TLS 851 (8th Oct)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Other Crosswords

As usual I managed to get about half of this before resorting to Google etc. I actually left it alone for a couple of weeks, only finishing it last weekend in a gruelling session which involved the Saturday Times, two TLS puzzles, a Listener and a couple of Magpies!

Across
1 FESTE – hidden in “one of liFE’S TEnder moments”. The jester in Twelfth Night.
4 PAPERBACK – PAPER (newssheet) + BACK (returning).
9 CHATILLON – double definition. Walter de Châtillon was a 12th century poet, and the porte de Châtillon is one of the city gates of Paris.
10 MAYNE – souds like “main”. William Mayne was the children’s author, who died earlier this year.
11 INERT – another hidden with a ridiculous amount of padding. However, Kipling did write a book called Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), so at least this keeps it thematic!
12 REHEARSAL – The Rehearsal was a satirical play published anonymously in 1672, but known to be by George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham and others, aimed specifically at John Dryden, parodying his heroic drama The Conquest of Granada (so says the Wikipedia article :-)). I got it from “dry run” and crossing letters.
13 INGELOW – (lingo we)*. Jean Ingelow (1820-97). Never heard of her!
15 REVENGE – The Revenge was a burletta (comic opera) by Thomas Chatterton, who apparently committed suicide in 1770 at the age of 17!
18 EGO-TRIP – got this from crossing letters, but there’s a literary critic called James Agate who wrote a book called The Shorter Ego. That must be it.
20 BRIGAND – (barding)*
21 LAW-MONGER – quotation, probably an OED citation. I don’t have access to it, but maybe Tony will confirm?
23 HELEN – yet another hidden word! I don’t think I need to explain Helen of Troy, do I?
25 DEVIL – “lived” reversed. Nina Bawden wrote Devil by the Sea in 1958.
26 SCENARIST – (Actress in)*
27 ESSAYISTS – 1ST inside ESSAYS.
28 ARDEN – “Enoch Arden, a rough sailor’s lad” from the eponymous poem by Tennyson, and the Forest of Arden in Warwickshire.

 

Down
1 FACSIMILE – first letters of Fairly Apt Common + SIMILE./
2 SNAKE – a poem by D. H. Lawrence.
3 EPISTOLER – (not very) cryptic definition.
4 PILCROW – lip rev. + CROW. One of these: ¶, used by printers to denote a new paragraph.
5 PINCHER – Pincher Martin (1956) by William Golding. Wrong part of speech in the clue, but one doesn’t expect cryptic clueing perfection in the TLS. Having said that, myself and a few others (Richard Grafen was one, but I can’t recall who else) managed to collar the TLS editor Sir Peter Stothard at Cheltenham a few weeks ago and complained about the standared of cryptic clues, incorrect enumeration etc that we’re subjected to most weeks. He graciously apologised and promised to “look into it”. Not being a solver himself, he probably wondered what all the fuss was about, but we’ll wait and see if any improvements are forthcoming.
6 RUMBA – guessed from the crossing letters. No help from Google here, but it’s the only word that fits so it must be right.
7 ABYSSINIA – Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 novel Scoop was set in the fictional African country Ishmaelia, but was based on his own experiences as a journalist in Abyssinia.
8 KNELL – there was a painter called William Knell, but he painted maritime scenes, not portraits. He had a couple of sons who were also successful painters according to Wikipedia, but it doesn’t give any more details. A Google search reveals that they also painted seascapes. Any other suggestions?
14 GOOD WIVES – volume two of Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women.
16 VAISHNAVA – (Havana visa)* with one A too many, not accounted for. A follower of Vishnu.
17 EDDINGTON – (doting end)*. British astrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington. I own a couple of his books, Stars and Atoms (1926) and Science and the Unseen World (1929).
19 PEGASUS – the famous winged horse from Greek mythology, also a poem by Cecil Day Lewis.
20 BURGESS – B.S. around URGES. A man after my own heart. Check out his infamous cocktail, the Hangman’s Blood, consisting of gin, rum, whisky, brandy, port, Guinness and champagne!
21 LODGE – David Lodge is one author this might be referring to, although there are others.
22 ORLEY – Orley Farm (1862) by Anthony Trollope.
24 LAIRD – IR inside LAD. The Laird o’ Cockpen is a Scottish song written by Baroness Nairne in the first half of the 19th century. I’ve no idea if it was funny though.

2 comments on “TLS 851 (8th Oct)”

  1. Despite being desperately tired when I tackled this one, I felt I didn’t do too badly at it, and had almost all of it done in about 12 minutes. As usual the last two or three clues held me up, particularly ORLEY (which took a long time to come to mind and doesn’t quite seem to fit the clue, unless I’m missing something – can a farm really be described as a “country seat”?) and LAW-MONGER, which like RUMBA is clued with an OED citation. In the end I finished in 17:26 with 2 wrong: VAISHNAVA, where I failed to spot the connection to Vishnu and had the N and the second V the wrong way round, and LAW-MONGER where I’d somehow managed to convince myself that the only possible word that would fit the first part was LOW!!!

    Jean Ingelow used to crop up regularly in the daily Times cryptic when I first started doing it back in the 1960s, but I’ve never been moved to read anything of hers.

    James Agate also used to come up regularly, probably well into the 1980s. I think The Shorter Ego is simply a selection from the nine volumes of diaries and letters he collected under the overall title Ego.

    The “distinguished portraitist” in 8D must be Sir Godfrey Kneller who, from his name, would have been responsible for a KNELL.

    (A minor typo: you’ve put Loisa instead of Louisa in your explanation of 14D.)

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