Mephisto 2499-Mike Laws

Most of this puzzle fell into place, but it would have helped if I could have worked out the wordplay for 1ac, as I originally had CANNABIS in and that held up my progress on the NE corner. Once I realised it was CANNABIN (even though I still don’t know the wordplay), the NE corner followed quickly. Total solving time, including recourse to reference sources, was just over an hour.

ACROSS

1 CANNABIN – not sure of wordplay beyond CA being “Bill brought back”

7 FLAW – double definition. A flaw can be a gust of wind.

10 (<=MALE) – an ancient warrior kingdom east of the Tigris River

11 VI(AB)LE

12 ARTIC-H(OK)E

13 T-HER-(<=FOE)

15 M-(<=AIDE) – something to do with computing?

16 KA(LOOK)I – a card game. KAI is the Maori word for “food”

18 ESC-ROLL – ESC is the “Escape” key on your keyboard, of course.

21 E-(c)LEMENT – Definition is He (helium)

23 SUSANNE – which along with Mia is an anagram of “amanuensis”

25 (<=NIT)-ED

27 RET-ABLE

29 OBSTETRIC – (totes crib)*

30 SE(ME)ME – SEME seems to have come up a lot recently in Crosswordland. In linguistics, a sememe is a basin unit of meaning.

31 Y-ORE

32 ODOR – hiddden in “TheODORe” – the American speller of ODOUR, which can ,ean “repute”.

33 BERG-A-(<=TOM)

DOWN

1 CENT – homophone of SCENT

2 A(L-THEA)A

3 NA(KED)N-ESS

4 A-C(RE)AGE

5 BE(TOKE)N

6 (<=IN)-COL – a Nicol prism is a crystal used for the polarization of light.

7 FAH-LORE – a sulphide of antimony and copper

8 ALKY(L)

9 WE(EVIL)ED

14 DOOR-N-BOOM – A doorn-boom is a South African acacia

15 (<=MAES)-TO-S.O. – it is useful to learn your musical terms when solving barred crosswords. MAESTOSO means “with majesty”

17 S-MATTER

19 STEERER – (eserter)*

20 CUTTING – double def.

22 VELCRO – (LuCk) in (over)*

24 NE(<=ME)B

26 A(B.E.)D

27 EVE(n)T – the common newt, more commonly seen as EFT in crosswords.