Mephisto 2418/Chris Feetenby – Enough Standard Clues to Stop You Lamping!

Author   the_odPosted on Categories Mephisto
Solving time: 21:06
As I have come to expect from Chris Feetenby’s Mephisto puzzles, I was able to complete this puzzle without resorting to Chambers. Any unfamiliar words were able to be worked out from friendly wordplay. I did check two answers afterwards, 28A and 10D, for the reasons given below, but I was not really expecting to find my other ideas in Chambers.
Newcomers to barred grids can be deterred by the notion that there are many unusual words and trickier clues. However, Mephisto does tend to have more than a smattering of clues that are no more difficult than you would expect to find in a Standard Daily Cryptic (SDC). By my reckoning there are easily eight such clues in this puzzle and I have marked them as “SDC” below. If you are still getting to grips with Mephisto, try and train yourself to pick out these clues first as they will get you up and running. Once you start entering answers, the grid can then assist with the harder clues. For instance, I did not know the artist BRUEGHEL at 16D. I could see that at 28A the “dance” was giving me ?HAY? , and that 29A was likely to end in –METER. This then gave me ?RUE?HEL so I was able to enter the answer even before fully solving all the across clues running through it.
Across
1
PUNCTULATION (L in PUNCTUATION) – “period” = full stop
9
SMART BOMBS (TRAMS rev. + BOMBS) – SDC
11
IMAUM (I + MA + UM) – my first thought here was AMEER, but of course ME does not equal “mother”. I was thrown by the fact that IMA(U)M always seems to be defined as “religious leader” – hands up anyone who has seen the clue “ I am a mosque’s leader” – or similar.
14
SQUABASH (SQUAw + BASH) – sadly, many years of solving barred grids meant that I knew this word!  An immediate write-in for me – especially with the helpful wordplay.
15
ONYMOUS (hidden) – this word always looks strange to me, but I suppose it is only the opposite of ANonymous.
17
MOROSE (MO + ROSE) – SDC
19
TIRADE (I in TRADE) – SDC
20
EGG-CUP (G + CUP after EG) – CUP = Cambridge University Press with a reference to the Curate’s Egg.
22
ACUMEN (A + CU + MEN) – SDC
24
UNDERDO (UNDER + DO) – very clever definition in this one I thought.
25
AMORANCE (A ROMANCE with the ROM reversed) – ROM from the world of IT meaning Read Only Memory, clever wordplay.
27
NICK (hidden) – SDC
28
KHAYA (HAY in KA) – I did consider BHAYA as a possibility, but I knew KA meant spirit whereas BA actually means “the soul” rather than spirit, so I plumped correctly. Add khaya to my list of trees of knowledge.
29
HYETOMETER (METEOR THEY*) – unusual word that we can now impress our friends with rather than just say rain gauge.
30
STANDARD LAMP – STANDARD + LAMP – “lamp” is a Scottish word meaning to scamper
 
Down
1
PSILOMELANE (SPOIL* + ME+ LANE)  – I am not sure that the anagram of SPOIL is being sufficiently indicated by “from”, but it is easy enough to work out what is going on with the wordplay. 
2
NAAM (A in NAM) – slight obscurity in the wordplay as well in this clue. NAM is the past tense of “nim”.
3
CRUMMOCK (C + RUM + MOCK) – maybe not in everyone’s vocabulary, but the wordplay is straightforward.
5
LOCUST (LOCUS + T) – SDC
6
AMHARIC (AM + A RICH*) – again I am not convinced by the anagram indicator, “potential” being a noun.
7
ISLAY (I SAY around L) – “inch” here meaning an island.
8
ONESIDEDLY (ONE + IS rev. + DEaDLY)
10
ACHAENOCARP (A in ACHE + NO + CARP) – helpful wordplay again, but I had to check afterwards that the answer was not ACHIENOCARP, but that never looked likely.
12
MONOGAMIST (OGAM in MONIST) – I really liked the clever definition here, with “Dutch” = wife.
16
BRUEGHEL (BURG HEEL*) – take your choice of Brueghels – I didn’t know any of them, but the alternative would have been an unlikely looking GRUEBHEL.
18
SUGARED (GAR in USED*) – I am not a fan of “to get” as a container indicator.
21
PUNCTA (PUNCTuAl) –  PUNCTUAL with numbers (letters) 6 and 8 missing.
22
ANCHOR (hidden) – I liked the definition here, but not the use of “of” to indicate that the answer was hidden.
23
MOCHA (MO +CHA) – SDC
26
TA-TA (TA twice) – SDC

3 comments on “Mephisto 2418/Chris Feetenby – Enough Standard Clues to Stop You Lamping!”

  1. I decided “lesser party” was “underdog” and I couldn’t quite see how the wordplay truncated it. Of course once my mind was thinking that way it I never considered how it really worked (and by then it couldn’t be anything else due to checking letters)
    1. I suppose I should have picked up on the fact that splitting UNDERDO into UNDER and DO for the wordplay is a little uninspired, so perhaps it was not surprising that you looked for alternatives.
  2. A very recent hands up for IMAM – “One leader of Muslims? You can say that again (4)” appeared in an old Independent crossword I did last night.

    Pieter Brueghel the Elder is one of my favourite painters – I think visitors to this site would have a lot of fun with his Netherlandish Proverbs. The painting depicts over 100 proverbs and idioms from the 16th century – some of which are still around today. Look for such phrases as ‘the blind leading the blind’, ‘hold a candle to the devil’, ‘belling the cat’, ‘armed to the teeth’, ‘put a spoke in the wheel’, ‘marry over the broomstick’…

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