Solving time: 55 mins, references for 11 and 25 in grid A.
Araucaria’s special Bank Holiday double puzzle was themed around the poet W H Auden, who would have celebrated his hundredth birthday this year (see clue to 10A). The two grids contain his full name and four multi-word answers, each an extract from his poetry (none of which I knew), with 17B a classic Araucaria anagram of no fewer than 62 letters.
Music of the day: Two grids, so two tracks: Scherzo Allegro from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony (courtesy of clue 1) and The Truth About Love by David McCormack (6B etc).
Answers are listed below in the order they are clued.
* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | ALLEGRO (hidden) / S + CHER + Z + I – nice pair of answers. Sonny and Cher were a combo best known for the song I Got You Babe. |
| 5A | FOB OFF |
| 9A | IN + VA + LIDS – using ‘5A’ to indicate VA is very sneaky. |
| 10A etc | WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN; W + (NASTY)* + HUGHENDEN (with AU for EN) – I think I would have really strugged with this puzzle had I not known Auden’s full name, courtesy of an excellent Listener earlier this year (PS by Homer) based on his poem ‘Night Mail’. Apparently Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, lived at Hughenden Manor. |
| 10B | CLITIC, from CRITIC |
| 12 | FOREQUARTERS (“FOUR QUARTERS”) / SUP + E + RHUM + AN(L)Y – the first clue here is brilliant, with the split expertly disguised (“Front of horse said to become one…”), but I don’t like the second at all, as not only is ‘rhum’ a pretty obscure French word but ‘in’ seems to be doing double duty as both an instruction to insert L and part of the definition. |
| 15B | ON ALL FOURS (double definition) |
| 17B etc | The answer here is the second couplet of this verse:
To the man in the street, who, I’m sorry to say, and the anagram is astonishing: (THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT + WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN + GO SIGHT WWW.FACULTIES.LITERATURE)*. |
| 19B etc | M(A + NINTH)ESTRE + E.T. – another extract from the poem above (hence ‘to whom the foregoing’). Mestre is a town north of Venice. |
| 26 | IRRUPT; rev. of PURR in IT / LIE LOW; (WELL 10)* |
| 27 | A D(VI + S)ORY / WHI(G-GIS)M |
| 28A | LUPIN + E, L(UP)INE – double wordplay. |
| 28B etc | WE MUST LOVE ONE ANOTHER OR DIE; (W for R)EMUS + (LOVE-ONE + (DARN HOOTER)*) in TIE |
| 29 | NAME DAY / S(URGE)ON |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | A + CID / SASH (double definition) |
| 3 | GOLGOTHA; rev. of LOG + GOTHA / RUE + F(U + L)LY – not sure how famous the Gotha Almanac is. |
| 6A | OF YORE; (FOR O YE)* |
| 6B etc | TELL + MET + HE + T + RUTH + ABO(UT + LO)VE |
| 7 | ON THE NIGHT; THE in (NOTHING)* / EX-TINCTURE, (NEXT TRUCE I)* – more double wordplay in 7B. |
| 8 | FI([mi]NISTER)RE / TACHYMETER; (HETTY CREAM)* – Finisterre, literally ‘Land’s End’ (from Latin finisterrae), was the former name for the shipping region Fitzroy, renamed to avoid confusion with Cape Finisterre in Spain, but I’m sure everyone reading this will know that anyway from listening to Test Match Special. You probably also knew that ‘tachymetric’ is an anagram of ‘McCarthyite’. |
| 11 | L(U.N.)ULA / C + HORUS – I needed to look up 11A. The lunula is ‘the whitish area at the base of a fingernail that your mum tells you not to pick’ (Chambers), while ‘Lula‘ is the current president of Brazil. |
| 13 | STOCKS + TILL / FO(A + MP + I)LLOW |
| 14 | BUMPER + CROP / MA(INST.)RE + A.M. |
| 16 | B(INCH)Y / OCHRE(A) – I didn’t know the author Maeve Binchy or the botanical word ‘ochrea’, but got them both from the wordplay. |
| 18 | SOLARIUM; (OUR MAILS)* / END + ANGER |
| 21 | TIEPIN; “TYPIN[g]” / A + L + DO + US – the likely ‘apin[g]’ for ‘copyin” held me up on 21A. |
| 25A | LYLY – I didn’t know John Lyly and needed references for this. I think the clue is an attempted semi-&lit, with the wordplay being the adverbial ending ‘-LY’ doubled, as well as a reference to Lyly’s elaborate style. |
Tell me the truth about love is more Auden, wasn’t sure if you’d made that clear.
Indeed (hence the song selection) – the four Auden extracts are 17B, 19B, 28B (all across) and 6B (down).
No I didn’t think you’d have missed it but the David McCormack reference threw me. Now it occurs to me you might well be the same blogger that found the whacky White Stripes version of Apple Blossom Time.
Might be…