QC 2939 by Orpheus—Alas Poor Yorrick, I knew him

Not sure that the word “perhaps” is needed. It actually is part of a watch.

[On Edit, not all watches have SECOND HANDS, hence “perhaps”]

Pretty much identical to when I blogged a fortnight ago, so I don’t need to repeat my story about “When is a door not a door?”

A bit sneaky to use the last letter of Oscar, rather than the O, which it usually signals.

The word MAKER is making quite a comeback with the “Maker Community”, an analogue analogy to the previous generation of “Hackers”, which includes hobbyists, DIY enthusiasts and engineers, who want use use their hands not their computers. All power to them.

The tricky part here was choosing the multiple spelling of Tsar/Csar/Czar, especially with Ezra already having a tempting looking Z.

Anyone else look up SAUTO, as an obscure Arab tribe?

The “connected with” instruction seems to imply that reversal is needed, not sure I buy that.

Alt + 0199 renders a Ç on a windows keyboard. I only know a couple  by heart, the EN dash and EM dash. (Both handy crossword words as well). This is because I think using an EM dash —rather than brackets—makes one look erudite. (Alt +0151)

An alternative to Crestfallen. The OED has it as hyphenated in all its references (last one 150 years ago).

Although NHO for me, it does appear in one of Shakespeare’s most famous scenes:

Alas, poor  Yorick! I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite  jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his
 back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in
 my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung
those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.
 Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to
 set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your
 own grinning? Quite CHAPFALLEN? 

Here Chapfallen also refers back to Hamlet’s comment earlier in the scene that the skull he has found is “chapless”, where “chap” is another word for jaw.

My paper copy of Partridge has a good entry on this “Impudence; very great assurance”, either Northern or Australian provenance.

Famous usage was a 1941 defiant response by Churchill to a sneering comment by French Marshal Philippe Pétain who told Churchill that in three weeks Britain would “have its neck wrung like a chicken”.

Churchill replied “Some chicken! Some neck!”

NHO, but at least you just need to follow the instructions once a couple of checkers are in.

An uncouth or bad-mannered woman; (also, now chiefly) a badly behaved, brash, or boisterous young woman or girl. (OED, Origin uncertain, possibly Dutch for “heathen”)

Memories of the HOY (barge) from last week, but Orpheus chose to not construct a clue with it. Ladettes barge onto hideaway (8)

A Night cap is what you wear to bed, as in those pictures of Scrooge. It meant this for 500 years before some nameless Victorian wag decided to make it a euphemism for a drink, calling up his Butler for “My Night Cap please, Jeeves, nudge nudge”

Tricky anagram, as I didn’t know much about Stravinsky apart from that rioting business. I was looking for words like Dissonance, Atonal or some combination of the two.

As soon as I see Mistake in a crossword my go-to word is BISH, as featured in the 15×15 yesterday, although I haven’t heard it in the wild for decades. Since I still have my copy of Partridge out, I can add that he says it is “Mid-Century Prep School”

Slang dictionary needed again, where Partridge just says “See Chew the fat”.  Although apparently in WW1 Chew the fat was to sulk, chew the rag is “to argue endlessly without hope of a definite agreement”. Could come from the Navy, where sailors chewed on rags after running out of tobacco.  There’s chew the mop as well.

This slang for a fight is an Americanism—in the UK the more common use is for the final stage of a race, the home stretch. “Arsenal have a tougher RUN-IN than Liverpool this season”.

You can use “home run” for “home stretch” if you really want to confuse Americans.