Mephisto 2473

Posted on Categories Mephisto
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.

5 comments on “Mephisto 2473”

  1. Good for you – I couldn’t solve this one without resorting to a few references. Finally when skylark fell, the rest of the grid settled in nicely. For me this was a return to earth after being high on solving the first Listener for the year.
  2. I managed to solve this without access to a dictionary, which I usually regard as impossible. But I too was totally baffled about how “AIDA” was meant to work. Either it is reversed or not only are the first two missing but two more are swapped. I wrote it in really lightly at first, fully expecting that the acrosses would not fit and I’d have an aha moment about how the clue really worked.

    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

  3. I see we were all puzzled by AIDA. Another clue typo maybe? There’s a mistake in the e-grid for 2474 by the way. The last letter of 5 down should be wholly contained within bars. Jimbo.
    1. Strangely enough, I managed to solve it (and post it off) without even noticing the missing bar.

      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.

  4. It’s curious how much trouble sport-related clues cause me. If I remember correctly, TWINIGHTER was my major sticking point in this puzzle.

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