Mephisto 2478 – Chris Feetenby

Across
1 UNS=sun*,HIP=fruit, as in rose-hip
5 STI(G)ME – stime = to peer, in Scots, and stigme = a dot used as a punctuation mark in Gk. mss (manuscripts!)
10 PO,TO,MAC – the Potomac flows through Washington DC so I guess it’s the boundary of at least some of Virginia, and therefore ‘to’ = adjacent to, Virginia.
12 OGEED = (Dee,go) rev. – ogeed is an adj. derived from ogee = an S-shaped curve
13 SWAM,PLAN “D”. Confusingly, a vlei (pinched from Dutch) is a swamp in the US and low-lying ground where a lake forms in the wet season in Southern Africa – Sossusvlei, where I’ll be sometime in September, is a Namibian place with sand dunes and other desert scenery.
16 A(DUN)/C = hooked (think of uncus) – so the money could be a catch if ‘hooked’.
18 KICKS=pleasure,TARTER = sourer and hence ‘less sweet’
19 DOLLY,CAME,R.A. – one on a dolly = mobile platform
24 SMO(LENS)K(e) – a Russian city that I can’t think of anything to tell you about right now. (Later: that was rather ignorant of me – the Wikipedia entry shows that it has some interesting history.)
25 ARCH’S,TONE – a voussoir is a wedge-shaped stone forming part of an arch.
26 ASHET = haste* – a large plate, derived from the Fr. assiette as in ‘assiette charcuterie’, always recommended for carnivores who can’t make their mind up about a starter
27 EIDETIC = (cited,i.e.) rev. – eidetic = clear and vivid, as of a mental image – i.e. just the opposite of my mental image about the word ‘eidetic’ until C came to the rescue.
29 PERONE = per,one and = the fibula in Greek.

Down
1 UPS,TAY
2 N.O.,WED – knotted in heraldry
3 H(=henry – the SI unit),O.M.,UNCLE
4 PALL=rich cloth,ESSENCE=nature, and pallescence = a pale appearance – so why we need ‘we hear’, I’m not sure
8 MEN,SREA=ears* – mens rea = ‘guilty mind’ and therefore criminal intent. New to me but I might have guessed it from the similarity to ‘mens sana in corpore sano’
11 CAPITAL=money,SHIP=(his,P)*
14 GUIL(LOCH)E – an ornamental border apparently named after a M Guillot.
17 BREW(ST.)ER – the dictionary being Brewer’s D of Phrase and Fable, which should go to the top of your booklist if you don’t have it.
18 K.O.,U,MISS – a drink of fermented mare’s milk in Russian. But I’ve been to Russia and Ukraine on holiday and can’t recall any opportunity to try it – unlike kvass which you can get nearly anywhere if you don’t mind it coming out of a dwarf petrol tanker into a shared tin cup. I never quite plucked up the courage.
19 D,E(‘S)SAU – possibly a nod to Mephisto setter Mike Laws, who has used Esau as a pseudonym.
20 FLEE,CE – CE is an EU equivalent of the old BSI kite-mark on electrical goods and the like – it’s on the back of the laptop on which I’m typing this report, for example. Checking that point got me a few funny looks from other commuters.
21 VERTU – hidden – variant of virtu – a love of the fine arts
23 LENIN = (nine,L) rev. – “The Nine” = Erato, Clio and the other seven.