Solving time – 37:44
This was probably one of Mike Laws’ easier offerings, as I normally find him the hardest of the three Mephisto setters.
Across
1 | TWAS – TWA (ceased operating in 2001 when they were bought out by American Airlines) + S(weden). |
4 | EASTWARD – EA + ST(e)WARD, which is indeed the direction to go from Spain to Italy. |
10 | HACKBUTEER – BUTE inside HACKER. |
12 | DELENDA – END inside lead*. Latin, literally “things to be deleted”. |
14 | LATE LATIN – LA, TELA, TIN |
16 | ERRATA – RAT inside ERA |
17 | E-BOOK – OBE rev. + OK |
19 | AMORIST – IS inside A MORT (loose woman). |
23 | TOURACO – TOUR (round), A, CO (Colorado). “Seen” is just a linking word I think. |
24 | OFFER – Doffer (someone who removes bobbins from a machine) without the first letter. |
25 | CANTOS – CAN’T + S.O. rev. |
27 | AU FROMAGE – AUF (German for on) + ROMAGE (Shakespearean word for tumult). |
29 | IGUANID – I, GUAN, I’D – a guan is “a large noisy American arboreal game bird”. |
31 | TWI-NIGHTER – WIN inside TIGHTER – a baseball match where the teams play each other twice, in the afternoon and evening of the same day |
32 | ALIENATE – LIEN inside A, ATE. Definition is “transfer”, which is a legal meaning of the word. |
33 | YAWS – two meanings. |
Down
1 | THE BEANO – BEAN inside THEO. A children’s comic that’s been published since 1938. |
2 | ACT DROP – (Top card)* – the curtain which comes down between acts of a play. |
3 | SKYLARKER – SKYLARK + ER, suppressing meaning “getting on top of” here. |
4 | E-BOAT – BO inside EAT. A fast German motor torpedo boat. Chambers isn’t sure what the E means, suggesting “enemy boat” or German Eilboot, from Eile=speed. |
5 | STEEP-TO – TEE inside stop*. A nautical term, meaning “going down precipitously into the water”. |
6 | TELLER – two meanings. |
7 | WEE – two meanings again. |
8 | RADIOSCOPY – R (phonetic alphabet) + ADIOS + COPY |
9 | DEAN – two meanings yet again. I rashly put DALE here at first, but soon spotted the mistake. |
11 | VERMIFUGAL – (Give armful)* |
15 | ABERNETHY – A, BERNE, THY. Presumably Berne is French-speaking because the Germans spell it Bern. |
18 | KLOSTERS – K, LOST, ER’S. That’s the third or fourth puzzle this has appeared in as an answer in the last week or so, one of them clued almost identically. |
20 | STAMINA – animates rev. without the E (energy). |
21 | CATASTA – canasta with the N (last letter of Queen) replaced with T. It’s a “dreaded stage” used for torture. |
22 | CRONIN – NOR inside NIC(e), all rev. A.J. Cronin, the Scottish novelist who wrote Dr. Finlay’s Casebook. |
26 | AGOGE – AGOG + E. In ancient Greek music, tempo or sequence in melody. |
27 | AIDA – hmm, this doesn’t work. It’s stadia with the first two letters missing, but there’s no indication in the clue that it should be reversed. |
But I got one wrong. I invented LACE-LATIN (with LACE being the web, LA, TIN). I’d not heard of TELA. Oh well.
Paul
I suspect a printers’ error for 27dn, with a reversal indicator left out. I’d be very surprised if the setter made such an obvious mistake.