Mephisto 3110 – Then you eat him?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Mephisto

I have to admit partial defeat.   While I was able to get about three-quarters of the puzzle without reference books, in the end I got most thoroughly stuck, and had to pull out all the stops to be able to finish and post a blog.   Even so, I ended up with one or two  answers which were highly plausible, but wrong.  There were just a few things I didn’t know, that prevented me from finishing, or even attempting to finish.

On the other hand, I was pleased to be able to figure out some very tricky ones unaided, that turned out to be quite correct.  I could still use another two hundred thousand words in my vocabulary, but I can’t say where I would find the space to store them.   I have the same problem with my record collection.

There are one or two things I’m still not quite sure of, so feel free to chime in.

Across
1 Old crock struggling with Mephisto? Not me! (6)
PITHOS – anagram of [me]PHISTO, the stock storage jar of the ancient Mediterranean kingdoms.
7 Baldrick stokes remains of fire (4)
SASH – S + ASH.  The stoke here is evidently a unit of kinematic viscosity that can be abbreviated as S.
10 Quality of dwelling within unopened semi men can supply (9)
IMMANENCE – anagram of [s]EMI MEN CAN.
11 Juveniles with yen for a little room in dwelling (4)
YOOF – (-r,+Y)OOF.   A UK term, in Jamaican they would say yoot.
13 Indian clerk about to get annual return (6)
CIRCAR – CIRC + A + R, more usually spelt SIRCAR.
14 Dull person, sort one rebuffed (6)
NUDNIK – KIND + ‘UN backwards, a common Yiddish word around here.
16 Chooses old points (4)
OPTS – O + PTS, a starter clue.
18 Chance missed by inside left on the wing (6)
LETOFF – LE[f]T + OFF.  I’m not really sure about this one; discussion invited.  ‘Letoff’ is a technical term from archery, but I don’t think that’s it. OK, here we go.   It’s OF inside an anagram of LEFT, and ‘chance missed’ is the definition.
20 Jumping Jack, an Irish Catholic (9)
SALTATORY – SALT, A TORY.    It may be helpful to understand the 17th-century origins of ‘Tory’, as applied by Titus Oates to his opponents.
21 Number missing exploding golden rain firework (9)
GIRANDOLE – Anagram of GOLDE[n] RAIN, and a ‘firework’ in the sense of a pre-electric light fixture.
24 Muslim students in strain without lecturer (6)
SENUSI – The right answer, but not the one I had.   I still don’t see the cryptic, so feel free.  Here we go, NUS inside SEI[l], and the definition is simply ‘Muslim’, in this case a particular sort of Muslim, more often spelt ‘Senussi’.
25 Nothing’s accepted in supplements, causing dispute (4)
ODDS – (-a,+O)DDS), as when you are at odds.
28 Old dukes finished with party, Times put out (6)
NEAFES – NEA[t] FES[t], I believe, where the old word for fists is more often spelt nieves.
30 High official abroad accepted bill, for example (6)
ATABEG – A + TAB + E.G, an easy cryptic if you don’t know this position.
31 Drive miles into remote parts of Asia for this tree? (4)
AMLA – A(ML)A, I think, although I can’t find that abbreviation of miles.  The Indian gooseberry.
32 A lot of civility shown by adjutant and one Balkan guerilla (9)
COMITADJI – COMIT[y] + ADJ + I.   If you wasted time with ‘polite’, join the club.   This word is a Turkish version of committeeman, although it appears the Bulgarians had a rather different idea of committee work than we do.
33 Buffalo’s belly uncovered (4)
ARNA – [c]ARNA[l]….I think.   A Biblical or 17th-century usage?
34 Always stick around for Indian millet (6)
BAJREE – EER JAB backwards, more often spelt BAJRI.   Mephisto constructors apparently need a lot of words ending in -EE.
Down
1 Complaint hits Posy badly (8)
PHYTOSIS – anagram of HITS POSY, a rather easy clue to a fungal disease.
2 Tipped number agreed with tabloid image (4)
IKON – N + OK + I, all upside down.   I’m 40 years out of grad school, and I still thought of Robert Adams’ book.
3 Fish: tons turning up around lake (9)
TROUTLING – T + ROUT(L)ING, avoiding the two fish into one clue.
4 Body folds and ladies headed to another primarily (6)
OMENTA –  0 MEN + T[o] A[nother].
5 With stuff on board for return, area block dead silly (10)
BACKLOADED – Anagram of A BLOCK DEAD.
6 Attacker up on legs (6)
SNIPER – RE PINS upside-down.
7 Scottish shirt is on one in the RAF (4)
SERK – ‘S ERK, more usually sark.  
8 Opening of station eatery on former platform (8)
SCAFFOLD –  S + CAFF + OLD.
9 Fly after having left for day in harbour (4)
HERL – HER(-d,+L), a very specific type of fly for fly-fishing.
12 Row about boring Norfolk town almost leads to writ as before (10)
DISTRINGAS – DI(STRING, A)S[s].   A writ directing a sheriff to distrain.
15 Person who is promising to protect cypher is a nut (9)
COCODEMER –  CO(CODE)MER, often written as a COCO DE MER.  
17 Nothing in new-fangled pattern? I would assess that (8)
PATENTOR – Anagram oif PATTERN around O.
19 Frank carries a lot for a cool walk (8)
FRESCADE – FRE(SCAD)E.  Nowadays, we usually use more than one scad. 
22 Rising hostel singers not entirely in minor keys (6)
ISLETS – backwards hidden in [ho]STEL SI[ngers].
23 African one’s seen in two neighbouring US states close to Canada (6)
NYANJA – NY(A)NY + [canad]A.   Fortunately, I tried nearby states first.   This group is also known as the Chewa, watch out for that.
26 Rodent picked up a toadstool top (4)
PACA – A CAP upside down.
27 Charm previously Poles missed in bustling Bosnia (4)
OBIA – anagram of BO[sn]IA.   It will help with the variant spelling if you know how obeah is pronounced.
29 Black and slack by the sound of it (4)
SLOE -Sounds like SLOW.   The fruit of the blackthorn, hence black, as in sloe-eyed.

15 comments on “Mephisto 3110 – Then you eat him?”

  1. Good morning,
    I hope everyone is well.

    24 ac: NUS for students inside SEI(L) – Ch. gives the latter as an alternate spelling for sile = to strain (dialect)

    33 ac: belly has carnal as a synonym in Ch.

    Many thanks to both the setter and the blogger.

  2. 18A Let-off is defined in C as “(in games) a failure to take advantage of an opportunity”

    31A C does indeed have ml. = miles

    32A “any Balkan guerrilla” is one C def

    15D C has it as “coco-de-mer” rather than just a 9-letter word

  3. morning, Vinyl

    18ac Chambers has “let-off: a failure to take advantage…,” so the def. is “Chance missed.” The wordplay is OF in *(LEFT)
    31ac ml is in Chambers as an abbr. for miles
    12dn Sherriff is not in Chambers, but sheriff is 🙂

    I have started doing these again and try not to use references, like you, so far without any conspicuous success!

  4. ….and finally cleared it up on Friday afternoon on my fourth sitting of the week. I biffed six, but I more or less understand them all now. We should all be very grateful to Vinyl for taking over this daunting task.
  5. Your toughest one yet I think Vinyl so well done for finishing. Don’t beat yourself up – you’ll gradually get the hang of the harder stuff. When I’m solving these days I find myself occasionally wondering how you’ll manage a clue without reference books and I thought parts of this one could prove to be tricky. However, you should have experienced a good feeling when you finally nailed it.
  6. All correct, going by the blog – for which much thanks – but with several not fully parsed. (Thought about ‘carnal’, for example, but didn’t check.

    Even by Mephisto standards, a very tough puzzle.

  7. “Tough!”, it says on my copy. I see others have answered your parsing queries already, vinyl. My downfall was putting in NEIVES for 28A, which matches the definition, but I thought I just didn’t understand the wordplay. And that gave me NYINJA for 22D which is a place in Tanzania. Oh well. At least today’s is easier.
  8. The timer shows about an hour for this which suggests I found it moderately but not desperately hard, although I think I may have cheated to get one or two of them (I can’t remember).
    All to no avail though because having parsed 9dn perfectly I still managed to put in HERD.
  9. Quite tricky, though I didn’t have any question marks on my copy. I found the definitions really straightforward on this one and the wordplay trickier.

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