Enigmatic Variations 1236: Record Holders by Nutmeg

With the Olympics starting at approximately the same time as this puzzle’s submission date, is Nutmeg going to give us some sporting records to decipher…will this be a marathon or a sprint?…or perhaps we are going retro into the olde worlde of vinyl records?…

The preamble states that:

“Seven people who could be described as RECORD HOLDERS appear as nine of the unclued entries, one in two guises, and another as a combination of two entries. The definition in each clue contains a misprint that must be corrected before solving; in clue order, the correct letters give part of a quotation asserting what these people have by virtue of their records. The remaining unclued entry must be completed with a possible setting. Chambers Dictionary (2014) and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations are recommended.”

As is often my way, I scanned through the clues and then started solving from the bottom up, and soon had a good proportion of the bottom half filled – minus those pesky unclued entries… As I sauntered up the right-hand side, I had a fortuitous double-PDM, if such a thing can exist? I spotted ANNE FRANK and ADRIAN MOLE at about the same time, and guessed that we were probably looking at diarists – in these cases one real, one fictional. Soon after BRIDGET came into focus, which meant JONES probably had to be at 11A or 17A. And the E of BRIDGET led me to POOTER at 29D. So, all in a bit of a rush, it was almost all over bar the filling in of the top half and, of course, the misprints/quotation/setting.

I knew that TONY BENN had kept the odd diary or two, and I guess-oogled JOHN EVELYN – the only one I wasn’t familiar with – from crossing letters, once JONES fitted at 11A.

The misprints gradually revealed ‘SOMETHING’, ‘SENSATIONAL’, READ’ and ‘TRAIN’ – from which it was a swift leap to Lady Bracknell, from ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’: “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” I did have to double check that ‘in the train’, after trying for a while to get an O into COALS to get ‘on the train’… technically speaking one is ‘in’ the train, but you try telling that to the mobile-wielding masses in the so-called ‘silent’ carriage: ‘I CAN’T SPEAK RIGHT NOW, I’M ON THE TRAIN!’…

I also spent some time trying to find an Italian diarist called P?ND?L?NO – Pendolino? – before a re-read of the preamble reminded me I needed a ‘setting’ – a PENDOLINO train!

I did get a little exercised about why these people were RECORD HOLDERS – isn’t a diarist a record keeper? But on reflection, all of the thematic items are the diaries themselves – THE (SECRET) DIARY(IES) OF…, or …’S DIARY(IES), etc. – so the RECORD HOLDERS of the title is valid, but maybe the preamble is a little misleading, as the people themselves were the record keepers? But maybe the blogger quibbleth too much…

Many thanks to Nutmeg for an enjoyable solve – most of which occurred ‘in’ a South West Trains carriage to/from Waterloo. In fact, I have my own Lady Bracknell-esque motto: ‘I never travel without a thematic barred cryptic puzzle in my man-bag. One should always have something challenging and time-consuming to fill in the interminable delays due to signalling problems at Surbiton, or the wrong kind of leaves on the line at Brookwood‘. (Please don’t mind the gap between the published timetable and the actual time of arrival at your destination!)