Mephisto 2536 Mike Laws

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Mephisto
The puzzle contains a mini-theme. It is puzzle number 25-36. 25 is the square of 5; 36 is the square of 6; 1A=numbers; 15A contains “five”; 25A contains “six” 33A=squared. I didn’t realise this until after I had solved what for me was an easy puzzle.

However, when last Tuesday I suggested it was straightforward this was greeted with some dissent from newer solvers. The argument for needing some easier puzzles to encourage new solvers is well rehearsed, understood and supported. However I think this puzzle may highlight the difficulty of moving from the daily cryptic to the bar crosswords. This is surely evidence of the need for the weekly publication of an intermediate bar crossword, harder than the daily cryptic but not as difficult as the regular Mephisto, to enable solvers to move forward in incremental steps.

Across
1 NUMBERS – two meanings; 1=book in the old testament 2=slang for songs; easy clue;
7 ORFF – OR-FF; OR=alternative; F=forte=loud (music); Carl Orff 1895-1982 German composer of Carmina Burana; easy clue;
10 ACARPELOUS – A(CAR)PE-(SOUL)*; an American flower without carpels; easy to derive from wordplay and I had met the word before;
12 REUTTER – REUT(T)ER; Reuters was founded in London in 1865 by the German Paul Reuter initially to give financial analysis rather than news, which came later. It is now part of the Thomson Group; easy clue;
13 CALCAR – two meanings; 1=a spur 2=an oven for annealing;
14 ESCHAR – E(SCH)AR; SCH=school; EAR=attention; a slough of dead tissue (pathology); easy to derive;
15 HIGH-FIVE – HI(GHFI)VE; HIVE=colony; F,G,H,I are consecutive letters “relocated”; easy clue;
17 RACA – hidden word (py)RACA(nth); biblical word for worthless; easy to derive;
18 STREAK – ST(R)EAK; cut=STEAK; R=Romeo (phonetic alphabet); “dash” is the definition as per Erica Roe at Twickenham Rugby ground 1982;easy clue;
22 GOPURA – GO(PUR)A; PUR-2=the jack (card) in post and pair; a tower over a temple in India;
24 ARCH – (m)ARCH; another easy one;
25 SIXPENCE – SP(IX)ENCE; SPENCE=a parlour in Fort William; XI=eleven=a team and reverse that; a “bob” was a shilling or twelve old pence so SIXPENCE was half of (a) bob; nice clue;
26 SHTETL – (“the last” minus a=American)*; Golders Green perhaps?;
27 POTFUL – POT-FUL(l); full=drunk; another easy one;
30 HOYLAKE – HOE arround (alky)*; town on the Wirral Peninsular next to the famous golf course; easy clue;
31 OFFER,PRICE – OFF(ER-PR)ICE; OFFICE=State Department; easy solve from either the definition or the wordplay;
32 D-DAY – ADD reversed + Y=unknown factor (algebra); simple clue;
33 SQUARED – S-QUARE-D; QUARE=dialect for “queer”=quaint;
 
Down
1 NARC – (missio)N-ARC; ARC=(electrical) discharge; American narcotics agent;
2 MAULGRE – (real mug)*; MAULGRE=maugre=old word for ill-will;
3 BROCHE – BR(i)OCHE; brioche=egg submarine then remove “i”; brocade;
4 EPHA – EP-HA; EP=extended play (old 1950s record – several uninterrupted kisses longer than a 45, shorter than an LP); HA=hoc anno=this year; a Hebrew measure of dry goods;
5 SLEEVE – S(LE)EVE; LE=French “the”; reference Seve Ballesteros, iconic dashing golfer that my wife still swoons over;
6 HOUSETOP – HO(USE(d)-TO)P; did=”used to” then remove d=degree; HOP=dance;
7 OUTCRY – (court)*-Y; another easy one;
8 FLEA,CIRCUS – (cruel as if)* surrounding c=country’s leader; “show” is the definition;
9 FERRARA – car=Ferrari then steal “i” and add “a”=first of agents; railway junction between Bologna and Padua;
11 WAITERHOOD – W((AIT)+(hero)*)OD; DOW=dhow “turned up”; AIT=island as in Chiswick Ait just down the Thames from the Fuller’s brewery;
16 FALSTAFF – F(last)*AFF; the vain and cowardly Sir John; easy clue, not least because of the unimaginative definition combined with an anagram of “last”;
18 SMASHED – S-MASHED; S=soprano; MASHED=pickeer; slang for over indulgence of Mistress Quickly’s wares;
19 FUNFAIR – FUNF-AIR; once again my German for businessmen comes into play with FUNF=five; easy clue;
20 SHELFY – SH(ELF)Y; SHY=attempt; easy clue;
21 WILKES – W(ILK)ES(t); reference parliamentary reformer John Wilkes 1725-1797 who obtained for publishers the right to publish verbatim what was said in Parliament. For this reason he is commemorated by a statue just off Fleet Street in Fetter Lane; very easy;
23 PETARA – PE(TAR)A; Hindi basket for clothes; easy to derive;
28 OGPU – O-GP-U; OU=South African man; Russian secret police 1922-1934;
29 LIED – two very obvious meanings;

15 comments on “Mephisto 2536 Mike Laws”

  1. I agree that this was a somewhat easier Mephisto. It occurs to me that those who like, for example, Azed would say that this crossword IS the intermediate step… and there is also some amount of slack since it is not necessary to finish the Mephisto in order to get some benefit and enjoyment from it.
    1. I wonder how much support there is for the contention that Mephisto is a stepping stone to AZED (who took over in The Observer from Ximenes some 30 years ago)?

      I think we have to ignore the specials such as Printers Devilry and so on and look at the plain ones. Those I have found vary in difficulty quite a bit. I agree not usually as easy as this puzzle but today’s 2537 is I think on a par with most plain AZED.

      1. I don’t do the Mephisto very often, but I’d say it’s on a similar level of difficulty to plain Azeds. In other words, if you can do Mephisto, you’ll probably enjoy Azed, available free from the Guardian site.

        Tom B.

        1. On plain puzzles, I think it’s a toss-up whether Azed or Mephisto is easier, depending on how much difference many more years of weekly Azed solving makes.
          1. A very interesting point, Peter. Although Mephisto has been going longer than Azed it has been set by a variety of setters, not just one. Personally I think that makes Mephisto the more interesting of the two. Going back into the archives for example and doing puzzles by now retired setters such as Chris Feetenby is great fun whereas there is a sameness about Azed. I guess we can both see a lot of his constructions quite quickly simply through years of doing his puzzles.
  2. I think I was the dissenting voice on difficulty. To put that in context, when I made that comment, I had looked at the puzzle about 3 times late at night just before going to sleep (when my brain wasn’t exactly sharp) and had finished the right-hand half only. The following evening I completed the entire left-hand half in about 40mins, so all-up I would have to agree that it wasn’t so hard after all.

    It’s a trite comment, but my work and family commitments mean I just have to fit the crossword in when I can, which leads to very varied experiences and can make it hard to judge relative difficulty (complete failure on Friday’s cryptic was a classic example!).

    SHETL came up a few weeks ago. At 17 I had CANT for a while (although that is “meaningless” rather than “worthless”

    Congratulations Jimbo on spotting the “numbers” theme.

  3. well I am new to Mephisto, having only been attempting them for the last few weeks. I got far closer to finishing this than I have with any other, and it has certainly spurred me on to keep bashing away at them. I might actually HAVE finished it, if I hadn’t entered a wrong answer.

    19dn: I invented “funfkin” as a possible German word for quintet – I know perfectly well that “funf” means five, it didn’t occur to me that ‘quintet’ just meant five, I was looking for something else. The wordplay made sense(ish) .. FUNm entertainment – F(or) – KIN, family. Consequently I couldn’t get SQUARED: the only other that I missed, OGPU, I might well have guessed if I’d have the U at the finish.

    I agree that moving from Times Cryptic to Mephisto is more of a difficulty cliff than a difficulty curve. It’s not so much the difficulty of the clues as the obscure answers (for which I fully appreciate the necessity); if the answer is something I’ve never heard of but I can figure the first letter or two from wordplay or crossing leters, I can very probably crack it. If I have no crossing letters, and can’t figure out which bit of wordplay gives me the start, then I’m stranded.

    Words I’ve never heard of but could easily imagine being words:
    ACARPELOUS, REUTTER, BROCHE, SHELFY.

    “What the hell is that?” words:
    CALCAR, ESCHAR, RACA, GOPURA, MAULGRE, EPHA, PETARA.

    I enjoyed this one a lot more than I have the others I’ve attempted, despite not quite finishing it. I would agree on the idea of a barred crossword with slightly lowered difficulty.

    1. Thank you for making the effort to give us your thoughts. The views of new(ish) solvers are the most important ones in this debate.

      Can I be so bold as to suggest that you’re not using Chambers properly? When you can’t make sense of a clue you should look up each of the words to find exact and/or off beat meanings. So, you should have looked up both “quintet” and “five”. There’s a classic example of this in today’s puzzle.

      Under “tags” on RHS of this blog you’ll find “tips and tricks” which may be helpful. See also M2505 blogged 7/09/2008

      1. All suggestions gratefully received. I should have been more suspicious of FUNFKIN precisely because it’s not in Chambers, nor a proper noun.
      2. I started doing Mephisto about 6 months ago. It’s true that there is a qualitative difference between it and the Times cryptic, but there is a fair bit of variation in both the difficulty of clues in any given puzzle, and also between different puzzles. This means that you can always manage some clues as many are no harder than ordinary cryptic clues, and in due course manage some complete puzzles. I really don’t see the value in a puzzle of intermediate difficulty.

        I keep a book of words (it’s surprising how many recur – I dragged one up in today’s puzzle) ) and also of abbreviations which do not appear in Times cryptics and are often key to wordplay.

        And I also read Jimbo’s excellent blogs, of course….

  4. I liked this one, to me it was easier than most mephistos but mostly because the words were familiar to me, there were a few barred-grid regulars in here (MAULGRE, OGPU, RACA, NARC, EPPA) and some good wordplay to obscure words (HOY LAKE – not easy for non-UK solvers, I would expect).

    You can’t go wrong with a crossword that has the word SHELFY in it! I will try to use that to describe something or someone this week.

    Newcomers – use Chambers Word Wizards (or the online chambers). It’s not cheating (at least in my mind) because you still have to piece together the wordplay.

    1. Be warned that Word Wizards, although I believe it will assess permissibility for Scrabble using the full Chambers, is not quite a substitute. Aside from the obvious issue of not giving you definitions, because of various rules of Scrabble, words like kilfud-yoking (a fireside disputation, one of my favourite Scots words from C) are not allowable in Scrabble and therefore seem not to be words. If you solve these puzzles in the same room as a computer, the online version of C is good, though not cheap.
  5. I am a new ‘prentice to Mephisto and some weeks it seems easy (thank you, Mike Laws for this one which I completed successfully the same day) while others I keep going back to over the week hoping a new penny will drop – it often does. I enjoy the harder ones too, more fun for longer, and more satisfaction with each clue mastered, even if I have to wait for the blog to understand the ones I didn’t get. I am saving up for a new Chambers, mine is my late mother’s 8th edition.
  6. Just under 25 mins without C – one wrong answer, 13/CALCAI – double defs aren’t much help under these conditions unless you know the word from one of them or the checkers make the right word obvious.

    On my copy printed from the website, there was pale blue shading of the words in the mini-theme, which helped. Possibly added later – I did this just before the golf coverage yesterday.

    Getting back to relative difficulty, it may have changed over the years. While tidying up my bookshelves [Hurrah! says Mrs B], I just found a book of Mephisto puzzles, published in 2003 and including puzzles written by Mike Laws after the “three setters” system started in 1995. Of the puzzles with times noted (about 8 of the first 23), there are two under 20 minutes, plus an absurd 8:30 for one – easily my quickest-ever barred grid solution. These were aided by a cross-puzzle Nina which usually gives a broad hint about 1A. I think my Azed PB is around 16 minutes.

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