I’d have done better to solve this before the other Olympic puzzles while I was still fresh. But I tackled them in reverse order, and was so tired by the time I reached this one that I failed to spot the obvious answer to 20dn. And I’m still very tired, so it’s quite possible that I’ve missed some of the finer points (but I trust there’ll be someone out there to enlighten me :-).
I solved all but three clues (25ac, 19dn and 20dn) in 12 or 13 minutes. I’d already thought of MINIVER for 19dn, but in those days the rule that at least half the letters of each answer in a Times (cryptic) crossword must be checked didn’t exist, and the two vowels I had, coupled with the barely cryptic definition, made me nervous. 25ac was annoyingly obvious once I’d found it by working through the alphabet, and seemed to confirm MINIVER, though with three vowels now in place, I still felt the need to check through the alphabet in case I was missing something obvious. Unfortunately by this time, I was so exhausted (and also aware that time was passing, and that I needed to go out before too long) that I skimped on checking through the alphabet for 20dn; and when I couldn’t see anything obvious that fitted, I rashly bunged in PASSBED, hoping that such a word might exist. Damn! It didn’t, and a quick recourse to TEA revealed the obvious. Doh!
cd = cryptic definition (there were a lot more of them around in 1948); bcd = barely cryptic definition; dd = double definition; (…)* = anagram
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 4, 9 | LANDSCAPE GARDENER – cd |
| 10 | AMARYLLIS – a quotation from Milton’s Lycidas: “Were it not better done as others use, / To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, / Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?” (this quote used to crop up regularly in Times past) |
| 11 | CONCLAVE – “Eminence” is the title used to address or refer to cardinals, who meet “in conclave” to elect a new pope |
| 12 | EDGEWORTH – EDGE + WORTH; the novelist is Maria Edgeworth, whom presumably few read in 1948, and no doubt fewer still read now |
| 13 | PLANGENT – Sir P. Abercrombie was a well-known town planner (i.e. a PLAN GENT) of the day; he is probably remembered now mainly for the Greater London Plan, aka the Abercrombie Plan |
| 14 | OPEN-EYED – cd (the lid is an eyelid); nowadays this would be enumerated as (4-4), but this didn’t always happen in the past |
| 18 | FOOTPATH – cd |
| 22 | ESTIMATE – cd |
| 24 | BACCHANTE – a female follower of Bacchus, aka Dionysus |
| 25 | ECLIPSES – bcd |
| 26 | DILL-WATER – (wild later)* |
| 27 | TENEMENT – MEN in TENET |
| 28 | STARLIGHT – cd (stars being light-years distant) |
| Down | |
| 1 | EGGCUPS – cd: the OED includes among its definitions of “meat”: “The flesh of a fruit, nut, egg, etc., likened in texture to the flesh of animals. … Now chiefly N. Amer.“ |
| 2 | FRONTAL – dd |
| 3 | SEA-LEGS – a quotation from Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Yes, slimy things did crawl with legs / Upon the slimy sea.” |
| 4 | LEAVEN – a direct quotation from Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon, which there was no need to look up since all its letters were checked! |
| 5 | ARMED TO THE TEETH – cd |
| 6 | DARK-EYED – a quotation from John Gay’s song Sweet William’s Farewell to Black-Eyed Susan: “All in the Downs the fleet was moored, / The streamers waving in the wind, / When black-eyed Susan came aboard.” (the third line is occasionally rendered “When dark-eyed Susan came aboard”, but “very” in the clue clearly indicates that the setter had the “black-eyed” version in mind) |
| 7 | CULLODEN – the Battle of Culloden (1746) was won by loyalist troops under the command of “Butcher” Cumberland |
| 8 | PHILTRES – cd |
| 15 | BOTANIST – cd |
| 16 | STICKLER – (trickles)* (anagram not indicated! – don’t expect to be spoon-fed in this era 😉 |
| 17 | KALAHARI – Livingstone certainly crossed the Kalahari Desert on the way to becoming the first European to discover Lake Ngami in 1849, but I don’t really think this is enough to justify “first” in the clue; any other thoughts? |
| 19 | MINIVER – bcd (not really cryptic at all when it comes down to it!); most solvers of the period would no doubt remember Jan Struther’s Mrs. Miniver columns in The Times as well as the film Mrs. Miniver starring Greer Garson |
| 20 | PASSKEY – PASS (a pass degree is “a university or college degree without honours” (Chambers) + KEY (a crib can be “a key or baldly literal translation, used as an aid by students, etc” (ditto)); there’s no definition of the complete word, but this was not in the least uncommon in this era |
| 21 | DENSITY – cd |
| 23 | SECRET – bcd |
Edited at 2012-12-26 09:09 pm (UTC)
The literary works referenced – Lycidas, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Atalanta in Calydon and Sweet William’s Farewell to Black-Eyed Susan (as well as Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent) – could almost be regarded as “set works” for Times crosswords from the early days. Of course there were a lot of other “set works” as well, so it was assumed that solvers were fairly well read, which was almost certainly more true then (at a time when the typical solver was supposed to be a clergyman, or the provost of Eton 🙂 than it is today.
Andy B.
One reason I’ve always enjoyed the literary clues is that they gave me either an excuse for going back to some favourite piece of verse or prose, or the opportunity to explore something I hadn’t come across before (and there was quite a lot of the latter in my early solving days).
As you say, Shakespeare and Tennyson were always very popular choices for direct quotation clues. The last one (from Milton’s Paradise Regained) appeared in 1995 – just before they were finally killed off when Brian Greer took over as Times crossword editor.
At 16dn it seemed to me that the anagram was sort of indicated; to me it said “.. seen in trickles, if you look hard enough” if you see what I mean. At 19dn Chambers has miniver as a small fur, presumably “in origin” refers to it being a French word. Not sure what Mrs M has to do with it?
To me black-eyed Susan is just a plant I’m afraid 🙂 – but I did get the slimy legs and Maria E
I like your explanation of 16dn (STICKLER). I think that’s probably exactly what the setter had in mind.
Your explanation of 19dn (MINIVER) is of course quite correct, and I should really have given it myself rather than simply saying “bcd …”. The reason I brought in Mrs. Miniver is that while I imagine that solvers of the period might not necessarily have been aware of either the meaning or the derivation of “miniver”, almost all of them would have heard of the word because of the film, and probably because of Jan Struther’s column as well. I certainly first came across it through the film.