Solving time: about 20 minutes, with one dictionary look-up but also one wrong answer from trying to be a smart-arse and solving most of this one without Chambers. By my reckoning, about half the clues in this puzzle could be solved by a good Times solver without Chambers, and these give you a big help towards the rest. Like Jimbo in his reports, I’ve used S below to indicate these “starter” clues, and C to indicate the ones where I’d expect most solvers to need to look something up in Chambers.
For general advice about this type of puzzle, take a look at an Azed-related posting of mine at fifteensquared – most of what I say there applies to Mephisto puzzles too. Also have a look at Mephisto tips from Jimbo based on an earlier easy Mephisto.
Of the three Mephisto setters, Mike Laws seems to me the likeliest to give you an easy puzzle like this, though he can also write much harder ones. Difficulty varies quite a lot on these puzzles – easy clues giving you checking letters at the beginning of words can help a lot, like 1 and 12 across and 18 and 3/28 down in this puzzle.
This puzzle has one unusual feature – 40 answers in the grid rather than the usual 36, though three are in pairs giving 37 clues in all. variations from the usual count of 36 are usually downwards rather than upwards.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 S | LEA(p),SABLE – apart possibly from fur=sable, this is a daily paper clue, and “that can be” is a strong pointer towards an -ABLE ending. |
| 12 S | OATH – hidden in ‘boathouse’ – definitely an easy one |
| 13/14 | W(ATCH=chat*)ING,BRIEF – the tricky point here is {fan=>WING} – “fan” can mean something spreading in a fan shape like a bird’s wing or tail. Nice mention of the other paper with a famous barred-grid puzzle in the clue. |
| 15 | GA(TE(L)E)G – a tricky abbreviation – L=league – takes this just of the “starter” group |
| 16 S | (l)APSE – routine stuff unless you’ve never seen this bit of ecclesiastical architecture |
| 17 C | C(YES)ES – “these French” is in the same style as “the French” = le/la/les. The answer is a difficult word which just turns out to be “pregnancies”. |
| 18 C | F(IST=sit*)-LAW – the law of brute force. This is the one I got wrong, seeing the uproar as FLAP and putting FISTLAP. It turns out that “flaw” has a second entry in C, with defs including “uproar”. A chance here to note that for hyphenated answers in barred-grid puzzles, you don’t get a (X-Y) enumeration, or even “(X, hyphenated)”. |
| 19 C | PLASH – this is a quite tricky double def – the strange word “plash” turns out to have three entries in C, with meanings including “bend down” and “sudden downpour”. I remembered a watery connection from plash=puddle seen in previous puzzles. |
| 22 | G(RANI)TE – rani=princess, in get*. {princess=>RANI} is worth remembering – a handy bunch of letters so used quite a bit. |
| 25 S | ICE-FREE – fierce*,E from creaturE. “trained” is the anagrind here. |
| 27 C | (g)REAVE – {plunder=REAVE} is a barred-grid commonplace. {thicket=GREAVE} is not, but seeing it as a possible variant of “grove” is the kind of “word imagination” that can get you a long way in these puzzles. |
| 29 S | O(CTA=act*)VAL – classified as a starter because although octaval = “based on the number 8” is obscure, it’s easy to see from other oct- words, and the wordplay is fairly easy. |
| 31 C | GARRYA = (Ayr,rag) rev. Garrya is a shrub named after a Mr Garry. Given enough experience of Banksia, Bougainvillea and the like, no “name-a or name-ia” word is a surprise. |
| 34 S | M(I’M)E – one’s = I’m, oneself = me. Nicely worked structure but nothing difficult here. |
| 35 C | A,R.(MILL)A. – mill is old slang for “to box” and hence “common old box”. And an armilla is a bracelet. |
| 36/37 | WA,TERM,OCCASI(o)N. A water-moccasin is a type of snake. WA = Washington, TERM = “school session”, then “no ordinary event” means you lose the O=ordinary from OCCASION=event. |
| 38 C | AESC = case* – Aesc (=ash) is a ligature in the printing sense – æ or Æ, representing an old runic character. |
| 39 S | GAMYNESS – woman=AMY replaces the UIN in “Guinness”. With Guinness in plain sight in the clue, most of this answer is under your nose. |
| Down | |
| 2 | (Wyatt) EARP,I(E)CE – to “ice” is to kill (US slang), and a difficult meaning of “earpiece” is a “a square box for advertisment etc printed at the top of a newspaper page”. I filled this in from wordplay but the def. was new to me. |
| 3 S | A=article,TISSUE=paper. A chance to note that when the answer is two words you get told that, but not the word-lengths. |
| 4 S | SH(EET=tee rev.)Y – short=SHY as in “they were three runs shy of the target to win”. SHEETY is not a familiar word but easy enough to imagine from sheet. |
| 5 S | A,W,FUL=”flu developing” – a clue that’s topical, probably by, er, fluke. |
| 6/23 S | BAGGAGE = a cheeky woman,RECLAIM=miracle* |
| 7 C | E,C(i)TY,PAL – an ectype is a copy |
| 8 | GHEE – eh=what in e.g., all rev. Ghee is clarified butter used in Indian cuisine |
| 9 S | AILS,A – which gives me the chance to remind you that the “Some first names” section at the back of Chambers is a place the setters love to look – a little mini-dictionary on its own. Take a look if you need more about Ailsa. |
| 10 S | KNEE – move the N in ‘keen’. |
| 11 S | EGGS=incites,HELL=”severe censure”, as in “the papers are giving those MPs hell about their expenses at the moment”. |
| 18 S | FAIR GAME – 2 defs, one by example (with indication, as always in Mephistos) |
| 20 S | ST(r)(JAM)ESS. St James’s Square is just north of Pall Mall. |
| 21 C | GREYLAG = ((e)gg-layer)* – clever wordplay with “but” = “except for”. A greylag is a kind of goose and therefore an egg-layer |
| 24 S | INVITEE= I,(I in EVENT*) |
| 26 C | S(A MA)AN – the saman (also samaan) is “the rain tree” as Chambers helpfully tells us. Note that “samaan” does not get its own entry in Chambers – you have to notice that the similar “saman” includes it. Chambers is more helpful with cross-references like this than it used to be, but I believe they still have a rule that if the x-ref would have been less than an inch or two away, it can be left out. (Old hands may tell you about the days when “emalangeni” could only be found as part of the def. for “lilangeni”, now 386 pages away.) |
| 28 S | ARM,CO. – a little bit of advertising for the people who make crash barriers (not yet generic enough to appear in Chambers) |
| 30 | TAW,N.Y. – tawny is a kind of port, and an ally=all(e)Y-taw=taw is a big marble. |
| 32 C | A,ROW = “in a row”, or “one after another” |
| 33 S | RICH – 2 defs. |
If Peter tried to take a dictionary into the Cheltenham final that would be cheating (not that it would be much use to him the speed those guys work at). No other use of dictionary, thesaurus, atlas, Wiki etc is cheating. Each solver is free to solve each puzzle any way that gives them pleasure and most of us used everything we could lay our hands on when we first started on the daily cryptic.
Bar crosswords are designed to test the solver’s ability to first analyse a clue and then to synthesise an answer. By using obscure words they stop the solver guessing the answer from the definition without understanding the wordplay (something that goes on in the daily puzzles all the time). That is why they improve ones ability to do the daily puzzles. There is little quite so satisfying as deriving an answer, looking it up in Chambers and finding that you’ve got it right.
Jack, you have said that you want to complete the daily puzzle faster than you do. I would suggest that becoming proficient at Mephisto would significantly assist you in that objective.
A tad nervous and clumsy and all over rather quicker than expected. Sounds familiar.
I took Jimbo’s advice comparing one of his “easy” solves with the puzzle and what I noticed was that there were a few clues of a conventional nature which could be conventionally solved. On Peter’s advice I then printed 2542 (above), found some doable clues which opened he way to solving the rest which I managed in under 2 hours with no errors, which was good seeing as I started more in hope than expectation. Chambers not yet arrived but was able to justify unknown words via Internet. I agree to an extent with Jack and found little that was either amusing or elegant but even though this was apparently an easy Mephisto I did note that unscrambling the clue was more difficult than the normal daily. If this will help my speeds on the daily then it is worthwhile persevering as I need to get quicker so I can restart my life. Thanks for the additional info on the blog and I will certainly look at the links suggested. Thanks also to Jimbo for his encouragement and advice (hope he sees this). So all in all my first experience was a mixture of disappointment and elation. Again, sounds familiar.
This was an easy puzzle and you may struggle rather more with 2543 so if you have the time try a few more where the blog is already available and you can get instant feedback on your efforts. That’s how these blogs cut the learning curve down from months to weeks.
Ailsa Craig (a rock, not a lass) sits just off the Scottish coast and always gets plenty of TV coverage when the Open is played at Turnberry.
Today’s puzzle looks like a different kettle of fish, though!
Yes, a very easy puzzle that took me less time and fewer references than the daily cryptic last Friday 22nd. So useful for removing the fear factor from new solvers but slightly misleading as to the usual standard.
I don’t know if I want to pursue this route, I prefer solving without book.
I should add that I had guesses all over the place, but the others were correct!