I did not find this too difficult, although I was too tired last Saturday to complete it in one sitting, and in fact the remainder got held over for quite a while. However, I did manage to complete it before the next one came out.
Now for a couple of side notes:
At my weekly Friday club, I am instructing a cryptic-crossword beginner in the basics, using the weekend puzzles Johninterred, Sawbill, and Busman put out. After we finished a puzzle, I showed him my nearly-completed Mephisto and explained how some of the clues worked, and then I solved rhomboi and cnida on the spot. He asked me to send him the link to the blog when it was available, which I will do, but in order to make it more understandable to a beginner I have included greater detail than usual.
Over at the Times, Mick Hodgkin announced in today’s Times Puzzles newsletter that Tim Moorey has decided to discontinue setting Mephistos. If he is not replaced, this would result in a rota of three setters: Paul McKenna, John Grimshaw, and Robert Teuton. Regulars will have noticed when Don Manley retired from Mephisto, and two new setters were added, the bloggers became specialists: I blogged Paul McKenna and John Grimshaw, and George blogged Tim Moorey and Robert Teuton. With a rota of three setters, however, both George and I will each blog a puzzle from each setter every 6 weeks.
| 1 | Insect head and wing (8) |
| FROTHFLY – FROTH, the head on a beer + FLY, with wing as a verb. An insect also know as a frog-hopper. | |
| 7 | Refuse cataloguing system for books (4) |
| MARC – Double definition: MARC is the grape skins left over from making wine, but also refers to Machine-Readable Cataloging. | |
| 11 | Obliging spirit of Brussels girl? (7) |
| EUGENIE – EU + GENIE, where Brussels is used to indicate the European Union. | |
| 12 | Wise Man without a bit of myrrh or gold representative of another land (5) |
| ELCHI – [m]ELCHI[or], removing the first letter of myrrh and the heraldic word for gold from Melchior, one of the Magi. An elchi is a Turkish ambassador. | |
| 13 | Gannet flying about with river bird (8) |
| GNATWREN – Anagram of GANNET about W/R. | |
| 15 | Grower’s skill entering them half cut in local prize stupefied (10, two words) |
| GREEN THUMB – GREE + N(TH[em])UMB. Gree is a dialect word for victory, and hence the prize for victory. | |
| 16 | Core community’s fine for fifty (5) |
| FOCAL – (+F, -l)OCAL, a letter-substitution clue where F is substituted for the Roman numeral L. | |
| 19 | Dirty old skate (3) |
| RAY – Double definition. A ray is a type of fish that includes the skate, and ray as a verb meant dirty or defile in the 16th century. | |
| 21 | Military rule rose before Wellington perhaps (8) |
| JACKBOOT – JACK + BOOT, of which a Wellington boot is an example. The tenses of jack and rose don’t seem to match – comments? | |
| 22 | Corporal, one picking up speaker at defence meeting? (8) |
| ANATOMIC – A NATO MIC, a brilliant and very amusing clue. | |
| 23 | Press time cut by hour (3) |
| SIT – SIT[h]. Sith is an archaic word for time, and part of the definition of sit is weigh, bear, press. | |
| 25 | Heroin from the US with Ecstasy in pouches (5) |
| CAECA – CA(E)CA. Caca was taken into American slang from Spanish. The caeca are pouches in the intestines. | |
| 27 | Rapture you can develop with Jesu (10) |
| JOUYSAUNCE – Anagram of YOU CAN + JESU, giving a word taken from French. | |
| 29 | With little ready I will certainly get something to chew (8) |
| ILLIQUID – I’LL + I + QUID, where I is a variant spelling of aye, certainly, quid is a plug of chewing-tobacco. | |
| 31 | Rust — treat after earlier operation (5) |
| UREDO – URE + DO. URE is an archaic word for action or operation, and uredo is the rust fungus that afflicts plants. You might think redo is involved somehow, but apparently not. | |
| 32 | Synagogue regularly plundered in the middle city (7) |
| YAOUNDE – [s]Y[n]A[g]O[g]U[e] + [plu]NDE[red], giving the capital of Cameroon. | |
| 33 | Hindu custom turning back palms (4) |
| SATI – ITAS backwards. The ita is a palm tree. | |
| 34 | Potential killer close to US city? One must leave (8, two words) |
| NERVE GAS – NE[a]R VEGAS. One can represent an A in Mephisto. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Truly local fruit — one being English (4) |
| FEGS – F(-i,+E)GS, a letter substitution clue. Fegs is a dialect word derived from faith that means truly. | |
| 2 | Be able to manage number going around tense after game (5, two words) |
| RUN TO – RU + N(T)O. RU is Rugby Union, a T is a valid abbreviation for tense in grammar. | |
| 3 | Model T they alter as lead compound is in fuel (10) |
| TETRAETHYL – Anagram of T THEY ALTER. | |
| 4 | Sacked absent politician? Mine might have a problem with that (8) |
| FIREDAMP – FIRED + A + MP, where a is a valid abbreviation for absent. Firedamp refers to a buildup of methane from coal, which is potentially explosive in a coal mine. | |
| 5 | Old river sediment spades removed (3) |
| LEE – LEE[s], where S is a valid abbreviation for spades in card games. Spenser used lee as a word for a river. | |
| 6 | Gossip craving thanks (5) |
| YENTA – YEN + TA, giving a fairly common Yiddish word in the US. | |
| 8 | Look into a principle without support (8) |
| ACAULOSE – A CAU(LO)SE. The answer means without a stem, referring to fruit. | |
| 9 | Those involved in racket reported traveller lad (7) |
| RHOMBOI – Sounds like ROM BOY. A rhombos is a bull-roarer, a noise-making device used by maenads and such in their rituals. | |
| 10 | Type of bread Italian company felt advanced (8) |
| CIABATTA – CIA + BATT + A. Cia. is the abbreviation for company in Italian, batt is a layer of felt, and a is a valid abbreviation for advanced. | |
| 14 | Horse cloth, it covers middle of the pair carrying queen (10) |
| SHABRACQUE – S([t]H[e])A BRAC(QU)E. S.A = sex appeal, also known as It, a brace is a pair, and QU is a valid abbrevation for Queen. A shabraque is a trooper’s horse covering. | |
| 16 | Surpassing a jewel, one stolen in French society (8) |
| FRABJOUS – FR(A B[i]JOU)S. Fr. is French, S is a valid abbreviation for society, and they enclose a French-derived word for a jewel minus the I….giving us a word made up by Lewis Carroll! | |
| 17 | Wild centaury which might be poisonous (8) |
| CYANURET – Anagram of CENTAURY, a herb. Cyanuret is an archaic word for cyanide. | |
| 18 | Very pointed rule by supreme commander in hall (8) |
| ACICULAR – A(C.I.C)ULA + R. A commander-in-chief, inside aula, a hall, and R. I was a bit surprised to see that R is a valid abbreviation for rule, but there it is. Acicular means sharp-pointed. | |
| 20 | Mountainous land even if worthless in the Highlands (7) |
| ANDORRA – AND + ORRA. Orra is a Scots dialect word that can mean worthless; although, if I wanted to be pedantic, I would point out that Scots is spoken in the Lowlands, while Gaelic is the language of the Highlands. | |
| 24 | Particle involving zero spin (5) |
| PSION – Anagram of O + SPIN. | |
| 26 | Dog perhaps dropping a part of jellyfish (5) |
| CNIDA – A dog is a CANID; in a down clue, you drop the A to the bottom. A cnida is a stinger cell. | |
| 28 | Plans to spend a day in Rome (4) |
| IDES – IDE[a]S, where spending the A means you no longer have it. | |
| 30 | Feature of Early English branch line (3) |
| LYE – Hidden in [ear]LY E[nglish]. Lye (3) is defined as a short branch of a railway, a variant of lie. | |
I enjoyed this week’s, but spent far to long toying with Euterpe to come up with a girl’s name for 11. Then just as I was submitting the answer, Eugenie struck me.
I must have been doing these too long: quite a few of the obscurities turned into words I had seen before, even YAOUNDE and I think JOUYSAUNCE, which Chambers says is Spenser but which I associated with Chaucer. 42.27, and rather fun to do.
Re JACKBOOT, the 32nd and final definition of jack in Chambers is “(with cap) a Jacqueminot rose”
Beat me to it, re. ROSE. And if I wanted to be a pedantic Scotsman, I’d point out that the eastern Highlanders in Scotland were and are mainly Scots speakers.
TETRAETHYL – Anagram (“Model”) of T THEY ALTER.
I’m glad to hear you are finding our Weekend Quick Cryptics useful. As it happens I have recently started a Cryptic Crosswords group with our local U3A group. Our online resources can be found here. We use the recently started Guardian Quick Cryptics as basic crosswords for learning.
As for this Mephisto from John G… I didn’t find it that easy, with a couple where I needed to come here to find the parsing – SITH and CIABATTA. But it was fun. LOI CNIDA. Thanks John and Vinyl.
Hit a few lucky moments as ANDORRA came up in conversation a few weeks ago and YAOUNDE was in another crossword recently, so breezed through this during commercial breaks in the movie. I was pleased to see FRABJOUS is in the dictionary.