Solving time: 30 minutes (2 wrong).
Les Misérables is one of those books I’ve always meant to read but never got round to, so although I’ve heard of Jean Valjean I simply didn’t connect him with “Madelaine” (or even “Madeleine”). Burmese Days sounded faintly familiar once I’d looked it up, but it certainly didn’t spring to mind at the time. The rest of the puzzle was a mixture of easy wins (like DITHYRAMB and ANTONYM), educated guesses (like GAMIN and ROBBE-GRILLET), and answers that seemed obvious once I had enough crossing letters, but not before (like BORSTAL and TITANIA).
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | DAVID GARNETT – (Dating advert)*; David Garnett wrote A Man in the Zoo (1924) |
| 8 | ORACLES – Margaret Kennedy wrote The Oracle (1955) (I’m not wholly convinced that this is the correct explanation, but I haven’t the energy to look for a better one!) |
| 9 | BORSTAL – Brendan Behan wrote the autobiographical Borstal Boy (1958) |
| 11 | BURMESE – George Orwell wrote Burmese Days (1934) |
| 12 | ETERNAL – Cardinal Manning wrote The Eternal Priesthood (1883) |
| 13 | GAMIN – a citation from the OED |
| 14 | DITHYRAMB – “thy” in (dim bar)* |
| 16 | INAUGURAL – (Gaul a ruin)* |
| 19 | BLUER – Mrs Molesworth (aka Mary Louisa Molesworth) wrote The Blue Baby and Other Stories (1900) |
| 21 | LATERAN – late + ran; there are various Lateran buildings, the “church” mentioned in the clue presumably being the Basilica of St. John Lateran |
| 23 | GERMAIN – another citation from the OED (I initially bunged in GERMANE, but decided to take a chance with the unfamiliar GERMAIN when I saw LE LABYRINTHE emerging) |
| 24 | TENSION – (sonnet I)* |
| 25 | AZIMUTH – Thomas Hardy’s Two on a Tower (1882) has the astronomer Swithin St Cleeve as one of its principal characters |
| 26 | A MAN IN THE ZOO – Angus Wilson wrote The Old Men at the Zoo (1961) (see also DAVID GARNETT above) |
| Down | |
| 1 | DIAGRAM – (raid + mag (= “little review”)* (another indirect anagram) |
| 2 | VALJEAN – in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, the convict Jean Valjean assumes the name Monsieur Madeleine; I expect anyone who’s read this far down this blog entry already knows the connection between Proust and a madeleine, but if you don’t, you can find the explanation in À la recherche du temps perdu 😉 (I can’t see any justification for the spelling “madelaine” in the clue, and can only assume that it’s a typo) |
| 3 | DESCENDER |
| 4 | ALBEE – A L + bee; the playwright is Edward Albee (the author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) |
| 5 | NURSERY – nurse + ry; Sir Edward Elgar’s Nursery Suite was written in 1931 |
| 6 | TITANIA – Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1: “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania” |
| 7 | ROBBE-GRILLET – Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote La Jalousie (1957) … |
| 10 | LE LABYRINTHE – … and also Dans le labyrinthe (1959) (I agonised briefly over the gender of labyrinthe and opted for le labyrinthe simply because it “felt right”) |
| 15 | TELEGRAPH – as in “bush telegraph”, I assume |
| 17 | ANTONYM – Antony + M |
| 18 | GORDIAN – the Gordian Knot (sounds like “not”) was cut by Alexander the Great |
| 19 | BERLIOZ – BERLITZ with O replacing T; the composer is Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) |
| 20 | UNAMUNO – una + M + uno; Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) |
| 22 | NINON – Dorothy Parker wrote the poem Ninon De Lenclos, On Her Last Birthday (1931), which you can find here; Ninon de l’Enclos (1620-1705) was a French courtesan and all-round good egg, who encouraged the young Molière and left money in her will for the 9-year-old Voltaire to buy books |
In answer to your comment last week, perhaps we should just continue till the end of the year and then call it a day. It’s been fun tracking down all the obscure references, but it’s very time-consuming (and frustrating when LJ swallows your work), and I don’t think I can spare the time any more. Another couple of posts each will round it off nicely though.