Most of this fell rather readily, I had to check a few spellings. I like this style of Mephisto where the obscure words have fair wordplay and enough checking letters to give someone of my level a good shot at solving.
Having said that, there is one where I am not 100%. Someone with a better knowledge of Europe may be able to help me.
Edit: And help was received, I was in error twice. I’ll leave my errors up with edits after.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | USELESSLY – US and then LESS in ELY. This one reads oddly, but the wordplay works. |
| 10 | POLY,PET,ALOUS(=ASOUL*) – having many petals |
| 13 | UN(=French male),HOL(s),Y(ear) – Impious in its more common usage here |
| 14 | COLE’S LAW – This is obscure… Cole Latent Virus (CoLV) is virus first isolated in Brazil. Edit: as suggested in comments below, this should be COLD’S LAW and I had the wrong virus. |
| 15 | NEUSS – SEUSS with N replacing the S at the beginning. A guess from wordplay that turned out to be a city near Dusseldorf |
| 17 | TATOUAY – A,OUT* in TAY. Thankfully checking letters made the spelling of this one obvious. |
| 19 | BOYAR – BOYAU is a communications trench, I learned while blogging this |
| 21 | SATCHEL – (TALES)* around CH. I used to favor a satchel, but go for a small backpack these days. |
| 24 | SHAM(b)A – another tricky letter removal clue |
| 26 | LANGLAUF – checking letters helped here, didn’t know the word before |
| 28 | FARCI – ummed and ahhed betwen FARCI and SARCI not knowing whether to anagram “if” or “is”. French term for stuffing food. |
| 30 | YANKEE(=one drawn)DOM(=MOD<=) – cute clue. Yankees being from the north of the US |
| Down | |
| 2 | ELO(=OLE<=),CUT,IONIST – great construction |
| 3 | LY(soso)ME – why do I get the feeling that Feetenby, Laws and Moorey were biochemists in previous lives? |
| 4 | SERO,SAS(s) – see above |
| 5 | STULM – L(liquid) inside (MUST)*. It may have been around for longer, but I’ve been noticing L for liquid more frequently, particularly in Mephistos and Listeners |
| 6 | LANES???? – OK, I think it’s LANES as a method of getting around, but the wordplay seems to be hinting at LA NEZ? Can anyone enlighten me? For now I’m sticking to LANES. Edit – thanks Bill, this should be LANDE, D(=Germany)in LANE. |
| 7 | WOOLLYHAIRED – (LOWLY,RIO,HEAD)*, cute anagram |
| 8 | TU,LAR(Lybia Arab Republic),AEMIC(=I,CAME)* – I should really go back and have a crack at college biology after a few Mephistos |
| 9 | PSYWAR – The Scots version of war, meaning to worst or beat. |
| 16 | ROCHDALE – CH in (ORDEAL)* |
| 18 | YAKUTSK – I knew the town, looked up the spelling, needed this to get the bottom half. |
| 20 | A,F,LAME |
| 23 | MAVEN – reversing the order meaning putting the AV bible in the men. Awkward. |
| 25 | AGISM(o) – not in favor of the old. |
I think the answer has to be LANES. There is a large coastal area of France called Les Landes – from the Gironde estuary nearly all the way to Bayonne. You can make LANDES by putting D for Germany inside LANES. But the clue doesn’t quite seem to work, as lanes cannot be “a way”, and the clue seems to indicate LANDES at least as clearly as LANES.
Bill
Neil