Every Friday at 1300 hours, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. All readers are welcome to assist.
To completely defox today’s word chain you’ll need to provide Roman with the sequence of 24 words suggested by the clues below.
A word can be any length and is linked to the next word in the chain by its last two, three, or four letters. For instance ‘honeysuckle’ might be followed by ‘leviathan’. ‘Handel’ could come next. Then ‘delta’. And so on. Complicating things a tad are the six green italicised clues. These have been shuffled. For example “An Asian desert” probably doesn’t refer to word #16.
1. A stunning Asian butterfly that’s half deer, half teutonic bigwig
2. A Royal Navy gun brig that participated in the Battle of Copenhagen
3. The respiratory form of this disease is much deadlier than the cutaneous form
4. A word sometimes seen before tax, herd, and pad
5. A moon discovered in the year this chap was born
6. A word sometimes seen before shoe and after freight
7. A passenger aircraft crashed into this unusual European peak in the Eighties
8. There’s one in this pic
9. This vessel
10. A jerry-built English abbey
11. Founded in Bavaria in the 18th Century
12. Its most famous landmark was nicked by Italian forces in 19**
13. A colour, a hospital ship, and a North Sea oil field
14. This PC game
15. A waterfall within sight of a Band of Brothers filming location
16. An Asian desert
17. A mineral sometimes found in art galleries, hot springs, and branches of TK Maxx
18. This African empress
19. Only monarchs can do this
20. A short story penned by this man
21. A European light metro station that opened in April 2015
22. He was rubbed out twice by Uncle Joe
23. A decent Descent descendant
24. Caused the death of Louis (the Something) of France?
* * *
SOLUTIONS
Last week’s cluster foxer:
Sidney Bechet (defoxed by Colonel_K)
E5. Expo 58 (Colonel_K)
E4. “The Night Is a Witch” (Colonel_K)
E3. Saxophone (Phlebas)
E2. Steppenwolf (Colonel_K)
D2. Petite Fleur (Aergistal)
Weather Underground Organization (defoxed by Colonel_K)
A1. Prairie Fire (Colonel_K)
B1. Haymarket Police Memorial (Colonel_K, Phlebas)
C1. Pentagon (Electric Dragon, Colonel_K)
D1. Brinks-Mat robbery
E1. Fort Dix (Colonel_K)
Predominantly female military forces (defoxed by ylla)
B4. Israeli 33rd “Caracal” Battalion (Colonel_K)
B5. Las Marianas (Colonel_K)
C5. Erato Detachment (Colonel_K)
D5. Greenfinches (Colonel_K)
D4. YPJ (Phlebas)
R vs Penguin Books Ltd (defoxed by Viscount)
A5. Trial (Phlebas, ylla)
A4. Penguin (Phlebas)
A3. E M Forster (Aergistal)
A2. John Robinson (Aergistal)
B2. R (Aergistal)
Newest chemical elements ()
C2. NHIndustries (Colonel_K)
B3. Lviv (ylla)
C3. Tsar Bell (Colonel_K)
D3. OGRE (Nutfield)
C4. McLaren (Phlebas)
2 is a bit ambiguous – apart from there being at least two battles of Copenhagen, the captured Danish brigs from the 1807 battle became RN brigs afterwards.
Royal Navy brigs at the time of the 1801 battle:
Cruizer
Harpy
Captured Danish brigs:
Nidelven
Sarpen
Glommen
Mercurius
Delphinen
Allart
Brevdrageren
But 3 looks like DIPTHERIA, which doesn’t fit any of them!
13. SHAMROCK? If you can say that is a colour?
6) ELEVATOR?
Might give Torre something for the mountain
No, TORGHATTEN (with a hole through it) at 7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wider%C3%B8e_Flight_710
I thought 7 might be…
Mount La Esperanza
But maybe not
5. ARIEL or UMBRIEL?
Either would fit 1851, when Arthur Evans was born.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Evans
18 MENTEWAB
possibly therefore 19 ABDICATE?
18 is MENTEWAB, Empress of Ethiopia
17 ORPIMENT
https://www.tkmaxx.com/uk/en/product-recall-yellow-orpiment-mineral-bookends
Ah, it can be 4 letters now, i’m out of date!
24. GUILLOTINE or.. LINTEL? :p
How do you steal a landmark…? Did they have Carmen Sandiego with them??
1) KAISAR-I-HIND? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teinopalpus_imperialis
2) Possibly INDIGNANT (list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gun-brigs_of_the_Royal_Navy), which makes it not diphtheria
3) ANTHRAX! Even nastier.
https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/basics/types/index.html
’22 Aug 1807 present at the siege and bombardment of Copenhagen 15 Aug – 20 Oct 1807 and capture of Danish Fleet by Adm. Gambier.’
https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~pbtyc/genealogy/18-1900/I/02409.html
20 is Rabindranath Tagore. The bad news is he wrote a lot of short stories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Rabindranath_Tagore
11. ILLUMINATI?
15. GIESSBACH?
If that’s right,
20. CHITROKOR
would fit at 16.
8 is a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, IF it’s the plane we’re after…
Found the picture! Senior Airman Abigail Michael, Loadmaster for the 167th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard.
NATIONAL something would fit at 12 after ILLUMINATI?
https://www.167aw.ang.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2107551/167th-airlift-wing-airman-spotlight-march-2020/
9 looks like CCGS GRIFFON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCGS_Griffon#/media/File:Canadian_Coasties_at_Belle_Isle_Detroit.JPG
Plenty more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Canadian_Coast_Guard, but not many with one-word names
Aha. Fitting with 10 FONTHILL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonthill_Abbey
So 8 might be 16 TENGRI, alternative spelling of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tengger_Desert
23. maybe OVERLOAD or RETROVIRUS?
12. AXUM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelisk_of_Axum
fits neatly at 4 in between ANTHRAX and UMBRIEL.
21. NISPETIYE (Istanbul metro)?
22. Nikolai YEZHOV was not only executed on Stalin’s orders but also edited out of photos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Yezhov#Legacy
24 at 20 TENNIS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_X_of_France
1. KAISAR-I-HIND
2. INDIGNANT
3. ANTHRAX
12* AXUM
5. UMBRIEL
6. ELEVATOR?
7. TORGHATTEN
16* TENGRI?
9. GRIFFON
10. FONTHILL
11. Founded in Bavaria in the 18th Century – ILLUMINATI?
4* A word sometimes seen before tax, herd, and pad
13. A colour, a hospital ship, and a North Sea oil field
14. This PC game
15. A waterfall within sight of a Band of Brothers filming location – GIESSBACH?
20* CHITROKOR
17. ORPIMENT
18. MENTEWAB
19. ABDICATE?
24* TENNIS?
21. NISPETIYE (Istanbul metro)?
22. YEZHOV
23. A decent Descent descendant – OVERLOAD?
8* LOADMASTER
11. ILLUMINATI
4* A word sometimes seen before tax, herd, and pad
13. (USAHS) THISTLE
14. LEGIE – previous work from the developers of Hrot
15. GIESSBACH
(See you at the Strakonice International Bagpipe Festival 2024, Tim?)
The Tagore short story Roman had in mind was penned in the 19th Century.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_tax
Interesting. Someone else can hunt through the list of short stories, though 🙂
ATITHI, 1895
Sort by Bengali title, then it has to begin NATI, ATI or TI. Fortunately ATI comes first alphabetically.
11. ILLUMINATI
20* ATITHI
13. THISTLE
14. LEGIE
15. GIESSBACH
4* BACHELOR
17. ORPIMENT
(Bring back the Nose Tax, I say. From when the taxman actually had teeth.)
Clever. I had actually ctrl-Fd through it yesterday and only come up with an essay on nationalism, so I don’t know what I did wrong!