the TV adaptation, Sylvia’s surname was changed to Kane, thus breaking the ‘Ximenean chain’.<\/p>\n Norah Jarman, fashionista<\/p><\/div>\n Mabel Jarman<\/strong>\u00a0got her name from Mrs Norah Jarman (16\/16\/59), a master cluesmith who was surely without parallel\u00a0when it came to\u00a0the ‘cryptic definition’ clue (a clue without wordplay, eg ‘Naughty type of Limerick<\/span>‘ for SPALPEEN in X202).\u00a0Mrs Jarman was a dedicated collector of postcards, spending many hours cataloguing her collection and dealing with other\u00a0deltiologists worldwide; among those with whom she enjoyed swapping cards was the comedian, Ronnie Barker.\u00a0\u00a0A highly talented musician who could play several instruments, Mrs Jarman had an upright piano in the dining room of\u00a0the house in Mousehole to which she moved in the 1960s. From time to time the members of the Mousehole Male Voice Choir, suitably\u00a0invigorated by refreshments at the Ship Inn, would call in and give an impromptu performance around her piano. Her grandson\u00a0has fond memories of\u00a0Mrs Jarman sitting in the bay window on the first floor of her house working on crosswords\u00a0whilst looking out over Mousehole harbour and Mount’s Bay. Although cryptic definition clues have been outlawed by Ximeneans since the early 1970s,\u00a0Norah Jarman\u00a0also\u00a0produced many top-class clues that did<\/em> include a\u00a0subsidiary indication of the solution, among which\u00a0is the superb<\/p>\n from X1140, the reference in the surface being to the lines ‘Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, \/\u00a0She stood in tears amid the alien corn’ in Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale<\/em>.<\/p>\n Gaye McFee<\/strong>: Mrs E. McFee (2\/9\/55). Her one winning\u00a0 entry in a ‘plain’ competition was in X834:<\/p>\n John Sanders<\/strong>: T. E. Sanders (11\/10\/91) competed in the Observer competitions from the Torquemada era (1926-1939) through to his second place in Azed 1026 in 1992. Azed rated his\u00a0winning clue in AZ competition 221\u00a0\u00a0–<\/p>\n as one of the all-time greats.<\/p>\n Jennifer Coleby<\/strong> – John Coleby (0\/1\/16)\u00a0was a\u00a0research chemist, Brain of Britain<\/em> competitor and\u00a0chess player as well as being a\u00a0regular Listener<\/em>\u00a0solver and occasional prizewinner. He was also a contestant on Mastermind<\/em> in 1973, and\u00a0legend had it that\u00a0when he\u00a0selected the Life and\u00a0Music of Liszt as his specialist subject,\u00a0the BBC contacted the secretary of the Liszt Society to\u00a0ask\u00a0them who would be best qualified to set the questions and they duly recommended one John Coleby, whom the corporation\u00a0then\u00a0requested to do the necessary. Sadly, Magnus Magnusson\u00a0recorded\u00a0in his memoir of the programme I’ve Started So I’ll Finish<\/em>\u00a0that,\u00a0while the BBC\u00a0had indeed contacted the society, what came back was a set of questions set by the committee of the society, with John Coleby having discreetly stepped out of the meeting at an appropriate point. Unfortunately, it was a requirement that the\u00a0setting be done\u00a0by one person, so the committee’s submission was rejected and the questions were\u00a0provided by someone unconnected with the society. John Coleby reached the second round of the contest even without the advantage of\u00a0being asked\u00a0questions that he had himself set. Here’s his ‘highly commended’ clue for X283:<\/p>\n Constable Dickson<\/strong> is named for Commander H. H. L. (Harold Hugh Lindsay) Dickson (6\/7\/43). Educated at the Royal Naval College, Osborne, he went to sea in 1919 and retired from the Royal Navy in October 1933 with the rank of Lieutenant-Commander, although he was recalled to the service on the outbreak of war in 1939 and served as gunnery commander aboard HMS Excellent<\/em>, being promoted to Commander in 1943.\u00a0After leaving the\u00a0Navy he\u00a0bought a farm near Fareham,\u00a0standing as a Liberal candidate for the Petersfield constituency at the 1950 general election, and coming third (of three) with 14% of the vote; he had another go in 1951, with a\u00a0similar\u00a0placing (but only a 10% vote share). He arranged the first Ximenes dinner in London in 1949. This is his winning\u00a0clue for X195, presumably a ‘down’ entry:<\/p>\n Azed, Jonathan Crowther<\/p><\/div>\n Bernard Crowther<\/strong> takes his surname from someone who will be familiar to all Azed solvers, Jonathan Crowther aka Azed himself. When Dexter started work on his first Morse<\/em> novel, Crowther had just taken over from Ximenes (although Macnutt died in 1971, his stockpile of unpublished crosswords ran through to\u00a0number 1200, published in early\u00a01972 – Azed number 1 was published on\u00a05th March of that year). \u00a0He worked for the Oxford University Press between\u00a0his graduation with a Classics degree from Corpus Christi College, Oxford,\u00a0in 1964 and his retirement in 2000. Before assuming the mantle of Azed, he had 16 puzzles published in the Listener<\/em> series under the pseudonym ‘Gong’, a family nickname.\u00a0The young Crowther’s record in Ximenes competitions was sound rather than spectacular (0\/2\/23); his first\u00a0commended effort (written while he was still at Cambridge University) came in X743 (a competition which incidentally featured another brilliant winning clue from Mrs Jarman):<\/p>\n Mrs Baines<\/strong> – Colonel\u00a0 P. S. (Peter Stanhope) Baines (listed as Major and Lieutenant-Colonel in earlier competitions) had a Ximenes record of 3\/4\/37. He served in the Royal Engineers, was awarded the US Bronze Star Medal in 1947, was created MBE in 1958 and retired in 1966. I feel he deserved more than an HC for this clue\u00a0in X105,<\/p>\n although these days ‘show’ would certainly not be acceptable as the anagram indicator – the clue\u00a0would now need to\u00a0be\u00a0more along the lines of\u00a0‘Little signs of striking from these miners, possibly’.<\/p>\n Frank Palmer<\/p><\/div>\n Clive Palmer<\/strong> – F. R. (Frank) Palmer’s greatest successes came in the Azed competitions, with three outright\u00a0first places\u00a0in the annual table. Educated at Bristol Grammar School and New College, Oxford, he is a highly distinguished linguist who\u00a0worked extensively on Ethiopian languages in the 1950s, and edited the Journal of Linguistics between 1969 and 1979.\u00a0A Fellow of the British Academy, he was\u00a0Professor of Linguistic Science at the University of Reading between 1965 and his retirement in 1987,\u00a0whereupon\u00a0he became\u00a0Emeritus Professor. He is the author of several works on linguistics and co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language<\/em>. His worldwide reputation resulted in\u00a0extensive travelling\u00a0during his professional life, including many trips to the Americas, North Africa and\u00a0Asia, and in 1981 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Foreign Languages Institute, Beijing. His record in Ximenes competitions was 0\/0\/6, with perhaps his best clue being this one for X993:<\/p>\n Peter Newlove<\/strong> – F. E. (Eric) Newlove had a Ximenes competition record of 8\/13\/91. He set Listener<\/em> puzzles under the pseudonym ‘Novamor’ and also competed with success in those crosswords. This is his winning clue from X382,<\/p>\n another clue which is perhaps a little ‘loose’ for today’s tastes.<\/p>\n Felix Tompsett<\/strong> – D. H. (David) Tompsett (2\/0\/15)\u00a0was the final winner of “Xim’s No.1 Cup” in June 1971, and presented\u00a0a new\u00a0trophy to be awarded to winners of the Azed competition (incidentally he\u00a0passed the Ximenes cup to the late Eric Chalkley, another of the ‘Woodstock clan’). An electrical engineer and expert on the works of Reginald Kapp,\u00a0he has contributed to a number of technical publications as well as making occasional appearances in The Guardian’s Notes and Queries<\/em> column, including this response to the question, ‘Did theologians ever really debate the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin?’:\u00a0‘What a pity this question is always misstated. The scholars knew that even the tiniest scrap of matter had to be located somewhere, whereas angels required no such accommodation. They therefore chose a place that provided no area at all for dancing \u2013 the point<\/em> of a pin (there is room for an infinity of angels on the head of a pin).’ I’m glad that’s been cleared up. Here’s his clue from X251:<\/p>\n George Baker<\/strong> – C. A. (Allen)\u00a0Baker (17\/20\/141).\u00a0 A regular Listener competitor, he kept extensive records of the Ximenes and Azed competitions and assisted Azed in his early years by checking his scoring for the annual honours lists (he was described by AZ as being ‘an invaluable long-stop behind my unreliable wicket-keeping’). Among many excellent clues in his canon is this one for X438:<\/p>\n Stephen Westbrook<\/strong> – Rev C. D. (Colin David) Westbrook (0\/2\/8) was elevated to the priesthood in 1962. His last entry for an Observer<\/em> competition was in 1985, but he is now the Reverend Canon Westbrook, Priest in charge of the Newport St John Baptist parish in the diocese of\u00a0Monmouth. As befits a man of the cloth, his most successful Ximenes entry made reference to the good book, specifically the parable of the rich man and Lazarus recounted in Luke 16, in this second-placed clue from X1115:<\/p>\n Tommy Melluish<\/p><\/div>\n The ‘young don’ Melhuish<\/strong> – T. W. (Tommy) Melluish (5\/14\/84), whose surname was modified to a more familiar form for his fictional alter ego,\u00a0graduated with\u00a0a degree in Classics from Christ’s College Cambridge. He was for many years senior Classics master at the\u00a0Bec Grammar School in Tooting, and\u00a0was a regular contributor of Greek and Latin crosswords, acrostics and verse compositions to the periodicals Acta Diurna<\/em> and Greece and Rome<\/em>. A skilled raconteur and public speaker, a friend wrote of him after his death, ‘Whenever he rose to speak…there was among the audience an expectation of good things that\u00a0was\u00a0never disappointed’ (what a great thing to have said about you). The same friend also recalled playing Pyramus to Melluish’s Thisbe at\u00a0a Summer School: ‘I remember him, diminutive in stature but a greathearted hero, advancing blindly onto the stage, his vision almost totally obscured by\u00a0the coal-scuttle which he wore for a helmet.’\u00a0A short article by Melluish is included in the book Liberal Studies: An Outline Course<\/em> by E. G. Rayner and a certain N. C. Dexter. Undoubtedly a skilled clue writer, many of his clues are probably a little too erudite for today’s tastes. I think this is a smashing little effort from X582 though,<\/p>\n which despite getting only a ‘highly commended’ rating reads beautifully and for my money is\u00a0better than the three prize-winning clues.<\/p>\n Poliewoman Fuller<\/strong> – Mrs J. O. Fuller (1\/2\/6). This is her wonderfully simple clue for X369:<\/p>\n Constable McPherson<\/strong> – Mrs S. M. MacPherson (0\/1\/6) had her ‘Mac’ modified by Dexter as well as having her sex changed. Her best clue\u00a0was perhaps seen in one of the\u00a0early Azed competitions,\u00a0 AZ23:<\/p>\n Eric Chalkley<\/p><\/div>\n Mr Chalkley<\/strong> – Eric Chalkley (1\/0\/9) left school at 13 and spent his whole working life as a carpenter.\u00a0\u00a0Things changed dramatically for him\u00a0in 1966, when he\u00a0got hold of\u00a0a copy of Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword<\/em>, about which he\u00a0later said: ‘It was like a conjuror giving all his tricks away. I discovered that a Ximenes crossword was governed by principles. If you got to know what they were, you could work out each clue and solve the puzzle.’ His admiration for Ximenes inspired him to ‘ape X’, hence the pseudonym Apex under which he set 71 Listener puzzles,\u00a0the first appearing in June 1969. A master of the themed crossword, he would set special puzzles for people that he admired – thus began\u00a0long correspondences with the crossword devotees Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, the latter responding with a clue (of sorts!) for Chalkley’s own name – ‘I ache<\/em> with clerkly<\/em> contortions<\/span>‘ (incidentally, Sondheim\u00a0himself competed\u00a0in the second half on the 1960s, his best effort perhaps being ‘Pop art panel, derived from Dada<\/span>‘ for PATERNAL in X864). In 1972, he started\u00a0sending\u00a0out a Christmas crossword – A Puzzle Every Xmas – to a select group of solvers, which was combined with a clue writing competition. The list of winners reads like a\u00a0“Who’s Who” of \u00a0the best clue writers of their day, with Norah Jarman’s submission for COMEDIES being a cracker: ‘The Frogs<\/em> etc issue croaks<\/span>‘ (come + dies<\/em>). Chalkley also set puzzles for The Guardian<\/em>, The Times<\/em> and The Sunday Telegraph<\/em>. He was\u00a0awarded the\u00a0MBE in 2002 for ‘services to the newspaper industry’, the first crossword setter\u00a0to receive such an honour.\u00a0His first (and only) win came in Ximenes competition 1097 with:<\/p>\n Doctor Eyres<\/strong> – L. E. Eyres (3\/6\/34). Laurence Eyres was a highly-respected classical scholar and a lifelong friend of Monsignor Ronald Knox, with whom he exchanged copious correspondence between 1912 and Knox’s death in 1957. After\u00a0his ordination as a Catholic priest in 1918,\u00a0Knox joined the staff of St. Edmund’s College, Ware. Here, he rapidly set about recruiting lay-masters and wrote to ‘Sligger’ Urquhart, Dean of Balliol, asking him to recommend undergraduates in their final term; one of Urquhart’s suggestions was Knox’s friend Eyres, who had returned to Trinity College following the war to take his finals. In 1926, Eyres moved to Ampleforth, where he remained.\u00a0 When Eyres retired from teaching Classics at Ampleforth, he was succeeded in the post by J. R. R. Tolkien’s son Michael. It’s hard to escape the thought that Knox himself might have written a nifty clue, although it would almost certainly not have been handwritten – he wrote a letter to Eyres in 1927 in which he began to type part way through, explaining, “I’m sorry, but I can’t think properly with a pen.” When researching his biography of Knox,\u00a0Evelyn Waugh\u00a0\u00a0travelled to Ampleforth to meet with Eyres,\u00a0whose contribution to Waugh’s book is prominently acknowledged in the preface. Eyres managed to get a reference to Knox into his clue for WATSON (X192), but perhaps his best clue is this one from X843:<\/p>\n Ted Kimmons<\/p><\/div>\n Kimmons Typewriters<\/strong> – R. E. (Robert Edward) Kimmons (2\/4\/15), born in 1923 in a mining village in Derbyshire, gained a scholarship to Chesterfield Grammar School and went on to Nottingham University. Ted Kimmons was married in 1950, and a few years later started teaching French at Corby Grammar School. Here he was a contemporary of Colin Dexter, who taught Classics, and the two would tackle the Times crossword in the staffroom. He remained in the Corby area up until his retirement; he had an active interest in Rugby Union – as both player and referee – and did some amateur Gilbert & Sullivan, but according to his son his overriding passion was crosswords and especially the Ximenes\/Azed competitions. In 1987 he reached the quarter-finals of Countdown<\/em>, having defeated Roger Squires in the preliminary rounds. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why\u00a0 Dexter chose to attach Kimmons’ name to a firm of typewriter specialists; his son could not even remember either of his parents ever using one; however, Dexter himself never used one either, all his novels being written out in longhand, so perhaps that has something to do with it. Both his Ximenes competition winners are excellent clues, his first success coming with his first published clue, in X773 (definitely for a ‘down’ entry):<\/p>\n\n
\n
‘The hobby and the habit of solving crosswords is the most serene and civilised way of wasting time that I have yet discovered.’ Colin Dexter<\/div>\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DTCJM-216x300.jpg\")
<\/span>Marlborough's second crusher in conclusive quartet of victories (9)<\/div>RAMILLIES [(A +MILL) in (victo)RIES, & lit.]<\/div><\/div>\n<\/span>Material for a black confection that might become Electra (7)<\/div>TREACLE [ELECTRA*; ref: O’Neill, ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’]<\/div><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Widdowson-300x202.jpg\")
<\/span>Bitter aloe growing rampageous in scrub (10)<\/div>OBLITERATE [(BITTER ALOE)*]<\/div><\/div>\n<\/span>Early stop in recurrent adverse balance of trade might well protect pound (6)<\/div>PALING [LIN in GAP<; see pound(2) in Chambers]<\/div><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Norah-Jarman-2-212x300.jpg\")
<\/span>Alien to Ruth, like the corn (7)<\/div>CALLOUS [two defs; ruth = pity]<\/div><\/div>\n<\/span>Bore will give the reverse of a short account - and what could be drier! (7)<\/div>CARRIED [A\/C< + DRIER*; bore = carried]<\/div><\/div>\n<\/span>Ire-lander? (10)<\/div>PADDY-WHACK [PADDY + WHACK, &lit.]<\/div><\/div>\nLewis: ‘So he did kill Nicholas Quinn.’
\nMorse: ‘Or did he, did he? Nah! How could he have done? He set the best crosswords in England.’<\/div>\n<\/span>Composed to greet the Queen (5)<\/div>SOBER [SOB + ER; greet(2) = lament]<\/div><\/div>\n<\/span>By degrees the feller gets us down (8)<\/div>WALLABAS [WALLA + BAS, &lit.]<\/div><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Crowther-279x300.jpg\")
<\/span>Leading pair of ministers in the Treasury once tried to debase the gold standard (7)<\/div>CHEMIST [MI(nisters) in CHEST; ref alchemy] – Mrs Jarman’s clue was ‘I provide something you can rattle up and down in a box’ [M1 in CHEST, &lit.]<\/div><\/div>\n<\/span>These miners show little signs of striking (11)<\/div>SMITHEREENS [(THESE MINERS)*] <\/div><\/div><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/FrankPalmer.jpg\")
<\/span>Inhabitant of N.E., perhaps, needs some sort of hat on in a winter month (8)<\/div>JONATHAN [(HAT ON)* in JAN; N.E. = New England] <\/div><\/div><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span>Put a saint in a bath of champagne and see if he does! (7)<\/div>ABSTAIN [ST in (A BAIN), &lit.; bain = bath in French] <\/div><\/div><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAdele Cecil [to Morse]: ‘People who like crosswords <\/i>have blanks in their lives, and they haven’t a clue how to fill them in, don’t you think?’<\/div>\n<\/span>Careless on much detail (12)<\/div>UNMETHODICAL [(ON MUCH DETAIL)*, &lit.] <\/div><\/div><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span>It must be swell, being a little waterproof duck in a rain-storm (8)<\/div>MACARONI [MAC + (O in RAIN*); macaroni = a dandy] <\/div><\/div><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span>Dives enjoyed it while alive: he slept to fry in torment (12)<\/div>FLESH-POTTERY [(HE SLEPT TO FRY)*] <\/div><\/div><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Tommy-Melluish.jpg\")
<\/span>Give the maid a ring when my boxes arrive (5)<\/div>MARRY [MY around ARR] <\/div><\/div><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span>Remember ether masks what is usually felt! (5)<\/div>BERET [(remem)BER ET(her)]<\/div><\/div>\n<\/span>Crusty cleric stormed about missing start of Test (12)<\/div>SCLERODERMIC [{CLERIC STORMED – T(est)}*]<\/div><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/EricC-223x300.jpg\")
<\/span>What pig has to become when gripped by hunger(12)<\/div>PANTOPHAGIST [(PIG HAS TO)* in PANT, &lit.] <\/div><\/div>\n<\/span>'Enspirit' is wrongly spelt: that's archaic (8)<\/div>PRISTINE [ENSPIRIT*; pristine = belonging to the earliest time, ‘enspirit’ is an archaic form of ‘inspirit’] <\/div><\/div><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/TedKimmons-272x300.jpg\")