I found this surprisingly easy for a Robert Teuton, but I was still left with a few to finish up the next day. For one, there were a surprising number of answers that I had heard of, which is always helpful. The ones I had not heard up seemed very unlikely, but there are some strange words in Chambers.
| Across | |
| 1 | Possibly do number ones and twos in this aged hut? Sure (12) |
| DRAUGHTHOUSE – Anagram of DO + TH[is] AG[ed] HU[t] SURE. A rather involved &lit which I found very difficult to parse. | |
| 9 | Fellow dropping out of reception lost hearing (4) |
| OYER – [f]OYER, lost in the sense of no longer in use. | |
| 11 | Bodily function finally about to be contained by miser (6) |
| CARNAL – CAR(N,A)L. You could look up carl – it’s not the fellow in the Schwab ad. | |
| 13 | Dishonest friend’s pound down (7) |
| BUDMASH – BUD + MASH. I thought this was an unlikely word, but I looked in Chambers and there it was. | |
| 14 | Prickly bush hampered hairy dog (5) |
| BRIAR – BRIAR[d], hampered in the sense of dropping the last letter. | |
| 15 | Recalled matter taking care to inject heroin? (7, two words) |
| SHOOT UP – S(HOOT)UP – PUS backwards. Hoot in the sense of what you don’t give. | |
| 17 | Centres of masculine power husband almost settled on (7) |
| OMPHALI – O’ M P H ALI[t]. Chambers gives only omphalos, which is the Greek form; the correct Greek plural would be omphaloi. | |
| 18 | Regretted athletic dance (5) |
| RUEDA – RUED + A, another word I didn’t think would exist. | |
| 19 | Skilfully guided missing vessel finally came to the surface (6) |
| WELLED – WEL[l] LED. | |
| 20 | Scottish chick that is recoiling with extreme pain (6) |
| EIRACK – I.E. backwards + RACK. Earock is a more common spelling. | |
| 22 | Advance performance in US not positive for theatrical show (5) |
| REVUE – [p]REVUE. | |
| 25 | Scotch whisky’s drawn out, nearly a whole vat (7) |
| SPUNKIE – SPUN + KIE[r]. | |
| 27 | Gossip about environmentalist wanting new protection from the Sun (7) |
| PUGGREE – GUP backwards + GREE[n]. | |
| 29 | Rob almost boasting, ready for ST? (5) |
| DOBRA – DO + BRA[g]. ST is Sao Tome and Principe, and we’re talking currency units here. | |
| 30 | Brood over overwhelming bitter grief (7) |
| TSOURIS – T(SOUR)IS, that is SIT backwards. | |
| 31 | Study about piece of work’s accurate (6, two words) |
| DEAD ON – DE(ADO)N. | |
| 32 | Split ends of hair must hold condition (4) |
| RIFT – [hai]R (IF) [mus]T. | |
| 33 | “Fail to plan, plan to fail”, eg one putting nothing in schedule (12) |
| ANTIMETABOLE – AN TIMETAB(O)LE. One of the many obscure terms of classical rhetoric. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Day Aussie mate caught out informant (6) |
| DOBBER – D + [c]OBBER. | |
| 2 | Magistrate resolved ideal conclusion to case (6) |
| AEDILE – Anagram of IDEAL + [cas]E. | |
| 3 | Swampy pine forest in Burma negotiated (5) |
| URMAN – Hidden in [b]URMA N[egotiated]. | |
| 4 | Stuffed cushion’s hard when hit hard (7) |
| HASSOCK – H + AS + SOCK. | |
| 5 | Drug ring’s malevolent being dealing out cut (11) |
| HALOPERIDOL – HALO + PERI + DOL[e] I never really thought of a peri as malevolent, but apparently that’s how they started out. | |
| 6 | Aniseed liqueur right for a little unseasoned pasta? (4) |
| ORZO – O(-u,+R)ZO. We don’t often seen letter-substitution clues in Mephisto. | |
| 7 | University translated Latin of a singular nature (6) |
| UNITAL – U + anagram of LATIN. | |
| 8 | Turn white? I would seeing snake (6) |
| ELAPID – PALE backwards + I’D. | |
| 10 | Scrub around strong drink that’s somewhat coarse (11) |
| BARRACK ROOM – B(ARRACK)ROOM. | |
| 12 | Composed us a clue that’s thorny (7) |
| ACULEUS – Anagram of US A CLUE. | |
| 16 | Interface introducing essential material (7) |
| GUIPURE – GUI + PURE, with essential pointing to its root meaning of pertaining to essence. | |
| 19 | She excitedly tucked into appetizer — keep silent! (7) |
| WHEESHT – WHE(anagram of SHE)T. Another bit of Scots. | |
| 20 | Spain is home area for matador (6) |
| ESPADA – E’S + PAD + A. | |
| 21 | Child largely to impress in routine (6, two words) |
| RUG RAT – |
|
| 23 | Bacterium put back intravenously with vigour (6) |
| VIBRIO – I.V. backwards + BRIO. | |
| 24 | This refuse was technological to some extent (6) |
| E-WASTE – Hidden in [refus]E WAS TE[chnological}, an &lit hidden. | |
| 26 | Once bent over in restraint (5) |
| 28 | Throne happy leaving Luxembourg independent (4) |
| GADI – G[l]AD + I. | |
I put in DRAUGHTHOUSE a long time before I parsed it, think that was the last thing I figured out. Again started on Monday and finished on Tuesday, basically two sessions.
A number of clues gave me the quintessential Mephisto rush, of thinking of a word that just might, more or less improbably, exist and seeing it materialize before your eyes in Chambers.
Thanks for the blog: but it seems to be under “Category: Meetups and Events”.
17ac. I hadn’t noticed about omphali vs omphaloi plurals. Very interesting.
26d. I think for COURB the definition is “once bent” (archaic form). Then wordplay “o” (over) in “curb” (the noun “restraint”).
11ac. Didn’t know about Carl in the Charles Schwab commercials. I think a current UK equivalent would be “The Bank of Ant and Dec” in the Santander TV ads!
Now fixed – it’s easy to click the wrong box!
I don’t understand the logic of the parsing of 1 across draughthouse. I got the answer from the letters and can see the definition but am struggling to see how the deleted letters in the anagram words are derived from the clue,
I managed to parse the rest of the clues but did not find it easy.
“Possibly” is an ancient, super-subtle anagram indicator, and the clue says you are to anagrammatize DO and “number ones” and “[number] twos” in THis AGed (and) HUt, plus the letters in SURE. The full stop may indicate an end to the series of the first two letters of words. Or you may just be lucky if you got the answer by assuming that, since our normal MO here is to ignore, as much as possible, punctuation.
I have to say that the parsing of 1a eluded me also. The best I could come up with was a double definition where ‘aged hut’ indicated the Shakespeare reference in Chambers. I was far from convinced. Thanks to Guy and vinyl1 for explaining that one.
The plural to omphalos is interesting: I think this shows another case of the search function not being too clever. I’ve seen cases where plurals of countless nouns have been generated buy simply adding s. In this case it seems that they have a crude algorithm for pluralising Greek words.
Yes I noticed that in the app OMPHALI comes up if you search for it and links to the entry for OMPHALOS… where the plural isn’t given at all. There are other Greek words (e.g. mythos, nomos, pithos, topos) where an -oi plural is explicitly given. Curious.
Thanks for the explanation Guy. I can just about see it now. The number one bit confused me but I can now see if the clue is split after number 1 then the number two can be applied to the first two letters of ‘this aged hut’. Thanks once again.
Quite tricky. I gave up on trying to parse 1ac, so thanks for that.
21dn – the suggested parsing wouldn’t give the answer. I thought it was RU[GRA(b)]T, where GRAB = impress, in the sense of grabbing one’s attention.
DRAUGHTHOUSE was the clue-writing competition word in the Azed of 13 April. One of the offerings rated VHC was “Must do number ones and twos in this aged hut? Sure” – written by R Teuton. I guess it’s acceptable to recycle one’s own clues; I certainly think “Possibly” is an improvement on “Must” as an anagram indicator. I’ve also seen URMAN as an answer quite recently.
My Chambers (’98) gives the meaning of BUDMASH as an evildoer, which isn’t the same as dishonest, either in meaning or part of speech, but maybe the most recent edition gives an alternative. I’ve also never come across Earock as an alternative spelling to Eirack; the latter seems more intuitive, as it comes from the Gaelic eireag.
Yes the most recent edition of Chambers gives ‘dishonest’ as an adjectival meaning of BUDMASH.
It also defines GRAB specifically as ‘to impress’.
Thanks.