Daily puzzles/problems.

[Basil]

4. Faulkner?

Nope.

7. Ahh, is that Don Quixote? - Cervantes

It is indeed Cervantes. Just like I said--the very beginning and the very end of that quote are key.

Unfortunately, none of the other names you produced are present on the list. Here's a hint: a few of the names that match up with some of these last unanswered clues have been said already, but they were offered for the wrong quote.

[Basil]

*1. "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." Ernest Hemingway

*2. "He was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it." Milton

*3. "About eight years or so ago, Valentine's Day, I seem to remember, you received an extremely bad review…and this review, unlike most bad reviews, came accompanied with a very large advance."

*4. "What unfolds in his works is not a multitude of characters and fates in a single objective world, illuminated by a single authorial consciousness; rather a plurality of consciousnesses, with equal rights and each with its own world, combine but are not merged in the unity of the event."

*5. "Explaining metaphysics to the nation –
I wish he would explain his Explanation."

6. "Count No 'Count" William Faulkner

7. "Before [him] there had only been good and bad characters, deliverers and traitors, saints and blasphemers, in literature; here the hero is saint and fool in one and the same person." Cervantes

8. "It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop [sir], back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes." John Keats

*9. "Once upon a time a Georgian printed a couple of books that attracted notice, but immediately it turned out that he was little more than an amanuensis for the local blacks." Joel Chandler Harris

*10. "A beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." Percy Shelley

*11. "[He] was perhaps the first great nonstop literary drinker of the American nineteenth century. He made the indulgences of Coleridge and De Quincey seem like a bit of mischief in the kitchen with the cooking sherry." Edgar Allan Poe

*12. "[He] did a great many notable things for his country…it is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel." Benjamin Franklin

*****

[prendrelemick]

Thanks for the clue, so a bit of reshuffling is in order.

4. Tolstoy.
12 Mark Twain.

[Basil]

Thanks for the clue, so a bit of reshuffling is in order.

4. Tolstoy.
12 Mark Twain.

No and no...although Mark Twain is the one who said #12--who's he talking about? A statesman once involved in a literary endeavor known for publishing maxims and witty proverbs.

[MarkBastable]

No and no...although Mark Twain is the one who said #12--who's he talking about? A statesman once involved in a literary endeavor known for publishing maxims and witty proverbs.

Franklin?

(It was 'witty' that threw me for a while there...)

[Basil]

Franklin?

(It was 'witty' that threw me for a while there...)

Yeah, I'm not sure why I was feeling so charitable towards the long deceased. I'm glad you were finally able to see through the mischaracterization, as Benjamin Franklin is the correct answer.

[prendrelemick]

My mother (who just knows these things) says Faulkner is number 6.

[jajdude]

Seems like #3 could be about Mark Twain. Doubt that is correct though.

[Basil]

My mother (who just knows these things) says Faulkner is number 6.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YoOFIPvj40

That's why in retrospect this was a lousy clue to use--it could only be solved by someone "who just knows these things"; it wasn't figure outable.

Number 3 is not Mark Twain.

I'll post hints for the remaining three quotes later tonight if they remain unsolved. I am mildly surprised that our British members are unfamiliar with #5.

[MarkBastable]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YoOFIPvj40

That's why in retrospect this was a lousy clue to use--it could only be solved by someone "who just knows these things"; it wasn't figure outable.

Number 3 is not Mark Twain.

I'll post hints for the remaining three quotes later tonight if they remain unsolved. I am mildly surprised that our British members are unfamiliar with #5.

Milton.

[Basil]

Milton.

Um, no.

The quote comes from a poem written by a Romantic with a fondness for sprinkling references to other poets of his day throughout his poetry. The poet being referenced had largely stopped writing poems at that time and had instead turned to expounding on literary criticism and metaphysical principles, including one particularly dense and lengthy volume that many readers of the time found impenetrable.

[Basil]

3. "About eight years or so ago, Valentine's Day, I seem to remember, you received an extremely bad review…and this review, unlike most bad reviews, came accompanied with a very large advance."

Most 'reviews' don't come with advances, do they? So what you have to ask yourself is...who gets the 'advance'? And what is it for (especially in the context of the 'bad review')?

[MarkBastable]

Most 'reviews' don't come with advances, do they? So what you have to ask yourself is...who gets the 'advance'? And what is it for (especially in the context of the 'bad review')?

Well, yeah. Restating the question isn't much of a clue though. I was hoping for something more along the lines of 'Find the Tyrant King' or "Consider Cambridge but bugger Birmingham'...

[Basil]

Well, yeah. Restating the question isn't much of a clue though.

I thought raising the possibility that someone other than the author would be receiving the 'advance' expanded on the original clue rather significantly.

There is a series of children's books featuring a kid detective named Encyclopedia Brown and his antagonist, the villainous Bugs Meany. The stories are solvable, with the solution usually hinging on the reader's knowledge of facts such as dolphins are mammals, not fish; or that hard-boiled eggs spin faster than uncooked eggs. I wish I could provide you with a key that would unlock this clue in a similar fashion, but sadly I can't think of one.

[MarkBastable]

I thought raising the possibility that someone other than the author would be receiving the 'advance' expanded on the original clue rather significantly.

There is a series of children's books featuring kid detective Encyclopedia Brown and his antagonist, the villainous Bugs Meany. The stories are solvable, with the solution usually relying on the reader's knowledge of facts such as dolphins are mammals, not fish; or that hard-boiled eggs spin faster than uncooked eggs. I wish I could provide you with a key that would unlock this clue in a similar fashion, but sadly I can't think of one.

'Find the Tyrant King' is the central clue in a book I read as a kid, in which the young sleuths had to go to all sorts of London landmarks to solve the mystery. The Tyrant King turned out to be the fossil Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Natural History Museum.

I loved that book, and I seem to remember buying a Red Rover one-day pass to go by bus to a lot of the places they'd gone to. I don't know what prompted me to do that. I remember that London Transport had some sponsorship thing going on with the book, and it was suggested in the story that the young sleuths managed to visit all these places around London because they had a Red Rover one-day pass to go by...

...HANG ON A MINUTE!