Sewellel
By Eric L Sewell
This article was originally published in the April 2002 edition of Soul Search, the journal of The Sole Society.
Having eliminated all but two clues in The Times Christmas Eve Jumbo Crossword my wife and I only solved one clue after an exhaustive search in the dictionary:
62 Across - 'Beaver in a stream in grounds to the west'
The answer had to fit *E*E*L*L. This very unlikely arrangement of letters only seemed to fit a word like PARALLEL, which was already the answer to another clue.
When we found SEWELLEL - 'an American
rodent linking beavers and squirrels' known as the 'mountain-beaver' - we
were astonished not to have heard of it before.
No doubt SEWELL fans of David Attenbrough are better informed. According to my dictionary the name is derived from Chinook shewallal - a robe of its skin