TLS Crossword 1124 by Talos – May 6, 2016 The Naughty Bits.

The sacrifices we make to bring truth and beauty to light! I did not find this too tricky, and rounded off at 35.20. But checking through to get the lowdown and detail on the answers: that was another matter fraught with “interesting” diversions. Here are some of the key words I tapped into Google: Romanticdisplay of affection and love; Fanny Hill; laid down to flog; erotically macabre; underclothes; The Stud; show cheek; Score!; bent over; wild Hessian; poet of love and wine; an immortal lover… You get the picture: Talos, knowing we may need to look up some stuff at the end of the day, has laid a pretty little minefield for those of us who don’t know how to thoroughly clean our search history and hard drive. Mine’s needed the electronic equivalent of a steam clean, and I’m sure my ISP has noticed anyway.
Be that as it may, this was in itself a pleasurable progress, with kind clues helping with the inevitable unknowns. There’s a little bit of a surrealist theme going on too. I still have a mystery concerning Arthur and his life, though there may be nothing to it.

Clues, definitions ANSWERS

Across

1 Get on very well with old charmer? (8)
PROSPERO the reluctant sorcerer from the Tempest. Nice easy wordplay to get us going: get on very well leads to PROSPER, and borrow the O from Old
5 NY actor associated with good books (6)
GOTHAM, a name applied to New York in 1807 by Washington Irving in his satirical Salmagundi papers, and since (a lot since) applied to Batman’s theatre of operations, allegedly (if you peer through the murk) rather similar to New York. In turn, Irving took his toponym from the legendary tales of the “wise Men of Gotham” who played the idiot to fool King John into leaving them alone.
The wordplay is again pretty easy, once you separate NY from actor and stop thinking Woody Allen. Actor=HAM, attach to G(ood) O(ld) T(estament) books
10 No time for Bad Vibrations author (5,4)
BORIS VIAN. An anagram of VIBRA(t)IONS – there’s no T(ime) – signalled by “bad”. Worth a look at his Wiki entry if you’ve not come across him before. Several of his works could actually be translated as Bad Vibrations, if you were very bad at French and easily satisfied.
11 A Taste of Honey? No, Green Tea! (5)
UMAMI I think all you’re trying to do is to discover a taste that isn’t in honey, but is in green tea. If you think the four tastes are sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, please update your lexicon to include today’s answer, a “pleasant savoury taste”.
12 Romantic display of affection and love (4)
HUGO Victor, the great writer in the Romanic movement. A display of affection might be a HUG, and love as in tennis.
13 “Judges don’t age. Time— them” (Enid Bagnold) (9)
DECORATES If the crossing letters don’t give it to you, you’ll just have to look it up. Enid Bagnold wrote “National Velvet” among other things. Our quote is from her play “the Chalk Garden”.
15 He wrote 20 supernatural works (after leaving navy) (4,6)
PAUL AUSTER Author of MOON GARDEN (vide infra) and also an anagram of SUPERNATURAL as long as you take RN (the navy) out first. Not especially a supernatural writer, but, like Boris Vian, in the Absurdist school of writing.
17 “Seek not for fresher founts—,/ Just drop your bucket where you are” (Sam Walter Foss) (4)
AFAR   A good guess can be made at this by following the alliteration, and assuming it’s a rhyme. Foss was an American poet steering perilously close to McGonagall, if with a better sense of rhythm:

Seek not for fresher founts afar,
Just drop your bucket where you are;
And while the ship right onward leaps,
Uplift it from exhaustless deeps.
Parch not your life with dry despair;
The stream of hope flows everywhere—
So under every sky and star,
Just drop your bucket where you are!

“Oh, ship ahoy!” rang out the cry;
“Oh, give us water or we die!”
A voice came o’er the waters far,
“Just drop your bucket where you are.”
And then they dipped and drank their fill
Of water fresh from mead and hill;
And then they knew they sailed upon
The broad mouth of the Amazon.

His The Coming American, once over the gateway of the American Air Force Academy until equal opportunities required their removal, now decorate the American pavilion at Disney’s Epcot Centre.
19 In which Fanny Hill was laid down to flog, I’m told (4)
CELL Sounds not unlike sell, as in flog. Not some salacious reference in the famously naughty book, but a reference to where John Cleland wrote it, while in Fleet Prison for debt.
20 Novel way to show cheek to Buckingham? (4,6)
MOON PALACE Wouldn’t faze Her Majesty. “Don’t worry, she’s been to Papua New Guinea and seen it all before!” Prince Philip on The Full Monty
22 Erotically macabre author pulling writer in Peter Street? (9)
CARPENTER My best guess for the erotically macabre author is Angela Carter, author of The Passion of New Eve. If you insert (pull in) PEN for “writer” into CARTER, you get CARPENTER, the profession of Peter Street, builder of (inter alia) the original Globe Theatre. I freely confess that while solving I assumed that the reference was to (say) Stephen Carpenter (not yet on the cart) and the wordplay was more or less indecipherable, apart from the pen bit. It sufficed.
24 Pans books that lack a middle section (4)
WOKS   Books are in that category of things called works. Destroy the middle letter.
26 Fear a street judge in hearing (5)
DREAD Joseph Dredd is a long running character in the 2000AD comics series, where he is described as a street judge.. How fortunate that his parents had such an apposite name! Our second soundalike clue.
27 Nearly time to put on Dent’s underclothes? (9)
NIGHTWEAR I do believe this is a reference to Dent, Arthur Dent, who hitchhiked his way round the Douglas Adams universe in his dressing gown. NIGH: near, T(ime) WEAR: to put on. “Underclothes” presumably because you wouldn’t wear your dressing gown while sleeping, but being Arthur Dent you would wear something.
28 Members of House in The Stud or Score! (6)
TUDORS So nothing to do with the Joan Collins vehicle or the top shelf “magazine”. But I had fun researching. Just squint a bit and spot the sTUD OR Score.
29 Wild Hessian heading for Crane, an immortal lover? (8)
ANCHISES Right, pay attention. In my previous but one TLS blog (1118), I alerted you to the status of Aeneas, son of Anchises and Aphrodite (I may have misspelled Anchises, sorry). We practically give these answers away. In advance. Wild should alert you to an anagram. Take HESSIAN, therefore, add the first letter of Crane (conveniently capitalised) and stir.

Down

1 Places where Shakespeare may have got paid? (4)
PUBS This puzzled me, and I kind of thought Pubs might be short for publishers. Turns out (riffles discretely though Chambers) that Shakespeare thought paid meant drunk.
2 Work involving a dustman– someone we all like (3,6,6)
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND   Nicodemus Boffin, one of the principal characters in Dickens’s last complete work, is a dustman. The second half of the clue is a simple charade of the title.
3 Rustic friend hosting Byatt, initially, then Hill (8)
PASTORAL So you have PAL, friend, A.S Byatt, TOR, Hill. Construct. Rather neatly, A.S. described one Tobias Hill as “one of the two or three most original and interesting young novelists working in Britain today”, adding a certain veneer of something or other to the clue.
4 Some author hindering Scottish antiquarian… (5)
RHIND Another hidden clue (you can have as many as you like in the TLS), some of authoR HINDering… That’ll be Alexander Henry Rhind, lawyer and Egyptologist.
6 … bent over first two pieces of Euripides’ work (6)
OEUVRE   Take the first two letters of EUripdes and OVER, and subject them to a severe bending.
7 Fry thanks readers of turn of the century book (5,2,8)
HEART OF DARKNESS Fry is the slightly unusual anagram indicator, THANKS READERS OF the letters you need. Konrad’s Heart of Darkness was first published in 1899, pretty close to turn of the century.
8 Way to support major satirical Lewis novel (4,6)
MAIN STREET   Sinclair Lewis is the author of our solution, a novel (1920). I’m not sure the wordplay (first four words) could be any plainer.
9 No arcane drunk, this poet of love and wine (8)
ANACREON   5th century BCE Greek poet, who according to Britannica lived to 103. Drunk signifies another anagram, here of NO ARCANE. I’m pretty sure Anacreon was at least occasionally drunk and tried out some fine moves on the ladies, even in old age
14 1948 sci-fi book by Heinlein or William Burroughs? (5,5)
SPACE CADET One of Heinlein’s earlier, boy scoutish novels, before he went all philosophical and grown up with Stranger in a Strange Land. The meaning of space cadet shifted to “a person (acting as if) habitually high on drugs”, which is a fair enough description of Burroughs.
16 Squeal about Arthur, say, and his sort of life (8)
SPORTING   The word play goes squeal: SING around PORT, of which (Port) Arthur is an example (“say”). Sporting qualifies Life to create a now defunct newspaper or several films. I regret I can’t shed light on why it’s Arthur’s (“his”) sort of life.
18 Fugitive upsetting wig in The Trial? (8)
MAGWITCH   Fugitive in Great Expectations, Pip’s anonymous benefactor. A scramble of WIG intrudes on MATCH as a substitute for Trial. Not Kafka, then.
21 Retired editor punching stern TLS solver? (6)
READER   The retired editor is DE, to be placed in the REAR or stern. You, dear TLS solver, are the reader.
23 Royal undone by poison ultimately (5)
REGAN   A rather pretty &lit. Regan is Lear’s middle daughter poisoned by sister Goneril to give her a clear run at Edmund, whom they both fancy. “Royal undone” (ie unfinished) gives you REGA(L), and “poison, ultimately” the N. Best of the bunch for me.
25 Greek creating discord upset father (4)
ERIS   is the name of the Greek Goddess of discord, and handily for our purposes is SIRE (father) backwards. Eris, the next Pluto sized not-quite-big-enough-to-call-a-planet object beyond Pluto, was so named partly because of all the arguments in the astronomical community about what she was and what to call her. Sadly, New Horizons won’t get anywhere near.