The difficulty appears to have been ramped up a little here – I got most of the bottom half out without needing to resort to aids, but the top half was full of unfamiliar territory! Now I think if I’d known the phrase at 1 across I would have found it a lot easier, but that was one of the last entries in.
I have to give a hat tip to Paul McKenna for the 14 down, which has a spectacular piece of misdirection – even when the answer is staring me in the face I couldn’t put it in the grid becuase I was convinced “not” was part of the definition and ain’t was just there as “contraction”.
Away we go…
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | CU,TO,NESS,TICK: for CUT ONE’S STICK. A new phrase for me |
| 10 | A,N,DR,O,MED,A |
| 12 | FIZZ: F then IZZAT(reputation) without A,T(Tango) at the end |
| 13 | STOLE: T in SOLE |
| 15 | EAU DE NIL: LIE reversed about AUDEN |
| 16 | COLIBRI: Strange, written as if it was a down clue? I after COL, I, BR(Bronze) |
| 18 | UVAE: V in the United Arab Emirates, plural for a type of grape |
| 20 |
|
| 21 | SMIT: double definition |
| 22 | ROIL: OIL(News) after R |
| 20 |
|
| 25 | BISH: one of the meanings of BISHOP is to confirm, so chop off the OP |
| 27 | RE,ALT,IE: ALT was the part that gave me the most trouble here – Miltonian word for rest/halt |
| 30 | AUTOGENY: (YOUNG,EAT)* |
| 32 | ITEMS: IT’S about E,M |
| 33 | ARNA: R in ANA – file ANA away, it’ll return |
| 34 | BICUSPIDS: SIB reversed holding CUPID(an american danish-type thing) with S inside |
| 35 | ENTER,OPT,O,SIS |
| Down | |
| 1 | CAFE CURTAIN: (CUTE,AFRICAN)* |
| 2 | UNIDO: I in UNDO |
| 3 | ORZO: middle of BORZOI |
| 4 | NOTE,BOO,K: DO is the base note of a scale |
| 5 | EMBAR: EAR(spike, as in corn) in MB – which Chambers confirms is an abbreviation for “Mark of the Beast”… I guess it was needed for hospital charts? |
| 6 | SEQUIN: SEQ(following from SEQUENS), then RUIN without R(take, from RECIPE). That’s a lot of Latin for one queue! |
| 7 | TATER: CHAMP is a dish made with potatoes, and it’s TATLER without the L |
| 8 | IRONSMITH: more tricky wordplay – IRONY without the Y (all but), then M(start of miff) in (THIS)* |
| 9 | COLITIS: IT,IS after most of COLIN(a quail) |
| 11 | SELL(saddle, impose upon),THE,P,ASS: another new phrase |
| 14 | PLAIN TEXT: PT(point) about LEX with AIN’T (contraction for is not) inside. Definition is just easily legible stuff. I was sure we were looking for something illegible, like a doctor’s note, fine print, or Spenser |
| 17 | ES,SAY,1,ST: S is kind of circular, I guess |
| 19 | VOLUTIN: VOLUME without the ME and then TIN(greens, money) substituted |
| 24 | FRESCO: anagram of CONIFERS – IN |
| 26 | BO,MBE |
| 28 |
|
| 29 | I,AND,I: I-AND-I is the West Indian term |
| 31 | CAPO: definition is DON and the rest is telling us to take the N off CAPON |
I picked it up half-heartedly this morning, thinking it might be useful to go through the blog later with a failure fresh in my mind. Then 1ac went pretty much straight in, followed by 1dn and 10ac (although in each case I needed Chambers because I didn’t actually know any of the answers), and I thought I’d better neglect the kids a bit and see if I could crack it. I did crack it, and very quickly by my normal Mephisto standards. To be clear this isn’t very quick at all and there was quite a lot of neglect involved.
Thanks as ever for the blog: there were a few I couldn’t parse. I must remember the “take” = R thing: it’s come up before even in my limited Mephisto experience.
I wasn’t entirely sure about 26dn: I can see that “buddy” sort of means “old boy” but I couldn’t find any justification for this in Chambers. Am I missing something?
Thanks for the explanations (too many to mention) the blogs are a great help to someone like me.
Chris
Had no great problem with either half of this one