Anthony Trollope was a very successful and popular novelist in Victorian England. One of his famous series of books was the Palliser novels, including Phineas Finn written in 1869. When it came to our Demon clue, ‘Trollope novel, Phineas …’ at 27ac, many of our puzzlers not surprisingly tried to fit FINN, but this caused trouble for the crossing words and there were five spaces, not four.
The fourth in the Palliser series was the sequel, Phineas Redux. REDUX, meaning ‘brought back’ or ‘restored’ fitted our Demon space perfectly. Phineas is not to be confused with Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne’s character who attempted to travel around the world in 80 days.
Clue 58dn also caused some bemused looks. ‘Futile (task)’ needed SISYPHEAN, a word once well known, but now of obscure meaning to most of us, as we are not so familiar with classical references. Sisyphus was a bit of a bad boy of Greek mythology, known for deceit, murder, lechery and all manner of evil. On his final demise he was condemned to roll a big stone up a hill for all eternity. This is where the meaning of futile comes from, associated with his name.
If your bracelet matches your hair clip, matches your earrings, matches your brooch, matches your belt buckle, then that is a PARURE, coming from Old French for ‘adornment’. Our clue for this was ‘Matching set of jewellery’ at 98ac.
At 136ac ‘Upper jawbone’ wanted MAXILLA not MAGILLA, which sounds like a gorilla (quite a mouthful!). If you like to keep an eye out for aliens then you could call yourself a UFOLOGIST (not UFOLIGIST), the answer to ‘Flying saucer researcher’ at 56dn.
SAPIENT was an answer familiar to the ‘Wise’ who tackled 86dn. This word comes from sapiens meaning wise and yes, is the same as in homo sapiens, or ‘wise man’.
On the top line of the Goliathon our judges spotted a couple of CLARAFIEDs, but CLARIFIED is the correct spelling in answer to ‘Explained’ (6ac).
The ‘Hot water springs’ (104dn) are GEYSERS not GEESERS or GEEZERS making ‘Barks shrilly’ (118ac) YAPS not EEPS. Geezers are men, the word is thought to come from a dialect form of guiser, someone who takes on a guise.
Thanks to Ellen Dean, who emailed us with her concerns over the clue ‘Two-by two craft (4’1,3)’ at 149ac. The clue was a reference to the animals going in two-by-two and so the answer was NOAH’ S ARK. Ellen thought this clue was too obscure for a Goliathon. What do others think about this? You can email us on postbox@lovatts.com.au about this or with any other queries or comments.
One clue that did catch out a few in the Bigcash was at 50ac. ‘Conforming, … the line’ was TOEING not TOWING. This is a not uncommon mistake but most of you lexicon lovers did know the correct choice of word.
As with many expressions, the origin of ‘toe the line’ lingers somewhere in the haze of history. Royal navy sailors were lined up for group punishment with their toes along the decking boards (toe the crack), early boxing matches had boxers ‘toe the scratch’ and the British parliament had lines separating the opposing front benches. If debate became heated, they would be told to toe the line, that is, keep their toes on or behind the line.
For those of you who did get this wrong, I hope you have now learnt something interesting. Unfortunately if you did have this wrong it made 40dn impossible. ‘By and large’ was OVERALL.
Our judges also spotted EULOLY instead of the correct EULOGY at 9dn for ‘Tribute’ and AMBIGUTTY instead of AMBIGUITY at 56dn for ‘Uncertainty of meaning’.
Happy Valentine’s Day and happy puzzling!
Recent Comments