Mephisto 2187 – Don Manley

Author   glhPosted on Categories Mephisto
Quick start but a slow finish on this one – I started doodling in answers during rehearsal and managed to get about half of it out without recourse to a dictionary. Then things ground to a halt. I should have checked my dictionary as soon as I got home, since I’d messed up two anagrams, entering in YSTANE and MARAS which held the right hand side up for a while.

After sorting those two out it wasn’t long before the last few went in with the HAMS/MBIRA crossing being the last to fall.

All the worplay appears to be clear, so away we go!

Across
1 SPRACK: PR in SACK
5 ST(one supposedly holy),EALE(possible word for evil)
10 TEE SHOT: or TEES HOT
11 ON(to),CE,R
13 KATORGA: OR,G in KATA(karate exercises, a new wordplay element for me)
14 ATREUS: anagram of TREASURE without RE
16 MAARS: A in MARS
18 TRITER: this was my favorite clue in the puzzle – THE WRITER without HEW
19 ARRASENE: RA in ARSENE Wenger. He was the subject of a Listener Crossword a few years ago so I’m familiar with him
21 APHELIAN: APH (initials for A P Herbert) then ELIAN (following Charles Lamb)
24 CHE,LAS(s)
26 (b)URIAL
28 PAPULA: L in PAPUA
30 ACRILAN: (CRANIAL)*
31 MB,IRA
32 (s)TINGING
33 STAYNE: (NASTY)* then (gon)E
34 SO,OGEE
 
Down
1 STEAMY: MAE West in STY
2 PENTALPHA: (THE PLAN)* In PA
3 ASPER,S(om)E
4 CHOU: hidden in barbariC HOUse
5 STAR TRAP: or START RAP
6 TO(against),TARA(bracken)
7 ENOKI: OK in IN,E reversed
8 ACROTERIUM: (MAORI,CRUET)*
9 ERAS: STARE reversed without the T
12 TRACHEARIA: anagram of (ARE,THEY,ACARI) missing YE
15 BENGALINE: BEG A LINE containing N
17 ARISTATE: SIR reversed in A STATE
20 SERPIGO: anagram of (GRIPE,SO)
22 LALLAN: LAN(d) with ALL inside
23 FLANGE: FLAN then EG reversed
25 L(eft),AIRY
27 HAMS: double definitions for buttocks and bad actors… speaking of which, anyone in Western North Carolina in the next few weeks can see me in Urinetown
29 A,R,NO

3 comments on “Mephisto 2187 – Don Manley”

  1. No problems with this one – middle of the road steady solve

    Wondered how you would get on with the french gooner George but didn’t know about the Listner connection.

  2. I got completely out of the Mephisto habit over the summer: I didn’t have access to a printer, or to my usual solving environment, which is an aeroplane somewhere over the North Sea. Not for the first time I am finding that if you don’t exercise your Mephisto muscles they quickly deteriorate.
    Like George I got going quickly on this but then got stuck. I had a big problem in the NW corner with King ARETUS of Pylos, but once I’d sorted him out I still found the SE corner slow going. And I ended up with a mistake: MOIRA for 31ac. A MOIRA is a fate, which I thought might be broadly described as an instrument of fortune. Usually if you’re solving one of these and thinking “that’s vaguely right”, then it’s wrong.
  3. Put me down for MOIRA as well, and with the same reasoning, even though I know that definitions tend to follow closely the wording in Chambers, with little room for interpretation.
    I also have recently resumed the Mephisto habit and (that aside) had been doing OK until I picked up Tim Moorey’s offering yesterday. I might need more than a week to finish that.

    Edited at 2014-09-01 05:46 am (UTC)

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