TLS Summer Acrostic (30th July)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Other Crosswords
No TLS crossword that week – it was replaced by an Acrostic puzzle, something they do about 4 times a year. In this puzzle, the answers to the clues are given coordinates and transferred to a second grid where they form a quotation, the author of which can be seen down column A of the answer grid. With no crossing letters these puzzles can be hard to get into, but after a few answers are entered you can guess words in the lower grid and feed their letters back into the answer grid, so it gets easier as you go. This took about 20 minutes without aids, despite not knowing several of the references.

Answers
1 JOHN TANNER – central character of George Bernard Shaw’s play Man and Superman.
2 ANNE BULLEN – Shakespeare’s spelling of Anne Boleyn, in the play Henry VIII. The quote is from Act 2 Scene 3, between Anne and an old lady.
3 MARSH ARABS – (has Mars bar)*. Wilfred Thesiger’s 1964 book The Marsh Arabs.
4 EYES/GHOST – Anthony Trollope’s 1879 novel An Eye for an Eye. The Ghost is a poem by Charles Churchill (1731-64) and a short novel from 1907 by Arnold Bennett.
5 SYBIL/HITS – Sybil, or The Two Nations, 1845 novel by Benjamin Disraeli. Double definition.
6 TARKINGTON – (kin to Grant)*. Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) was the author.
7 HOWARD’S END – E. M. Forster’s 1910 novel, named after the country house where it was set, which I’m guessing might have been in Surrey.
8 ODD/ISAIAH – An Odd Couple was an 1876 novel by Margaret Oliphant, and The Odd Couple a 1965 stage play by Neil Simon, which also became a film and TV series. Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-97) was a writer and philosopher.
9 MRS SIDDONS – Mrs Sarah Siddons was a well-known 18th century actress, and subject of a portrait by Thomas Gainsborough.
10 STEPS/EDDA – Steps, a 1969 novel by Jerzy Kosinski. Icelandic mythology hidden in assorted data.
11 OWLS/DAY – Owls Do Cry is a 1957 novel by Janet Frame. In Jabberwocky:

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
12 NAKED LUNCH – 1959 novel by William Burroughs. Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (“Lunch on the Grass”) is a painting by Manet depicting a naked woman having a picnic with two fully-clothed men.

Quotation
He looks in boundless majesty abroad,
And sheds the shining day, that burnished plays
On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering streams…
 
This is from “Summer”, from Thomson’s collection The Seasons (1730).

2 comments on “TLS Summer Acrostic (30th July)”

  1. As usual I’d forgotten there was an acrostic coming up. I’ve just had a quick look at it, jotting down a few answers on the back of an envelope, and it didn’t look too difficult. I failed to recognise the quotation even though I’ve sung in an English-language performance of Haydn’s The Seasons which is based on Thomson’s verses. My excuse is that Haydn used a German translation which was then translated back into English to fit the music, so most of the quotation was quite literally lost in translation.

    BTW it’s Howards End without an apostrophe. The wikipedia gives info on its location.

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