TLS 827 (2nd April)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Announcement
I got all but eight of the answers at a first sitting (while on the train home, in fact), then picked it up again the following morning armed with books and Internet, and finished fairly quickly. Last in APTOTE was hard, as I didn’t know the word, and the clue didn’t help with any wordplay, but a combination of TEA and Chambers soon got it.

NB If you’re waiting for this week’s TLS puzzle to appear on the Times website, don’t bother. About 4 times a year they replace the crossword with an Acrostic instead, which can be found under a separate menu heading. This week is the first one of 2010 and has a Shakespeare theme.

Across
1 MARMOSET – A line in The Honest Whore, Part I, which was actually a collaboration between Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, first performed in 1604. Chambers isn’t much help, only defining the monkey, but the Shorter OED also has “A woman, a child (used as a term of endearment or playful reproach).”
6 TSWANA – SWAN inside TA
9 WAGNER – (New rag)*. German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883).
10 ELEPHANT – Elephant Song, 1991 novel by Wilbur Smith.
11 SEPARATE – A Separate Development, 1981 novel by Christopher Hope, which was banned in his native South Africa for overt criticism of the Apartheid government.
12 LOVING – 1945 novel written under the pseudonym Henry Green, which was included in Time magazine’s 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923-2005. Looking through the list, I’ve read maybe 15 of them (hangs head in shame).
13 KEATS – (skate)* or (steak)*
14 STEVENSON – Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes in 1879.
17 DAMNATION – The Damnation Game, Clive Barker’s first full-length novel, published in 1985. I have read that one.
19 AGNES – The Eve of St. Agnes, written by John Keats (13 across) in 1819.
22 APTOTE – an indeclinable noun, which means very little in English, but would be significant in say, Latin or Greek. The word “offer” is just there for the surface.
23 MINOTAUR – (I rout man)*. The half-man half-bull which was killed by Theseus in Greek mythology.
24 PALLISER – Plantegenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium and Earl of Silverbridge, one of the main characters in Trollope’s Palliser series of novels.
25 QUARTO – QUART + 0. A full sheet of paper folded into four for printing on both sides – hence 8 pages (which these days equates to approximately A4).
26 DRAMAS – DRAM + AS
27 THE GLORY – poem by WW1 poet Edward Thomas (1878-1917), who was killed in action in the Battle of Arras.

Down
2 ACADEME – The Groves of Academe, 1951 novel by American author Mary McCarthy.
3 MANHATTAN – Manhattan Transfer, 1925 novel by John Dos Passos.
4 SERIAL – double definition.
5 THE DEATH OF MARAT – Jean-Paul Marat, French revolutionary famously killed in his bath by Charlotte Corday. This is the title of a 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David, who was a friend of Marat, and was completed less than four months after his death.
6 THE GLOVE – a poem by German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805).
7 ANANIAS – from Acts 5:1-2 – But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession,
And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
8 ANTIGONUS – “Exit, pursued by a bear” is the stage direction in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale.
13 KIDNAPPED – 1886 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson (14A).
15 NIGHTFALL – Night Must Fall, a play by Emlyn Williams first performed in 1935.
16 STRESSES – definition plus huh? I guess the idea is that certain words are stressed in poetry.
18 MATILDA – an epic poem by Michael Drayton (1563-1631), or Roald Dahl’s eponymous heroine, who I remember more from the Danny de Vito movie version.
20 EQUATOR – the two Henry Miller works being Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1936). Both were banned in the USA until 1961 for apparent obscenity.
21 UNIQUE – UNI + QUE

2 comments on “TLS 827 (2nd April)”

  1. 30:00, with 3 wrong. I had a brainstorm with 24A – I tried to put in PALLISTER first time through, realised it wouldn’t fit, but then removed an L rather than the T. What’s really dumb is that I failed to go back and look at it again when I couldn’t come up with any sensible answer to 16D (STRESSES) – so I failed on those two and on APTOTE, which I may have come across before but certainly didn’t remember at the time.

    I’m ashamed to say that I’ve only read about the same number of novels from Time magazine’s 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923-2005 as you have, though I’m not helped by its American bias (any list that omits Cold Comfort Farm has to be deeply flawed :-). Under the Net (one of the ones I’ve read) seems a slightly odd choice for the one Iris Murdoch novel. There’s no Aldous Huxley – I’d have thought Brave New World would have been worth including. I started to read Under the Volcano, but found it too dreary and gave up, though I know it’s rated highly. I’ve read most of Evelyn Waugh’s novels, but not A Handful of Dust since I know the ending and feel I’d be too depressed by the whole thing. I’d have put the Sword of Honour trilogy ahead of Brideshead Revisited. I could go on …

  2. One of the more doable puzzles for me. I had to get a Google boost for a couple of clues around the half-way point, but then completed it except for ANANIAS, who rang no bells at all. I’m a little shocked to learn that he was struck down dead on the spot when Peter called him out for not declaring his full income. MPs just get a letter from the standards office.

    I’ve read some 35 books on that Time list, but take no great pride in that, given what a strange list it is. I mean, Watchmen? Tony – A Handful of Dust is brilliant, but you’re right: deeply depressing. I still feel a claustrophobia shiver when I think of it.

    It seems surprising that MARMOSET would have had any sort of currency in Elizabethan, pre-David Attenborough times, but it clearly did, popping up in The Tempest, too.

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