Very close to finishing this one without aids, pulling up just three short (a fact I noted on my copy of the puzzle, but can’t now remember which three). It was the usual combination of a small amount of knowledge with a large amount of guesswork, but most of it fell into place nicely, with the answers I knew giving me enough help to make educated guesses at the rest.
There were also more than the usual amount of linked clues this week, as well as the symmetrically placed pair STARBOARD/STARLIGHT (although I only noticed the latter just now).
| Across |
| 1 |
TREE OF STRINGS – a collection published in 1997 by Scottish poet Norman MacCaig, “corded wood” being the cryptic definition. |
| 9 |
ELEUTHERI – (lieu there)*. This is an imaginary secret society of free thinkers, invented by Percy Shelley in 1813. |
| 10 |
CRASH – CR(edit) + ASH. 1973 novel by J. G. Ballard. |
| 11 |
DOYLE – Arthur Conan, that is. His Last Bow is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, and the name of one them. |
| 12 |
ELBA – hidden in “novEL BArely acknowledged”. Pretty loose definition, as it’s not that isolated, lying just off the coast of Tuscany. |
| 13 |
UBER – BE inside UR. German word for over (as super is Latin for over). |
| 15 |
SISTERS – The Sisters (1861), a poem by Irish writer Aubrey Thomas de Vere. |
| 17 |
WARRANT – RANT after WAR (Stephen Crane wrote a poetry collection War Is Kind in 1899). |
| 18 |
FRANCIS – Francis Stevens (4dn) was the pseudonym of American fantasy and science fiction writer Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1883-1948). |
| 20 |
BLUNDEN – Edmund Blunden was a WW1 poet, who published Retreat in 1927 (although it was 1928 according to Wikipedia). Yes, definitely 1928, as the slightly more reliable Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature also agrees. Maybe the title poem was written in 1927 even if the collection was published the following year. |
| 21 |
ALLY – quotation, from Act 3 Scene 1, just after Tybalt has killed Mercutio. |
| 22 |
ARGO – the ship Jason and the Argonauts sailed to find the Golden Fleece. |
| 23 |
VERDI – VERDI(ct). Actually a cryptic clue to VERDICT, but that’s the TLS for you… |
| 26 |
CIGAR – hidden reversed in “tRAGIC drama”. Another hidden with superfluous word, also breaking the usual rule that hidden words shouldn’t begin or end at the beginning or end of words in the the phrase they’re hiding in. |
| 27 |
ISHERWOOD – I Am a Camera (1951) is a play by John van Druten, based on Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories (1946). |
| 28 |
THE DEERSLAYER – (steelyard here)*. 1841 novel by James Fenimore Cooper. |
| Down |
| 1 |
THE IDES OF MARCH – 1948 novel by 8dn. |
| 2 |
ELEGY – An Elegy and Other Poems was published by Blunden in 1937. |
| 3 |
ON THE BEACH – 1957 post-apocalyptic end-of-the-world novel by Nevil Shute, set in Australia. The actual setting of L. P. Hartley’s The Shrimp and the Anemone was at Hunstanton in Norfolk. I had a walk along the beach under the famous tri-coloured cliffs there myself just a few weeks ago. |
| 4 |
STEVENS – see 18ac. |
| 5 |
RAINBOW – The Rainbow (1915) was D. H. Lawrence’s previous novel to Women in Love (1920). |
| 6 |
NICK – triple definition. Nick Chopper was the original name of the Tin Woodsman in The Wizard of Oz, the other definitions being to steal and “bird”, slang for prison (although that doesn’t really work, as bird (from bird-lime, time in Cockney rhyming slang) is the prison sentence whereas nick is the building). |
| 7 |
STARBOARD – Starboard Wine (1984) is a novel by American SF writer Samuel R. Delany (note only one E in the surname). Oops. |
| 8 |
THORNTON WILDER – (old northern wit)*. American three-time Pulitzer prize winning author and playwright. |
| 14 |
TRIUMVIRAL – Gaius Julius Caesar was part of the First Triumvirate (60-53 BC), but not the Second (43-33 BC), as he died in 44 BC. Still, Octavian took over his name at that time so there was still a Gaius Julius Caesar in the Second Triumvirate. |
| 16 |
STARLIGHT – Captain Starlight is a character in Robbery Under Arms (1883) by Australian author Rolf Boldrewood. No idea what Stella Gibbons has to do with it, other than hinting at the STAR bit. |
| 19 |
SERVICE – double definition, the poet being Robert W. Service (1874-1958), “the bard of the Yukon”. |
| 20 |
BROTHER – double definition. Brother Cadfael is the medieval monk detective in the series of books by Ellis Peters. |
| 24 |
ROOMY – quotation and a description of Charles Honeyman in Thackeray’s 1855 novel. |
| 25 |
ARNE – first letters of All Really New Entertainments. Thomas Arne (1710-78), most famous for Rule, Britannia! and well-known to most cryptic crossword solvers, as he crops up fairly regularly. |
I think “isolated example” in 12A isn’t too bad given that “isolated” comes from isola, the Italian for “island”.
I initially thought that “Stella” was the only contributing word in the second part of the clue to 16D, but it turns out that Stella Gibbons wrote a book called Starlight in 1967.
I’m not sure what happened to the crossword in the TLS for 27 August (someone has liberated Ealing Library’s copy!), but No. 846 appeared in the 3 September edition, so I’ll be blogging that in a fortnight’s time (after the closing date for entries on 24 September).