Mephisto 2633 – Tim Moorey

Author   glhPosted on Categories Mephisto
Well the difficulty appears to have been ramped up a bit here, I found this one a real struggle to get going on, but once a few key answers fell into place ((13 and 16 in particular) the grid settled out. I was left scratching my head for a good while trying to get my last two at 24 and 21, though when I saw what 24 was it became my favorite clue.

I was nearly done in by the Tiny Grid syndrome that occasionally infiltrates Mephistos and Listeners on the Times Online site. I have rather terrible handwriting (as anyone who reads my other blog might know) and can confuse Bs for Ds (hell, I can confuse Xs for Ps) in the Tiny Squares.

away we go…

Across
1 BALSAMIC: B,ALS(o) then (I,AM,C)*
6 WEDS: double def
10 DISH,A,BIT: I think we’ve seen DISH as ruin before
11 EATANSWILL: EAT then N,S in A WILL – from Pickwick Papers
12 START,URN: my first in
14 STENO: (NOTES)*
16 TORGOCHS: (GO,SHORT)* around C – I liked “do” as an anagrindicator. The fishy sort of char.
17 AN,MO
18 ACID: C in AID
19 GOADSTER: (OLD,STAGER)* without the L. The goadster, goadinating, goadnificent
24 HEAME: old scots for home, hence IN. THE GAME without a T and a G
26 DAG,LOCKS: I had a problem with this because I thought that matted wool was just DAG and was looking for a longer word that meant an Aussie eccentric (like George)
26 MULBERRIES: At least I think so, wordplay is completely escaping me, but I can’t think of anything else that would fit the three unchecked letters. Edit: note comments below, though I think it’s fooled many of us, BULLETRIES for the win
27 COMET,HER: thanks Bradfords
28 EROS: ROSE with the E moved to the front. An asteroid
29 ARSHEENS: (HEARS)*,then ENS(being)
 
Down
1 BREAST: A in BREST – ONE can be A in Mephisto but not in the daily Times
2 LA,THE RING: liked this, well-hidden definition
3 SPA(r)ING
4 MIST,I,C,OS: small ships named after masked Mexican wrestlers
5 CHIRT: R in CHIT. Anyone called a girl a chit lately?
6 WALT,Y: I guess he was a Disney character
7 DIS(inspectors),RE,MEMBER: had DIS and RE well before the rest
8 STINKO: NITS reversed, then KO
9 PANTOCRATOR: PANTO CREATOR without an E, cute
13 UINTAHITE: TAHIT(i) in (in,EU)* – that took a bit of finding
15 THANKEES: HANK(catch) in TEES – TEES seems to be the revier of choice these days, supplanting DEE, PO and EXE
18 A,B,DUCE
20 SEARLE: A,R,L(both hands) in SEE – had to Google him, sorry if you’re looking in. Someone started a blog about you
21 REASTS: my last in P out of REPAST, then S for Sabbath
22 GLUES: E(arpiece) in (LUGS)*
23 VOLTA: T in VOLA – had to look up VOLA as being part of the foot

8 comments on “Mephisto 2633 – Tim Moorey”

  1. I finished this in respectable time, bit under the hour, and assess it as roughly average. However I did have trouble understanding a couple..
    – why is 6ac a double def? The day is easy enough, but wagers?
    – mulberrries also I have not totally untangled.
  2. Similar experience. A bit harder than of late and not a clue how MULBERRIES works. At 6D I think WALT is Disney himself rather than a cartoon character.

    On the printing I copy and paste into Word and then use that to increase the size of the grid. Can’t work with those sceawny things that print off.

    1. Jim. The problem lies with the excessive width of the text between the grid and the clues. The browser auto-scale facility reduces everything else to make this fit on the page. As Peter said last week, you can alter the scaling manually but this wouldn’t be necessary if the offending text was reformatted with some extra line-breaks. If you read this Peter, perhaps you could get this amended?

      John Young

  3. I too assumed mulberries was a shoo-in but eventually thought I’d try a different tack and after checking synonyms for male I eventually got to bull(e)tries (variant spelling of bully-tree(s)- see Chambers.)
    Tks for the blog and rgds to all
    Paul
  4. Ah, I did wonder but simply could not find any other word that fitted. It does not, for example, appear anywhere in the full online OED! Well done you, Paul, but I claim foul..

    I mentioned the learned works of the great Jack Vance a few days ago as a place to find an unusual word (adit), and would just mention that pantocrator also appears in several of his books. And I think we had another of his words, deodand, not so long ago..

  5. Well done Paul.

    I contacted Tim who confirmed that “mulberries” was wrong. Once you lose that obsession and think it through again from scratch you see the “e-tries” at the end and then “bull” is an obvious possibility for male.

    1. I wrote BULLYTREES next to the clue with a question mark, but didn’t go to pursue it any further.

      Might be a small hat to pull entries from this week.

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