I have to admit, this wasn’t easy. I spent all week, as time was available, adding an answer or two. Even when I finished, there were many questions, and I had to do a fair amount of research to write the blog.
Some of the clues and answers push the conventions of Mephisto. There is, of course, a fine line between a clue that is brilliant and one that is just bizarre. Well, I can’t say I really enjoyed the puzzle, but I did solve it.
So how did you do?
| Across | |
| 1 | Indian interpreter’s nonsense in translating into English (8) |
| MOONSHEE – MOONSH(-in,+E)E. A brilliant substitution clue. | |
| 7 | Succeeded with German beaten as before (4) |
| SMIT – S + MIT. S + MIT, with in German. | |
| 10 | Declined backing one making first appearance live (5) |
| EBBED – DEB + BE backwards. | |
| 11 | Some drink regularly getting so off face (6) |
| METOPE – [so]ME + TOPE. A rather vague literal, I would say. | |
| 13 | Squatter on farm lying about reputation mainly to milk a cow dry (8) |
| BIJWONER – RENOW[n] + JIB, all backwards. Jib in this sense is a Scots word. | |
| 14 | Fruit drop confectionary’s hard (8) |
| SWEETSOP – SWEETS[h]OP. The clue is a direct command! | |
| 15 | Bristles when expected to be enthralled by vacuous séance (5) |
| SETAE – S(E.T.A)E. One I biffed – these bristles are popular in US crosswords. | |
| 16 | Lactating starts in mother in labour with child (5) |
| MILCH – M[other] I[n] L[abour] + CH. | |
| 17 | The Globe’s bankrupt, failing to defer a loan, spending over and over again (10) |
| TRADEFALNE – Anagram of TO DEFER A LOAN – O, O. A Shakespearean word. | |
| 19 | Crook would up this stove tenfold at the outset (10) |
| CALEFACTOR – (-m,+C)ALEFACTOR, where M is ten times as much as C, and the definition is in the middle of the clue. | |
| 22 | Pesky flies leaving nothing of hops in US (5) |
| PIUMS – [o]PIUMS, supposedly old US slang. | |
| 24 | Cook’s stuffing recipe in pan (5) |
| FARCE – FA(R)CE. A compendium of obscure secondary meanings. | |
| 27 | Statue tossed hit poet on the rebound (8) |
| ACROLITH – Anagram of HIT + LORCA, all backwards. | |
| 28 | Chambers set on including lists of language guide (8, two words) |
| POLE STAR – PO(L[anguag]E)S + TAR. Tar is tar(3), from tergan. | |
| 29 | US festival customs permit time off on 4th of July (6) |
| CARNEY – CARNE[t] + [jul]Y. A timely clue! | |
| 30 | Military cap cutting crack company (5) |
| CHACO – CHA[p] + CO. More usually spelt shako. | |
| 31 | Angry admitting one’s the least bit Scottish (4) |
| HAET – H(A)ET. Yes, a Scots word. | |
| 32 | Perhaps snail mail lost entry or a little mistake? (8) |
| RETRONYM – Anagram of ENTRY OR + M[istake]. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Cook chump of lamb with some dried apricots (5) |
| MEBOS – Anagram of [lam]B + SOME. The usage of chump is interesting – it means the end of a piece of meat, but in this case it refers to the last letter of a piece of meat. | |
| 2 | Cursory remarks accepted after eulogy rector put in order (11, two words) |
| OBITER DICTA – OBIT + E(R)DICT + A, and not an anagram of rector! | |
| 3 | Without opening mouth spout — it’s a Gallic thing (5) |
| OBJET – [g]OB + JET. I wanted this to be chose, with hose as the water spout, but the crossers put paid to that idea. | |
| 4 | Bulletin announcement: Princess of France’s down recently (6) |
| NEW-SAD – |
|
| 5 | Leader of fowl, ie when working? (7) |
| HENWIFE – Anagram of F[owl] + I.E. + WHEN, an &lit. | |
| 6 | Islamic ruler regularly ordered meek retreats (5) |
| EMEER – [o]R[d]E[r]E[d] M[e]E[k], all backwards. | |
| 7 | Bled money before Euros soccer tournament heads into struggles (6) |
| STOTIN – S[occer] T[ournament] + anagram of INTO. Bled, or course, is a town in Slovenia! | |
| 8 | Yank left with shiner boxing (6) |
| MOUSLE – MOUS[l]E. | |
| 9 | Desperate help accepted by territory’s transport system (7) |
| TELPHER – T(anagram of HELP)ER. | |
| 12 | A crypto crashing welcoming sweet wholesale pauperization (11) |
| PTOCHOCRACY – Anagram of A CRYPTO around CHOC. If you know πτωχός, this will not be too hard. | |
| 17 | Leader of district to wither (7) |
| TOPARCH – TO + PARCH. | |
| 18 | An excellent item picked up at auction for not much (7, three words) |
| A FAT LOT – A + FAT + LOT in entirely different senses. As in a fat lot of good this will do you. | |
| 19 | Vessel carrying uranium — it’s noxious (6) |
| CURARE – C(U)RARE. | |
| 20 | Import American launch (6) |
| AMOUNT – A + MOUNT. | |
| 21 | Scotch crooked scams hoodwinking to some extent (6) |
| CAMSHO – Hidden in [s]CAMS HO[odwinking]. | |
| 23 | Confusion about one old firework (5) |
| PIOYE – P(I,O)YE. Pye is one of the many spellings of the mixed-up printer’s type. | |
| 25 | Cane miserable specimen, case of aggression? (5) |
| RATAN – RAT + A[gressio]N. | |
| 26 | Chip and PIN initially stopping further withdrawing (5) |
| EPROM – E(P[in])ROM, where the enclosing letters are more backwards. | |
Thanks for all this: I needed your help for many of these.
4d. I think “Princess of France’s down recently” is the definition. In Chambers, under “new” is “adj, new-sad: (Shakesp) recently made sad”.
…now, I couldn’t find this in my Dictionary of Quotations, so I had to google, and found that this word appears in Love’s Labour’s Lost. One of the Dramatis Personae is “The Princess of France”. In the final scene (Act 5 Scene 2), she receives the news that her father the King has died, and then describes herself as a “new-sad soul”.
So, this clue seems to rely on quite detailed knowledge of the play. I suppose an alternative to “Stratford”, “The Bard’s” etc to mean Shakespeare! And I guess “Bulletin announcement” = news +ad is the wordplay.
I agree with Peter W: the definition is a Shakespearian reference to the Princess of France and the wordplay is NEWS (bulletin) AD (announcement).
I found this puzzle quite hard. First pass left me with a few dispersed answers and nothing to work with. I could not see the wordplay in 13a, 28a or 2d. The latter was quite a clever clue given its overwhelming attempt to pull one into thinking about an anagram of RECTOR.
I was about to ask for further help with POLE STAR, but I’ve just realised that, Camber can be a Po, List (2) is a border with tar (3) being Set On, as mentioned by vinyl1.
That was one tough puzzle!
I found it tough to get going on this, but after a few had gone in it started to yield. Thanks for the explanation of Princess of France – I’d got as far as new-sad being the (Shakespearian) definition, but was thinking “news” accounted for Bulletin announcement, so I was left with AD for the Princess, which I couldn’t make sense of! I thought 17ac “spending over and over” was clever and also enjoyed the Roman arithmetic in 19ac. 7dn “Bled money before Euros” was another very clever bit of misleading.
(2dn – the blog doesn’t mention the final A, which is, of course, “accepted”.)
The blog has been updated – thanks for the comments.
I found this very hard but I never quite lost all momentum so I persevered. All for nothing in the end though because having looked up the term at 17ac I misread the Chambers entry as TRADEFAINE, and since it was the only word that could possibly fit I just wrote it in without checking the anagrist. Drat.
I couldn’t get a good start on this one, and it’s clear now why.
Yesterday, I looked up a bunch of answers online (DanWord) and figured out most of the parsing. With my grid finally filled, I came here to make sense of the rest.
I’m leaving tomorrow for the Socialism 2025 Conference in Chicago, so it’s likely that I’ll also skip the current one.