Mephisto 2514 – Paul McKenna

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Mephisto
Solving time: c. 2.5 hours

IN theory I should wait another 115 minutes to post this, but on such a filthy night I’ll trust you not to rush out to a late-collection postbox.

I found this very tough, partly because I missed quite a few of the easier clues (19, 29, 26, 25 in particular) until late in the day, and therefore had a very empty SW corner. Any offers for the wordplay at 24 gratefully received – and bits of 35 and 7 too.

Across
1 J,I.T.N. = ‘news broadcaster’,EY = ye rev. – the def. is ‘cheap’, a less well-known meaning of jitney than ‘low fare minibus’. – it seems that a jitney was once a U.S. nickel, by way of “jeton”
6 A=adult,VENUE
12 ENL=Len*,A,CEMENT
13 (w)EDGE – wedge = ingot of gold/silver
14 KALININ – ‘nil’ rev. in kain=tribute. Mikhail Kalinin was the titular head of the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1946. I “remembered” him by back-formation from the city name Kaliningrad, given to both Tver and Königsberg.
15 CRU=vintage(L)LER=rel. rev. – a cruller (N Am) is a kind of sweet cake, fried in fat
18 KILT=”in Cork murdered”,Y=thorn – the name of the Old English letter þ, which was often replaced by y in writing and printing, leading to all that “Ye Old” nonsense
20 TRAIK = to lose one’s way in Scots. – I in kart rev.
22 HYDRANTS – anag. &lit.
24 SURROYAL = a tine (point) on a deer’s antlers above the royal’, which is another tine. A picture is worth a thousand words. But can’t see the wordplay.
25 O.R.=other ranks,L,O.P.=observation point
27 TE(TR.)A(n) – a tetra is some kind of flower/plant in Spenser. Tean = from Teon (Greece), and hence = Anacreontic as the poet Anacreon came from Teon. Last answer in, as first letter was unchecked and all of the preceding was new to me.
30 KIE(S,TE)R – a kiester is a safe in the US (and also your backside!). A kier is some kind of vat – one worth remembering.
32 H,AUTEUR – def.: surquedy = arrogance. An ‘auteur’ is a great film director
33 (b)R(ON)E(w) – a rone is a gutter, and a blash is a splash of liquid. ON = at the risk of, I guess, without checking C to confirm
34 INFLECTION = “infl.,lection” with L = learner ‘lost’. desinence = ending, and inflection = change in (word) ending
35 TALENT – claw (talent = talon),gift, and ‘Attic gold’ are all defs, but I can’t see what “Dull means” is doing.
36 S(DE)IGN = disdain, which is ‘coy’ in Shakespeare
 
Down
2 INDRI – hidden word. A type of lemur, whose name derives from a linguistic misunderstanding, actually meaning “look!” in the local lingo.
3 TEGULARLY = in style of roof tiles. regularly=normally, with first letter changed.
4 E,LUL(l) – Elul is a month in the Jewish calendar
5 YAK,ETY=yet*,YAK
7 VELDT = “felt”. But I don’t know who/what Koster is.
8 EMI(G)RATE – G = gourde = a unit of currency in Haiti.
9 UNI-CITY – unicity = uniqueness
10 ETNA = ante rev.
11 GECK=scoff,OS=bone
16 RE(DALE,R)TS – “beyond those” indicates that {RETS = soaks} goes outside (DALE,R)
17 PANETTONI = (I ate, no, p,n,t)* – last three from initial letters. Very nice fruity sponge cakes available for Christmas in your local Italian deli.
19 THROTTLE – 2 defs – and what I nearly did to myself for not solving it for ages.
21 CURT,AN,A – a short sword with no point, used for ceremonial purposes
23 S(HARE)D – SD is the IVR for Swaziland.
26 PREEN = “pre-en” = M
28 RENIG = Irish version of “renay”, and gin(g)er = mettle, rev.
29 WHIT(e)
31 I,RID = a plant like the iris.

14 comments on “Mephisto 2514 – Paul McKenna”

  1. 24a ROY (a fashion-conscious young, Australian male) in SURA (fermented palm sap) L (left)

    GRM

    1. Thanks for both – should have thought of that kind of Victoria, and failed to chase Koster hard enough in Google searches – “Koster veldt” would have done the trick, it turns out.
  3. Peter, thanks for filling in a lot of gaps.

    I was feeling pleased with myself for having completed my first 2 Mephistos without a lot of trouble, then this arrived as my nemesis. The top, centre and left half look nicely full but the bottom line and the SE corner remained discouragingly empty.

    1. I hope you’ve had a go at 2515 which is relatively easy and should give you your confidence back.
      1. Thanks for the encouragement Jim. Yes I’ve done 2515 although I still have three or four spaces unfilled. I’m still not sure that I like the solving process of Mephisto though. I’m a bit of a purist – I like to do the Times unaided. That is obviously not possible for the Mephisto – if it were possible to limit use of the dictionary just to check an answer that would be OK, but I find myself instead embarking on internet research and covering my desk with reference books (such as the Encylopaedia of Mythology looking for Nordic sea-gods.) For me that takes away the fun of a cryptic crossword – but perhaps it’s just a matter of getting better at it.
        1. This is an interesting observation that has given me pause. I think possibly the mind set for bar crosswords is slightly different.

          In the daily cryptic a good many clues are solved direct from the definition in the clue and the checking letters with the word play then being “reverse engineered”. In 24071 today 8D REVELLER is a classic example of that.

          That is less likely in a bar crossword because the answers are often obscure words and the only approach is to use the word play to derive an answer and then verify it by look up. I personally find that very satisfying.

          I look things up much less now than when I started but still have to use references. I don’t know that there are more obscure towns, football teams, gods, authors, composers and historical figures in the bar crosswords than in the daily cryptics – which sometimes has some very odd people and places in it.

  4. 20a I think that the vehicle maybe a TROIKA rather than a KART, giving A in TR(o)IK(a)

    Removal of the O and A being justified by “old disabled” and “just about” respectively, and the initial “One in…” supplying the A to be inserted in the remaining TR,IK

    35a “Dull means claw…” could be a reference to Love’s Labour’s Lost; Act IV, Sc2: where Dull (the Constable) states “If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.”

    Bill

  5. 20a has nothing to do with ‘kart’ or ‘troika’.

    It is A (one) in TRIK[e] (old disabled vehicle just about)

    GRM

  6. Correct! – In C, trike (well tricycle in fact) has the reference to ‘disabled’ that I carelessly assumed ‘kart’ might have.
  7. Oh dear… not my greatest effort – I had written in KEDGIER at 30 thinking that thinking that the safety came from the anchor, that kept me from the rest of the Florida corner.
  8. The great and the good struggling with this one AS WELL as me.

    Personally – and irrelevantly – one of my fave Chuck Berry lines is: “It was a souped-up jitney, was a cherry red 53. Took it down to Orleans to celebrate the anniversary.”

    Woo … and indeed Hoo

    miles3659

  9. I thought this an excellent puzzle of Ximemean standard that I really enjoyed wrestling with. My thanks to Paul McKenna.

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