TLS 857 (26 Nov)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well, for the first time this year I have to admit defeat in a TLS crossword. I still can’t get 10A or 28A, and, although I’ve got an answer to 17D, it has to be wrong (but that’s the setter’s fault rather than mine). Another dubious clue was 23A, which leads to the misspelt Christian name of an artist whose work was used as the title of a series of novels (actually, I got that wrong. It refers to the fictional narrator in the novels).

Across
1 UNREAD – quotation. I’ve got this (Meredith’s Rhoda Fleming) on my Sony eBook Reader, one of the 100 Free Classics it came with.
5 COLVILLE – worked out from the wordplay. Just as well, as this was another flawed clue. Theodore Colville is the hero of the novel Indian Summer (1886) by William Dean Howells, so the apostrophe was in the wrong place in the clue.
9 EGOCENTRIC – cryptic definition, ref. I, CLAVDIVS.
10 ALSO – from Ernest “Papa” Hemingway’s title The Sun Also Rises.
11 CLAUDIUS – Doctor Claudius (1883), a novel by Francis Marion Crawford, and Hamlet (Prince of Denmark) was killed by his brother Claudius.
12 HAMMER – Ref. Mickey Spillane’s P.I. Mike Hammer.
13 ISN’T – quotation from Through the Looking Glass, (Tweedledum and Tweedledee)
15 FORESTER – C.S. Forester, author of the Hornblower books.
18 OVERLOAD – 1979 novel by Arthur Hailey.
19 LAST – a couple of apocalyptic novels called The Last Man, Shelley’s from 1826, Noyes’s from 1940.
21 ENESCO – (one sec)*. Romanian violinist and composer George Enescu (1881-1955), who was known as Georges Enesco in France.
23 NICHOLAS – Anthony Powell’s 12-volume epic novel cycle A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-75) is narrated by Nick Jenkins in the form of his reminiscences. The title is taken from a work by French painter Nicolas Poussin, which threw me at first.
25 DEAR – Dear Shrink (1982), a novel by Helen Cresswell, who’s better known for her Lizzie Dripping stories.
26 RHINOCEROS – 1959 play by Eugène Ionesco.
27 UNLIKELY – Unlikely Stories, Mostly is a 1983 collection by Scottish author Alasdair Gray. I only came across him last weekend, when I picked up his massive cult novel Lanark in Waterstone’s.
28 PASCAL – the SI unit of pressure, named after French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who also wrote Les Lettres Provinciales. This was one I only solved while writing the blog.

Down
2 NIGEL – Nigel Dennis wrote 5D in 1955.
3 ENCOUNTER – Encounters was a 1923 short story by Elizabeth Bowen.
4 DENNIS – see 2
5 CARDS OF IDENTITY – cryptic definition, confirmed from the hint in 2D, 4D.
6 LOCKHART – LOCK + “heart”. John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854), whose Wikipedia article, however, denies he had anything to do with the attacks on the “Cockney School of Poetry”.
7 INARM – first letters of Italy’s New Art Renaissance Movement.
8 LISTENERS – The Listeners (1912) was a poetry collection by Walter de la Mare.
14 SEVENTEEN – a 1916 novel by Booth Tarkington, full title Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family Especially William.
16 SALMONEUS – father of Tyro in Greek mythology. King of Elis, struck down by a Zeus thunderbolt when he tried to get his subjects to worship him instead.
17 GOMORRHE – Jean Giraudoux wrote the play Sodome et Gomorrhe in 1943. However, the clue refers to the English translation (moods* = Sodom), so the answer should be GOMORRAH, but that doesn’t fit with 27ac.
20 SCROOP – S.C. (Small Caps) + POOR reversed. Lord Scroop is a character in Shakespeare’s Henry V, based on the real-life Henry Scrope, 3rd Baron Scrope of Masham.
22 SARTI – T (model, i.e. Model T Ford – an old chestnut) inside SARI. Giuseppe Sarti (1729-1802), Italian composer.
24 AROMA – Sweet Smell of Success (1957), a film written by Odets and Lehman.

2 comments on “TLS 857 (26 Nov)”

  1. You’re going to kick yourself over 10A, Andy. The give-away is the capital P in Papa – “Papa” Hemingway – who of course wrote The Sun Also Rises, giving ALSO as the answer.

    A nice cheeky clue – but one I missed while I was trying to solve this puzzle, as my brain seemed to have turned to gloop at the time.

  2. One mistake, guessing at ‘Overlord’ for Hailey’s follow-up to Airport, Hotel and all those other books I’ll never read.

    At 11, it’s King Hamlet who was killed by his brother, of course.

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