In a lively, Listener-ish April Fools’ wheeze nine of the solutions are book titles to be entered in the grid with a single-letter misprint. In the clues for these the name of an author points to the actual title while the wordplay gives us the mistaken version.
In the print version of the TLS the nine titles affected by printer’s devilry were rendered in italics. The Club website cannot do this so asterisks were used instead *. I hope I wasn’t the only one to spend rather a long time trying to work out how a star might feature in the wordplay or definition. This may have contributed to a few people’s irritation with the thing, as expressed on the Club forum. Personally I loved it. I think Laurence Sterne would have loved it, too.
Let’s get on with it.
* I’ll also ‘star’ the mischievous clues as I’m using italics for titles of works.
| Across | |
| 1. | * Anstey’s trumpet and trombone engagement (3,5,6) |
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THE BRASS BATTLE – first of the deliberate mistakes. ‘trumpet and trombone’ gives BRASS, engagement BATTLE Ref. Thomas Anstey Guthrie, who wrote as F. Anstey – The Brass Bottle, 1900 , a comic treatment of the djinn genie in the lamp story |
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| 8. | Ancient giant among Kentish-men (3) |
| ENT – hidden word. Anglo-Saxon for ‘giant’, borrowed by Tolkien | |
| 9. | * Banks gave us these boring plans |
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BANAL DREAMS – ‘boring plans’ Ref. the 1989 Canal Dreams by the late Iain Banks, the book he pronounced himself “least pleased with” |
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| 11. | Jargon from Christian seen in Felix Holt, mostly (5) |
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LINGO – most of the Rev. John Lingon a character in Ref. Felix Holt, The Radical, 1866 by George Eliot (which, along with Romola, has passed me by) |
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| 12. | I’m from South America and I love to read about schoolgirls (6,3) |
| BRAZIL NUT – Crytic definition. The clue reads like a message on the kind of website sometimes raided by the police but the putative speaker is simply a great fan of the works of Angela Brazil, author of innumerable stories of schoolgirl life | |
| 13. | Poetically singing bird making a constant din (4) |
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CROW – C = constant, ROW = din. I have to guess at a reference: Ref. The Singing Crow, 1926 poem and collection by child prodigy Nathalia Crane, “The Baby Browning of Brooklyn” CORRECTION: Apparently it was intended as a Ted Hughes reference |
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| 14. | Against reason, sometimes (2,8) |
| ON OCCASION – ON (against) + OCCASION (reason, as in “I have frequent occasion to visit London”) | |
| 18. | Murdoch included, satisfying is what 19 is doing to Faust (10) |
| SATIRISING – IRIS (Murdoch) inside SATING (satisfying). See 19a | |
| 19. | A fine schoolboy, in a gradual decline (4) |
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ERIC – An eric was a fine in Ireland paid as blood money, also: Ref: Eric, or, Little by Little, 1858 by Frederic W. Farrar, which tells of “the descent into moral turpitude of a boy at a boarding school.” Seemingly a rather irreverent treatment of the Faust legend by a man who was a schoolmaster, classicist, comparative philologist and C of E cleric, not to mention a close friend of Charles Darwin (who nominated Farrar to the Royal Society). CORRECTION: Terry Pratchett’s Eric was intended, though let’s assume TP got the idea from Farrar! |
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| 21. | In summer in France, a form of cornet is something savoury (9) |
| ENTRECOTE – anagram of ‘cornet’ inserted into été | |
| 24. | French composer posed next to Ireland (5) |
| SATIE – SAT (posed) next to IE, the two-letter code for Ireland | |
| 25. | * Ford’s final attitude, in America (3,4,4) |
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THE LAST POSE – final attitude = last pose. Ref. Last Post, 1928 by Ford Maddox Ford, fourth in his Parade’s End series, published in America as The Last Post |
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| 26. | Regularly being like Weldon’s women (3) |
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BIG – alternate letters of ‘being’ Ref. Big Women, 1997 by Fay Weldon |
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| 27. | * Tatjana’s racing car joins the contest (3,5,6) |
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THE LOTUS ENTERS – Lotus is a species of F1 racing car. The answer is a mistaken version of: Ref. The Lotus Eaters, 2010 James Tait Black prize-winning novel by Tatjana Soli |
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| Down | |
| 1. | * Balzac’s translated contribution to Tristram Shandy (3,5,5) |
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THE BLACK SHEET – An entirely black page, in mock solemnity, famously follows the death of Yorick in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy; also a mangled version of the translated title of: Ref: Balzac’s 1842 La Rabouilleuse (The Black Sheep) |
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| 2. | How you might be obtaining tagine (6,3) |
| EATING OUT – Not sure if I’ve seen this clever device before. You can get ‘tagine’ by making an anagram of ‘eating’ | |
| 3. | * Take delight in Walter’s novel (3,3) |
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ROB JOY – ROB (take) + JOY (delight), a misprint of: Ref: Scott’s 1817 Rob Roy |
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| 4. | George and Iain feature in a book by Erskine Childers (9) |
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SANDBANKS – George Sand and Iain Banks together giving us (I think) a likely feature of Childers’: ref: The Riddle of the Sands, 1903 |
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| 5. | Brontë of a kind, a lady Jilly Copper wrote about (5) |
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BELLA – I think this is BELL (Anne Brontë’s pseudonym) + A (given before ‘lady’); also a novel: Ref: Bella, 2005 by Jilly Cooper |
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| 6. | * Zola’s Waterloo? (8) |
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TERMINAL – Having mangled Balzac, the setter turns his sights on Zola!, a Waterloo being a figurative end and: Ref: Germinal, Zola’s 1885 novel down t’pit |
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| 7. | Memorise Edward’s bit of nonsense (5) |
| LEARN – Edward LEAR + first letter of nonsense. The ‘little bit’ device for the first letter seems to crop up more often in the TLS | |
| 10. | * Salman’s wicked parts on the edge (7,6) |
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SATANIC VERGES – now I’ll never think of the novel any other way! Need I add … Ref: The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie 1988? |
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| 15. | Corrupting 16, but not Brown (9) |
| CANKEROUS – The answer to 16d is IRRITABLE, which could be CANTANKEROUS, from which we remove the brown bit – ‘tan’ – to give us a word for ‘Corrupting’ | |
| 16. | I’m ratty — I can be seen on rivers, with one on board (9) |
| IRRITABLE – I,RR,I,TABLE – I + RR (2 rivers) + 1 + TABLE (board). Def. is a riddler’s personifcation of the adjective | |
| 17. | * Golding’s green baize award (4,4) |
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FREE BALL – I spent ages on this, even though I quite like a bit of armchair snooker. Following a foul shot players can be awarded a ‘free ball’, allowing them more leeway in their next shot. And of course a misprinting of: Ref. Free Fall, 1959, William Golding |
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| 20. | After posterior, like a spanker? (6) |
| ASTERN – Despite the cheeky surface, I think this is a triple definition — 1 after, 2 posterior and 3 like a spanker, the latter being a mast or sail found to aft of a vessel | |
| 22. | What you may not have to receive nuts, proverbially (5) |
| TEETH – cryptic def. I wasn’t familiar with this proverb “God gives nuts to those with no teeth”, of which there seem to be many variants | |
| 23. | Louis May’s cousins, in part of a sonnet (5) |
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OCTET – poetic term and how one might describe: Ref. Eight Cousins, 1875 by Louisa May Alcott |
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My favourite of the misprings was Zola’s (believable) Terminal, but there was much to admire in the “normal” clues, rather more non-literary than usual, I think, probably because of the game we were playing.
Did I spot an homage to the late great Bowie in your explanation to 1ac? Does that mean I’ll have to work on one for Prince? Or Victoria? Or Ronnie? Sad days.
Congratulations on a fine analysis of a fun puzzle, which took me just (only just!) under the hour.
A couple of official explanations from the detailed crib sheet we use for TLS xwds:
13 CROW – The singing was from a Ted Hughes complete title: Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow
19 ERIC – the Faust reference is to Terry Pratchett’s “Eric” – a more direct satire.
Everything else intended seems to have identified.
Curiously, and despite being a Pratchett fan and having read Eric, it was the Little by Little reference that satisfied me too, despite never having read it. Perhaps it’s just my subconcious refusal to accept that Terry is now part of Literature of the Deceased.
I had to do a quick check just to make sure Jilly Cooper (5a) is yet to join that constrllation.
My first thought for the crow was Ted Hughes, but it didn’t seem to add up. I was quite pleased to learn about Nathalia Crane, in any case. Her bio on Wiki is worth a read. The Pratchett was a complete unknown to me.
I’m suitably embarrassed at my numerical shortcomings. I did have a comment on OCTET as a self-refential device but edited it out! Just as well.
Edited at 2016-04-22 04:22 pm (UTC)
I twigged the theme very early on (I think SATANIC VERGES was my second one in), and ROB JOY crossing BANAL DREAMS confirmed it. I had to Google a couple of the books (1ac and 1dn) but the rest were familiar enough to me.