TLS 1172 by Talos

Author   sotiraPosted on Categories Other Crosswords

…  the TLS is easier than you think! This was a very accessible and witty puzzle, with mostly straightforward cryptics and mainstream or entirely optional literary knowledge. And fun to solve. Nicely signed by Talos, referencing himself in the last word of the last clue.

Quite a few clues turned out to have a bit more to them than I’d realised while solving, always gratifying for us harmless drudges.


Across


Down
Across
6 THE MET — cryptic def.  fortunately you didn’t need to know that Harry Starks was a London gangster in Jake Arnott’s The Long Firm to make a good guess at this
9 STUP,O,R — easy clue but I’m highlighting it because isn’t that a brilliant surface?!!
10 RHODESIA (soiheard)*- the Ballantyne reference is to the characters at the heart of four Wilbur Smith novels, starting with A Falcon Flies
12 L,U,BECK – Thomas Mann’s novel Buddenbrooks reflected his own family history in and around Lübeck
14 INSPECTOR Banks, Peter Robinson’s exceptionally dreary detective
17 NATHANIEL — I had no idea what was going on here while I ‘solved’ it. The Nathaniel in question is James Fenimore Cooper’s Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo. The clue anagramatises (HAT,LINEN,A)
22 TEMP,L,E — title of a novel by Aussie thriller writer Matthew Reilly, featuring Prof William Race. Sounds sort of Indiana Jonesey
23 AIR FORCE — Catch 22, of course, and sounding like ‘Ayr force’
25 T(HE S)EA — John Banville’s Booker winner features Max Morden

Down
2 H(ITCH)ER — Ford Prefect being the name taken by an alien whose birth name was “only pronounceable in an obscure Betelgeusian dialect”. Ford himself never learnt to pronounce it (Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
5 NORTHANGER ABBEY —  (threebobagranny)* Catherine was the working title of the Jane Austen novel
7 MUSKET,T — Guessable, but a Brownie point if you knew that Netta Muskett wrote more than 60 romance novels
13 CONS,TABLE Wee Mad Arthur is a Terry Practchett Discworld character
15 CARLO LEVI — (allviceare)*, author of Christ Stopped at Eboli
18 TOM JOAD — lead character in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The one clue where you couldn’t get by without the lit. knowledge
20 BECK,ET,T — Beck is a Swedish TV cop, ET a film. Add the last letter of Monstret
21 W(R)IT,ER — our author

5 comments on “TLS 1172 by Talos”

  1. How wonderful to have Sir Terry and Douglas Adams referenced in the same puzzle. I’m still slightly nervous of acknowledging my true literary taste in this company, which is perfectly capable of quoting Virgil in Latin and Homer in Greek, but H2G2 (and more especially, the detective novels) and Discworld are my favourite alternate universes. So I perfectly echo your opening comment: this is a far less stuffy and arcane exercise than ordinary solvers might imagine.
    So I saw Wee Mad Arthur and thought no, can’t be! But it is!
    And anyway, most every one else on the planet thinks ordinary solvers are either a bit weird or physical projections into our dimension of a race of superintelligent pan-dimensional beings, so doing the TLS isn’t going to hurt. Much.
    And those great surfaces! How could anyone not like “The Prime Minister was his strumpet, they say” (could that be George W?). And having tried to read Northanger Abbey as preparation (!) for reading Emma, how could I not like that three bob a granny anagram.
    Thanks for doing the research so I don’t have to!

    Edited at 2017-05-12 10:58 am (UTC)

    1. Don’t worry — my favourite reading is LA noir and stuff like that. I love seeing the TLS getting a bit more mainstream/low-brow (delete according to taste).

      And I’m with you on the Austen — from now on I’m not going to call that book anything but Three Bob a Granny. Frankly, it’s a much better title.

  2. An accessible puzzle as you say. I have generally found this setter to be the friendliest of the TLS-ers without sacrificing any wit or pleasure and referencing a couple of books that even I have actually read. But sadly a DNF for me. I fell at “the one clue where you couldn’t get by without the lit. knowledge”. I decided that on balance Richard Briers’ character from the Good Life probably never said it and that even if he did, he probably wouldn’t turn up in the TLS puzzle bragging about it. I decided to keep my dignity and respect the dignity of the puzzle by declining to enter anything and just leaving the unchecked letters blank. I bunged in Primo (the wrong Levi) but corrected when DI Banks went in. I also have some heavy overwriting at 4dn and 9ac. I finished with earlap and stupor – no idea what I had in there before that. Thank you for explaining the Ballantyne reference, Lubeck and Nathaniel.
  3. Thanks for this Sotira. I reflexively assume that since these are British puzzles it’s unlikely that a specifically NYC reference will pop up(unless it’s somehow telegraphed), and having no idea who Harry Starks might be, that corner had to wait for Google to help out. Speaking of lowbrow, my liking for Georgette Heyer is no secret (Jerry is also out of the closet on this) but she is the only romance writer I read. I sort of guessed it would be MUSKETT, but I know almost nothing about firearms either – although I often find myself in the supermarket lot parked next to a behemoth plastered with NRA stickers. So far no one has ever defaced our Obama stickers but we decided not to chance it with Hillary. THREE BOB GRANNY was a keeper.

    P.S. I did know Natty Bumppo (who bears no resemblance to Daniel Day Lewis’s glamorous character) – probably from Mark Twain’s take-down of Cooper’s work. Twain called the too-good-to-be-true Chingachgook “Chicago Joe”.

    Edited at 2017-05-14 06:18 pm (UTC)

    1. Heh. Yes, a Hillary bumper sticker might be like painting crosshairs on your car.

      Thanks for the informative Cooper / Twain supplement, which I certainly didn’t know about.

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