I didn’t do too bad with this one, only having to look up maybe three or four answers in order to finish it, but there was a lot of inspired guesswork too, which took quite a lot of research to confirm when it came to writing up the blog. Still, that’s the enjoyable bit.
| Across |
| 1 |
TRUMPET – The Trumpet-Major, 1880 novel by Thomas Hardy. |
| 5 |
BORACIC – a guess from the crossing letters. “Boracic Lint” is Cockney rhyming slang for “skint”, so at least it makes sense! |
| 9 |
BOTANY BAY – another educated guess – BOTANY as “plant studies” is obvious, but I didn’t know DH Lawrence wrote a poem called BAY in 1919. |
| 10 |
BANTU – BAN + TU |
| 11 |
LAURA – more Thomas Hardy. Short story The Honourable Laura
|
| 12 |
CRITICISM – Refers to Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play The Critic, in which Mr Dangle and Mr Sneer are both theatre critics, Dangle being the more generous. A clue like this, with names in lower case to hide the fact they’re proper nouns, would not be allowed in the Times crossword, although the other way round is acceptable for some reason. |
| 14 |
THEODOR FONTANE – THE + ODOR (American spelling) + (often an)*. Never heard of him, but once I’d got THEODOR and had the A and E at the end, it couldn’t be anything else. |
| 17 |
ORLANDO FURIOSO – a 16 century Italian epic poem by Ariosto, but Virginia Woolf also wrote a novel called Orlando: A Biography in 1928 (nothing to do with Ariosto’s Orlando though). I’d heard of the poem, not the novel. |
| 21 |
CLARENDON – double definition, I think. Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon is the statesman, but I can’t find the Doyle schizoid (although there is a book called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes written by Loren D. Estleman (as by John H. Watson, M.D.). I haven’t read it though, and don’t know if there’s a Clarendon involved. |
| 22 |
HARTE – (earth)*. Bret Harte, American author and poet. |
| 24 |
URNED – “earned”. Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk is the unlikely title of a 1658 book by Sir Thomas Browne. I guessed it from the obvious homophone and crossing letters. |
| 25 |
PHILOMELA – A play by Robert Greene (although not mentioned in his Wikipedia entry), she was an Athenian princess in Greek mythology, and also gives her name to the nightingale genus. Greene also wrote a version of 17ac, so it’s surprising there was no link (especially as we’ve had his Groat’s-Worth and Penelope’s Web recently, so the setter’s obviously a fan). |
| 26 |
TIRADES – R.A. in TIDES. |
| 27 |
LARISSA – hidden in “Platonic schoLAR IS SAid”. Philo of Larissa was the “Last of the Academic Sceptics”. |
| Down |
| 1 |
TYBALT – Juliet’s cousin. In Act 1 Scene 1 of R&J, Benvolio has the lines: “The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepared,
Which, as he breathed defiance to my ears, He swung about his head and cut the winds”. |
| 2 |
UNTRUTH – another quotation guessed from crossing letters. |
| 3 |
PANTALOON – (on to a plan)*. Characters in the Commedia dell’Arte, who also include Harlequin, Pierrot and Clown. |
| 4 |
TOBACCO ROAD – TOBACCO (plug in pipe) + ROAD. A 1932 novel by Erskine Caldwell. |
| 5 |
BOY – 1900 novel by Marie Corelli. |
| 6 |
RUBAI – RUB + A1. A Persian verse form of four-line stanzas. The plural is (the more familiar) rubaiyat. |
| 7 |
CANDIDA – CANDID + A. An 1898 comedy play by George Bernard Shaw. |
| 8 |
CRUMMLES – In Nicholas Nickleby, Vincent Crummles is the head of the Crummles theatre troupe, and father of Ninetta, “The Infant Phenomenon”. She’s billed as 10 years old but is actually 15, kept young-looking by a diet of gin. |
| 13 |
INFLUENTIAL – quotation, again worked out from crossing letters then confirmed with Google. |
| 15 |
NEIGHBOUR – Death Is Now My Neighbour, 12th novel in the Inspector Morse series by Colin Dexter. |
| 16 |
GONCOURT – G(erman) On COURT. Le prix Goncourt is like a French equivalent of the Booker Prize I think. |
| 18 |
LEARNER – LEAR + NE + R(ival). |
| 19 |
SURTEES – SUR (on French) + TEES. Robert Smith Surtees, a Victorian comic writer. |
| 20 |
MEGARA – Theban princess and wife of Hercules. After he slew their children in a fit of madness he had to perform the Twelve Labours to atone for it. |
| 22 |
ENDED – the poem Felix Randal by Gerard Manley Hopkins begins: “Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended”. |
| 25 |
PAS – just a ballet term meaning a step. Not sure how significant it is. |
This week’s mystery (and there always seems to be one) must be ‘The Strange Affair of the Doyle schizoid’.
I ended up in much the same place as you on this, linxit. Applying Holmes’ “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” doctrine, I think it’s a mistake and the setter, probably a glass of madeira to the good, has mistakenly attributed the tale of Jekyll and Hyde to Doyle (I’m doing my best to smoke a setter out of the brush here).
Thanks for the erudite blog as ever, linxit.
I’d practically finished the puzzle after about 25 minutes, but spent the last 5 worrying whether I’d got MEGARA right, as I only dimly remembered her, and thought I might be being wrongly influenced by Megaera.
I should perhaps add that there was a lot of inspired guesswork on my part as well, which I find adds to the enjoyment provided I guess correctly, though all too often I end up kicking myself for missing something obvious.
I came to the same conclusion as sotira, that the setter had muddled up his or her Scottish writers with CLARENDON and put Doyle where s/he should have put Stevenson.
Just to complete the gloss on 11A, The Honourable Laura comes from Hardy’s collection of short stories A Group of Noble Dames.
I didn’t understand the significance of “Significant” in the clue to PAS either.