TLS Crossword 1185 – “1 Across and 1 Down” by Praxiteles – July 21, 2017.

Her counterpart here is John Langshaw Austin the Oxford linguistic philosopher.  Philosophy is a subject I never had the wits to grasp so I only just barely knew of him.  I’m sorry about that because what I read of him now makes me wish that our jurisprudence syllabus had assigned him rather than Hegel, Wittgenstein and Kant….

This was done within the 40-minute range on the train.  It took me a while to cotton on at first and some of the answers needed confirmation.  I have a couple of quibbles but they didn’t at all detract from enjoyment of the puzzle.

In the spirit of the theme (if it’s bad it’s meant to be – at least that’s my story):

My first describes the pet and pique of rage
We fret and fume and call the setters names.
My second hides upon some learned page
The answer in these fascinating games.

But oh! conjoined the frequency we find,
The wavelength plays our tune and we rejoice.
The grid is filled, the answers all aligned –
Submit and hope the board confirms our choice.

Your ready wits the answer will supply
Beam your approval hereto by and by.

Well that’s all from me in this space.  Thank you Broteas, Myrtilus, Praxiteles and Talos – it’s been an honour and a pleasure.  Answers in bold caps.  Definitions in italics underlined.

********  BREAKING NEWS*******
Answer to the charade/riddle.  CROSSWORD.  Even as pastiche it’s dire.  Ximenes would turn in his grave.  The clue-writing contest referee would give it short shrift.  And Sotira would say that even for the Christmas Turkey it’s a turkey.

Across

1.  Here one’s to enter only initials of eminent novelist – one initial and surname actually (1,6)
J AUSTEN.  Once the theme emerged and 1D was solved, this became clear.  She had no middle name.  And see special_bitter infra.
5.  Second half of Burgess novel has second papers on caliphate (7)
ABBASID.  Abba Abba is a 1970s novel by Anthony Burgess about John Keats.  Half of it with S=second and ID=papers.  They were a dynasty of caliphs in Baghdad centuries before the Ottomans, the British and the Americans got there.
9 & 27.  Riding through cold Scottish county to Jane’s village near Crewkerne (10) (one word) (5)
UPPERCROSS.  UP=riding.  PER=through.  C=cold.  ROSS=scottish county.  In Persuasion this is the fictional village in Somerset where the Musgroves, in-laws of Anne Elliot’s sister Mary, live and where Anne goes to stay when her father and elder sister are forced by their extravagance to rent out the stately family home and move to Bath.  The additional (5) enumeration was rather confusing.
10.  Selina Hawkins’s husband’s children (9)
SUCKLINGS.  Very neat.  In old parlance children may be sucklings.  Specifically here, in Emma, Selina is married to the wealthy merchant Mr. Suckling and is the sister of the insufferable Augusta who becomes Mrs. Elton.  Mrs. E is always swanking about her brother-in-law’s “seat” Maplegrove, supposedly near Bath but more likely nearer the commercial hub of Bristol.  I’ve wondered if the name “Maplegrove” is one of those batsqueak non-U signifiers that would indicate to those tuned to the frequency that the Sucklings aren’t quite quite.  Emma is very silly but she has Mrs. E’s number right away.  Particularly when the latter carries on about “extensive grounds”, while the thought bubble over Emma’s head quite correctly says “rubbish”.
11.  Subject enthralling Miller at last, in each of two books (6)
TROPIC.  And lit.  We get some exemplary ones from the TLS setters.  TOPIC=subject containing (enthralling) [Mille]R (at last).  In the 1930s Henry Miller wrote the controversial novels Tropic Of Cancer and Tropic Of capricorn.
12.  For instance, wicked demon mostly found at outer bits of underworld’s .. (8)
ASMODEUS.  AS=for instance.  Anagram (wicked) of DEMO[n] (mostly).  With U[nderworld]S (outer bits).  Nice sort of and lit.
14.  They might cancel the race as fillies run about (10)
NULLIFIERS.  Anagram (about) of FILLIES RUN.
15.  At last she did, tragically, on 18 July 1817; and he on 8 February 1960 (4)
DIED.  The dates when the subjects of this puzzle departed this life and the 200th anniversary last month of Austen’s death.  It is indeed tragic to think she was only 41.
18.  Dr. Jones is at home, decidedly on vacation (4)
INDY.  As in Indiana (Henry Jr,) of the adventure movie series.  IN=at home with D[ecidedl]Y (on vacation).  From the sublime to the merely very entertaining.
19.  Things perceived to be sins perhaps I must have trouble over (10)
SENSIBILIA.  Anagram (perhaps) of BE SINS with I and then AIL reversed (over).  Of Sense And Sensibilia was originally a treatise by Aristotle which became the basis of a posthumously published work by our Mr. Austin (with a nod to Miss Austen) having to do with language and perception.  At the moment we have a president in these parts who has only the most primitive idea of the uses of language and the value of veracity.  What would the professor make of his tweets?
22.  Morse at start of literary novel has tricky problems (8)
DILEMMAS.  DI=Inspector Endeavour Morse from the Colin Dexter series.  With EMMAS=novel has.
24.  What Peacock does, society disapproves of about start of “Rhododaphne” (6)
STRUTS.  S=society.  TUTS=disapproves of, containing (about) R[hododaphne] (start of).  The shrub is an oleander and Thomas Love Peacock wrote a poem so entitled, aka The Thessalonian Spell.
26.  What results in chat, espec. performatively, according to 1D (6,3)
SPEECH ACT.  And lit.?  Another very clever one.  Anagram of  CHAT ESPEC.  According to Austin this is an utterance that has a “performative” function, such as a promise, order or warning (or tweet?).
27.  See 9.
28.  Posed awkwardly next to it, Emma’s picture was a precious one (7)
DEPOSIT.  Anagram (awkwardly) of POSED with IT.  Mr. Elton was entrusted with Emma’s portrait of Harriet Smith to take to London for framing.  He languished over it excessively and so dubbed it.
29.  I slip up when surrounded by special force in mountain country (7)
SIERRAS.  I ERR=slip up surrounded by SAS=special force.

Down

1.  Here one’s to enter a man’s name – author of 7 and 19 (1,6)
J AUSTIN.  Like Jane he died far too soon – in his forties.  And see special_bitter infra
2.  Desolate, like Milton’s paradise of fools (9)
UNPEOPLED.  Described in Book 3 of Paradise Lost as a kind of Limbo, unpeopled and untrod.
3.  Frightening description of everything, according to Hurree Jamset Singh (8)
TERRIFIC.  This was the favourite word of Singh, classmate of Billy Bunter in the Remove at Greyfriars, the public school created by Frank Richards – the pen name of Charles Hamilton.
4.  Headmistress only partly as keen as Harriet in collecting riddles? (4)
NASH.  Hidden in [kee]N AS H[arriet].  Here comes the first quibble.  In Emma, Miss Nash was the Head Teacher at Mrs. Goddard’s school, it’s Mrs. Goddard who is described as the “mistress”.  It’s not important.
5.  Tess and Angel Clare’s perhaps, constitutes a doubtfully legal one? (10)
ANCESTRESS.  And this is the other quibble because unless I’m completely astray (which is admittedly always a possibility) it should be the spurious ancestress of Tess and Alec D’Urbeville, not Angel Clare.  At the beginning of Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of The D’Urbevilles, Tess’s father, the drunken peasant Jack Durbeyfield, is told by the antiquary Parson Tringham that he is the descendant of a Norman knight who came over with William the Conqueror.  This goes to his head on top of the drink.  In time Tess sets off to present herself as a relative to a wealthy widow named D’Urbeville in another part of the county.  In doing so she meets up with the widow’s son Alec.  What Tess doesn’t know is that Alec’s father was really a moneylender named Stoke from the North of England who changed his name, on moving to Wessex, after consulting with works on extinct local gentry in the British Museum so as to choose a plausible one.  Alec uses his purported common ancestry with Tess as part of his harassment and seduction technique – with a cascade of tragic results.  Angel Clare is a farmer, one of the sons of a parson, some rungs up the social ladder from Tess but not in any way claiming descent from Norman knights.
6.  A loud 26 by a Nobel prize winning novelist (6)
BELLOW.  Saul, Canadian-American author won the 1976 literature prize.  Is a bellow a “speech act” as postulated by Austin, or is it just a loud vocal noise, made by animals as well as humans?  Oh picky picky.
7.  First part of work by either one, confusingly seen with second (5)
SENSE.  As in the Austen novel and 19A.
8.  Female speaking in French, not English, with German abandoned (7)
DISUSED.  DIS[e]USE=female speaking in French with D=Deutsch (German).  There’s a particular meaning for “diseuse” which is a performer who specialises in dramatic solo speaking performances.
13.  Mozartian pasha turns up with a role a long way off (5,5)
MILES APART.  SELIM=the pasha from The Abduction From The Seraglio reversed (turns up) with A PART=role.
16.  Bad temper in which Jonson said you would find every man after trouble (3-6)
ILL-HUMOUR.  ILL=trouble and the reference is to Ben Jonson’s play Every Man In His Humour.
17.  What stopped Catherine Morland travelling on shortly to top of Blaize Castle?
OBSTACLE.  Anagram (travelling) of O[n] (shortly), B[laize] (top of) and CASTLE.  In Northanger Abbey, Catherine never does get to see Blaize (also spelled Blaise) Castle, a mock Gothic folly near Bristol, because the proposed expeditions with the Thorpes never come off for sundry reasons.
18.  Is diode possibly how I modified it? (8)
IODISED.  Anagram (possibly) of IS DIODE.
20.  Helps Jane and Lydia Bennett, say, without hesitation (7)
ASSISTS.  Jane and Lydia are sisters.  AS=like.  SIST[er]S, dropping ER=hesitation.
21.  Manet initially in footwear or artist’s garments (6)
SMOCKS.  M[anet] (initially) contained in SOCKS=footwear.
23.  “When there’s nothing going on, there is nothing going on, and you –” (Kipling) (3,2)
LIE UP.  From A Conference Of The Powers, a short story describing army life.
25.  Sei Shonagon’s workers or Heraclitean characters (4)
ETAS.  The Greek characters couldn’t be anything else but I had to look up the Japanes court-lady poet of the first millennium and the workers.  Jason and Kevin probably knew of both.  Etas were an untouchable caste that did menial work.