My turn to arrive with the sad bunch of corner shop flowers and the sheepish grin. Sorry, darling, I’ll make it up to you, I swear. But a late blog is better than no blog. Isn’t it?
Writer of the week is Virginia Woolf, and I’ve been reminded of how long it is since I read her. Too long.
As ever with these themes it took me forever to figure out what was going on. After that it was mostly plain sailing, but entertaining stuff. Thank you, Praxiteles.
A bit of assistance needed with the parsing of 5 across
| Across | |
| 1. | Where Lodovico was welcomed and embraced by fancy Prussian (6) |
| CYPRUS – Lodovico being Desdemona’s cousin and convenient witness to all the key events in Othello, and the island where he fetches up is hidden in fanCY PRUSsian | |
| 5. | I’m inexperienced at acting – I will get in a state! (8) |
| VIRGINIA – I’ve realised I can’t actually parse this. “I’m inexperienced” gives VIRGIN but the rest of the wordplay doesn’t quite add up for me. Edit: see Jimbo’s explanation below | |
| 9. | Those corny parts of work by 5 (3,5) |
| THE YEARS – they + ears (those + corny parts), and the 1937 novel by that VIRGINIA (Woolf). The Years was the last novel published in her lifetime. | |
| 10. | Thomas Mann’s good red, which may nevertheless cause this (3-3) |
| GUT ROT – a semi&lit clue. Thomas Mann serves here as a token German, enabling us to translate ‘good red’ into his native language. I’m no Germanist, but wouldn’t it be ‘gute rot’? | |
| 11. | Ad hoc? (10) |
| COMMERICAL – … is an ad, and I guess the clue is cheekily self-referential: “An ad, this”. I kinda like it, even if I only kinda understand it. | |
| 13. | What 5 wanted: her 25 — (4) |
| ROOM – Back with Virginia (5 across) Woolf. I think I had to figure out 25d before any of this started making sense. Ref: A Room of One’s Own, extended essay of 1929 | |
| 14. | Saxon acquaintance of 5 (6,6) |
| SYDNEY TURNER – The splendidly named Saxon Sydney-Turner was a Bloomsbury Group regular and sometime correspondent of our Virgina. She seems to have rather liked him, and Leonard Woolf thought him “an eccentric in the best English tradition”, but he was described by Gerald Brenan as “the greatest bore I have ever known” and Lytton Strachey said “there was probably no one less entertaining in the world”. Had I been invited to a Blomsbury Group soirée — and I really can’t see why I wouldn’t — I’d have ended up stuck in the kitchen with Saxon. | |
| 17. | “The Hero in the — is unsuccessful, and by no means a Match for his Enemies” (Joseph Addison, Spectator) (8,4) |
|
PARADISE LOST – as writ by Addison in 1712, followed by the line “This gave Occasion to Mr. Dryden’s
Reflection, that the Devil was in reality Milton’s Hero.”
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| 20. | Larkin’s character judgement initially poor (4) |
| JILL – eponymous character in Larkin’s 91946 novel. J + ill | |
| 21. | Now named after Milton, it was new when Gissing wrote about it (4,6) |
| GRUB STREET – cryptic definition. Ref: George Gissing’s New Grub Street of 1891. The original thoroughfare in London’s Moorfields was renamed Milton St in 1830 after a local tradesman, not the poet | |
| 23. | Defeat and endlessly rout one of Roald Dahl’s practical jokers (6) |
| OUTWIT – OU (rout without ends) + TWIT. Ref: Dahl’s 1980 novel The Twits, which he was driven to write by his hatred of beards. Really. | |
| 24. | Numerically appropriate version of 12 by Cunningham; or much shorter version of 9? (3,5) |
| THE HOURS – Ref: Michael Cunningham’s 1999 Woolf-fest The Hours, which raked a Pulitzer then an Oscar for the adaptation. Might also be seen as a much shorter version of The Years | |
| 26. | Lawrence’s short story about Mrs Johnson (8) |
| LADYBIRD – Ref: DH Lawrence’s The Ladybird, short story which grew into the 1922 novella. Also a playful reference to American First Lady Claudia Alta Taylor “Lady Bird” Johnson, wife of LBJ | |
| 27. | Miss Whitefield taken in by this eccentric roué initially? (6) |
| TANNER – Ref; GB Shaw’s 1903 play Man and Superman, revolving around the combative courtship of Ann Whitefield and Jack Tanner (a latter day Don Juan). Wordplay requires Whitefield’s first name, as: ANN ‘taken in’ by T,E,R , first letters of “this eccentric roué” | |
| Down | |
| 2. | Swift beasts giving joyous cries (6) |
| YAHOOS – double-def, ref Gulliver’s Travels | |
| 3. | Bradbury’s line (3) |
| RAY – another double-def, referencing the author Ray Bradbury and ray = line (sort of) | |
| 4. | The Flight from the Enchanter finally – it’s a novel (5) |
| STAIR – only it’s not a novel here. Simply the last letter of enchanter + it’s a, all anagrammatized | |
| 5. | One trace of the natural history of creation found in Chambers (7) |
| VESTIGE – Ref: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, the Victorian (1844) bestseller by Robert Chambers | |
| 6. | Let go wildly in intricate trio in this opera (9) |
| RIGOLETTO – anagram of ‘let go’ inside an anagram of ‘trio’, the scramblings cued by ‘wildly’ and ‘intricate’ | |
| 7. | Role for Nicole Kidman to render with little sign of hesitation (11) |
| INTERPRETER – references La Kidman’s 2006 political thriller The Interpreter. Wordplay is interpret (render) + -er | |
| 8. | Hammett’s continental detective in heartless stories mingling variant elements (8) |
| ISOTOPES – OP inside an anagram of ‘stoies’ (stories without the heart – r). Dashiell Hammet’s first recurrently successful protagonist was ‘The Continental Op’, a San Franciso detective whsoe name we never learn | |
| 12. | Mary’s confused about day permit for Clarissa (3,8) |
| MRS DALLOWAY – anagram of ‘marys’ around D (day) + ALLOW (permit). Ref: Woolf’s 1925 novel about Clarissa D | |
| 15. | One of Saint-Saens’s hémiones, and his excellent dance, we hear, coming first (9) |
|
DZIGGETAI – referencing Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. Congratulations to anyone who knew this or was able to assemble it from wordplay. DZIGGETAI are Tibetan asses, renowned for their speed. The wordplay is a homophone of ‘jig’ (dance’ + ET (‘and his’ — ie. ‘and’ to a Frenchman) + AI (A1, excellent). Phew! |
|
| 16. | Camus’s play about Latin Imperator primarily destroying Gaul? (8) |
| CALIGULA – 1944 play Caligula by Albert Camus. Wordplay is CA (about) + LI (first of Latin imperator) + GAUL* | |
| 18. | Novel reputed to have broken through like White Teeth? (7) |
| ERUPTED – The reference to Zadie Smith’s novel is a red herring. It’s an anagram of ‘reputed’ and a dental definition | |
| 19. | E. Lear’s replaced by latter-day cartoonist (6) |
| SEARLE – another anagram, this time of (E Lear’s)*, giving us the cartoonist Ronald | |
| 22. | Gracious, like Simon’s charity (5) |
| SWEET – I guess ‘gracious’ can mean ‘sweet’. Reference to Neil Simon’s musical Sweet Charity | |
| 25. | What 5 wanted: her — 13 (3) |
| OWN – and here we are, back where we almost started, with Virginia | |
For some reason this puzzle prompted no comments at all on the club Forum but we do have the delightfully named “Urgeforoffal” at number one on the club board with a time of 2+ minutes… Yes, Saxon is a great name but I can’t really see anyone calling their child that nowadays – Scott or Sean seems more likely. I’m not much of a Woolf fan and the one I think I would have liked most of the Bloomsberries was Vanessa. Reading the diaries now makes one realize (a) how much they depended on servants and “an income of one’s own” and (b) how neither is ever mentioned. Wonder what the staff thought of all the goings-on. 32.51
Ah, yes. I was browsing some Virginia Woolf earlier while putting this together and I was reminded of just that. It’s a little hard to take …. But she couldn’t half write.
Re VIRGINIA … so are you seeing ‘state’ as doing double-duty, wordplay and definition?
Edited at 2016-06-05 12:33 pm (UTC)
I must be at least a little bit afraid of Virginia Woolf because all I really know about here is drawn from the TLS. I worked out her friend Saxon pretty much from the crossing letters, but failed to check properly how the swine spelt his name.
I quite like these themed puzzles, even if you have to adopt a scattergun approach to solving to understand the references. But hard to beat Praxiteles’ (for it was he) own Shakespearean tour de force in 1122.
It really is worth reading the whole story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2172858.stm
I can’t tell you how much this amused the locals.
Sadly I haven’t the patience for a long haul, and haven’t the literary knowledge to make it a short one!