Inquisitor 1959: A Keen Rime by E Lear
Next Tuesday, 12 May, will be National Limerick Day.
There’s an elderly setter in ..
Whose puzzles are often found ..
So – over to you
And to give you a clue
You might find their solutions ..The unclued (silvered) entries comprise, in no particular order,four sets of possible completions to lines 1, 2 and 5, of one, one and two syllables respectively. Line 1 completions are place-names, whose letters may be seen somewhere in the puzzle collectively jumbled as a single letter-string. Within each set, solutions rhyme but are differently spelt within each rhyming part. Each clue contains a letter to be removed to enable solving.In clue order, removed letters spell the name of an author followed by the title of one of his works in which limericks forma significant plot device.
OK, what have we here?
I love a Limerick so I hope I’m going to enjoy this puzzle. The setter appears to be E Lear and one of the most famous limerick writers was Edward Lear. We’ve not had a puzzle from E Lear before so I suspect it’s an established setter in disguise. The Inquisitor editor is Nimrod and one of his other pseudonyms is Elgar, so my guess it that it is he – but I may have barked up completely the wrong tree.
A Fifteensquared blogger named Ken,
solved Inquisitors now and again.
He’d parse every clue,
Spot a misprint or two,
Then blog it with style from his den.
(With thanks to my fellow author, Microsoft Copilot)
I rolled up my sleeves and got on with solving along with my daughter elmac. We found the clues to be a bit tricky in places but nothing really gave us too much trouble. As the extra letters started to appear, we had ED from 1 and 10, so it looked like the author was going to be the aforementioned Mr Lear but then the M from 11 blew that theory.
As usual, the extra letters began to form and elmac went on a mission. She found EDMUND CRISPIN and THE MOVING TOYSHOP. As usual, I had never heard of the work but from what I can gather, the plot relies heavily on limericks.
Since I love limericks, I’m tempted to read it but Ihaven’t done anything about it yet.
Of course, we had to try and deduce the words in the silver cells. Many of them are fairly obvious but a couple were a little ambiguous. Also, the phrase, “jumbled as a single letter-string” had been bugging me ever since I read it. After a bit of fruitless grid searching, I re-read, “somewhere in the puzzle” and thinking that, itself, was unusual, I realised that the letter-string in question was the entire title and author – i.e. A KEEN RIME BY E LEAR. Thus we had the following words, in grid order:
AYR
APPEAR
MUNDANE
BEER
UNIQUE
MAINE
PLAIN
HERE
FAIR
WEAK
LEEK
ELSEWHERE
and I’ve reproduced the resultant four limericks here:
| There’s an elderly setter in Maine Whose puzzles are often found plain So – over to you And to give you a clue You might find their solutions mundane |
There’s an elderly setter in Ayr Whose puzzles are often found fair So – over to you And to give you a clue You might find their solutions elsewhere |
There’s an elderly setter in Leek Whose puzzles are often found weak So – over to you And to give you a clue You might find their solutions unique |
There’s an elderly setter in Beer Whose puzzles are often found here So – over to you And to give you a clue You might find their solutions appear |
I found this to be at the less taxing end of the Inquisitor endgames but no less enjoyable for it.Thanks to elmac and, of course, thanks to the setter – whoever you are. I wonder if we’ll ever find out.
Now that my blog is complete,
It’s back to my den I retreat,
Until the next time,
I depart with this rhyme,
It’s now time to put up my feet.
(all my own work)
| Across | Entry | Extra | Wordplay | |
| 1 Sudden problems; address to mean second parcels going west (6) | CRISES | E | SECond aroundSIRrev: going west | |
| 10 Plead about squeezing puppy’s tail for barking (5) | AYELP | D | [pupp]Y (tail)inside PLEA anqg:about | |
| 11 Grouse romped in cheery performance (4) | RYPE | M | cheeRY PErformance(hidden: roped in) | |
| 15 Laird’s stiff suit, tailored the day before (6) | STIEVE | U | SIT (anag:tailored)+EVE (day before) | |
| 17 Canning Scots landlady, as if missing rent (5) | LALDY | N | L[and]LADY(minus AND (asif); anag: rent) | |
| 21 Object, driven by incorrect answer in religious services(6) | IBADAT | D | IT (object)around BAD(incorrect)+Answer | |
| 23 Bridles at sides of riders chiding tense trembling (7) | RESENTS | C | R[iderS(sides of) around TENSE (anag:trembling) | |
| 24 Poet’s closer, wandering around after torn leaves (5) | NARRE | R | ERRAN[T](wandering; minus Tense;anag: around) | |
| 27 Organic items falling short, upsetting hard analysis (8) | METHANAL | I | TEM[s](falling short; rev: upsetting)+Hard+ANALysis | |
| 28 Sprinters’ measurements originally meant in case of errors (3) | EMS | S | E[rror]S(case of) around M[eant] (firstletter) | |
| Down | ||||
| 1 Cyclingcomputer data round device for phoning and so on (12, 2 words) | CIRCULAR FILE | P | CIRCULAR(round)+FILE (devicefor honing) | |
| 2 Shiny fabric present in rain (5) | RAYON | I | RAN around YO(present) | |
| 3 Heartless sweep banned cat (4) | SPEW | N | SW[e]EP(heartless; anag: baned)Reminds me of the much missed Schadenfreude. He seemed tohave cat meaning vomit in so many of his excellentpuzzles. | |
| 4 Just cause sorted out (5) | SAUCE | T | CAUSE (anag:sorted out) | |
| 5 Buffalo ran off before chase to be skinned(5) | ARNAS | H | RAN (anag:off)+[c]AS[e](skinned) | |
| 6 Meat cut from furry animal (3) | RYA | E | furRY Animal(hidden: cut from) | |
| 7 Old manger quite near stalls (4) | TENE | M | quiTE NEar(hidden: stalls) | |
| 8 This droops from E-vehicle’s burst inner tube (6) | SLEEVE | O | E-VE[hic]LE(minus HIC (this:Latin)) anag: burst | |
| 9 Prominent feature of church verse -Paul’s first epistle in translation (12) | SPIRE-STEEPLE | V | ERSE+P[aul](first letter)+EPISTLE (anag:in translation) | |
| 12 A little laid up to cover deposit in store of information(8) | DATABANK | I | A+TAD(little lad) rev: up+BANK (deposit) | |
| 13 More than one fell in shadows, with nails splitting (9) | HILLSIDES | N | HIDES(shadows) around ILLS (ails) | |
| 14 Groping one in Holyrood, having good fiddle around outside (6) | GUYING | G | GU (fiddle)+YIN(one; Scottish)+Good | |
| 16 Skint in consequence of cut in poetic merit (7) | ENDERON | T | END(consequence)+][f] (cut)inside ERN (poeticmerit) | |
| 18 About a thousand coaches parking, each vertical, on a ferry (5) | APEAK | O | About+Parking+EAch+K(a thousand) | |
| 19 Cast stern eye in introductions(7) | ENTRÉES | Y | STERN EE(anag: cast) | |
| 20 Wrong day perhaps set aside with odd choices of times (7) | MISDATE | S | AIDE+T[i]M[e]S(odd letters) anag: set | |
| 22 What’s not done in toilet, heard uncovered on top (6) | ARREAR | H | [e]AR[d](uncovered)+REAR (toilet) | |
| 25 Old man’s nagging pain awakens opinions (3) | AKE | O | awAKEns (hidden:pinions) | |
| 26 Heavy knife had to be praised (3) | DAH | P | HAD (rev:raised) | |
An excellent puzzle. It was worth persevering with the single-letter manipulation applied here to every clue as I got plenty of enjoyment from working out the missing parts of the four limericks as and when they revealed enough of themselves. It was a brilliant design, and I particularly liked (1) the rhyming pattern of ‘one, one and two syllables’ and (2) the fact that the rhyming syllables were spelled differently.
I found the jumbled line of letters of the four place names in the first place I looked – a nice bonus to enjoy at the end.
Many thanks to E Lear (or whoever it was that compiled this puzzle) and to kenmac for the entertaining blog (I appreciated the two bonus limericks therein).
I enjoyed this, great fun. BEER was the last to fall, and I needed the title’s letter string to get that. The use of the title as thematic fodder reminded me of ‘Christmas-time at Hook-a-Gate’ by Pomfret. I knew there had to be a reason for the odd spelling of ‘Rime’, let alone the unusual setter credit…
Many thanks “E Lear” and kenmac
Going by the clues, I think it was Ifor.
Great fun!
@3Kirsanov My money is on Ifor too, largely because it seems to have been a while since we saw him.
A novel idea which proved very entertaining, so thank you to (mystery) setter and blogger. I also enjoyed the different spellings of the rhymes, very clever.
I actually did purchase the book, encouraged by glowing online reviews. It’s very slim at 200 small pages and fun to read if quite dated in places. However, 40 pages in and not a single mention of Limericks just yet!!
Having read The Moving Toyshop, I rapidly worked out the author/title, and everything went pretty easily from there. I never found the string of letters, having not learned from the Pomfret puzzle, but filled in all the limericks anyway – single syllable place names are very popular with limerick makers and I am sure I have seen other verses based around Leek, Beer, Maine and Ayr. The book is very typical Edmund Crispin; whimsical, donnish (based in Oxford), wildly implausible and scattered with literary references (the title comes from a Pope poem, though a toyshop does literally appear.). The limericks, all from Edward Lear, describe some of the characters, but aren’t really intrinsic to the plot. Anyway, thanks to ELear for a novel (or poetical) puzzle, and to Ken for the blog.
Unlike others, this was slower going for me, the amount of unchecked cells making the solving trickier and in fact I finished with five clues still unsolved. I did get the theme and all the limerick parts though, and I actually deduced what was the letter string fairly early, so some pluses there.
Thanks to the mysterious ‘E Lear’ for the puzzle, and to Ken for the blog.