Mephisto 2571 – Paul McKenna – Times for The Times

This was a mixture of pretty easy and blisteringly difficult – there were a lot of answers where I’d guess at some wordplay and head to Chambers to hope that I’d hit on some actual words, and I think everything has worked its way out in the end. It’s an interesting grid, with four 12-letter entries, and only one is clued as a straight-up anagram – usually I look for a couple of long anagrams to get a quick handle on a barred-grid crossword with long entries, but apart from 2 down, the rest of the 12-letter words were among my last in.

Not sure if Paul McKenna is into claiming firsties, but I don’t believe I’ve seen 13 across in a crossword before.

Across
1	B,UMMA,LOT,I: The Bombay Duck, remember seeing the word not that long ago. UMMA was the new part here, a body of Muslim believers considered as one community (thanks Chambers)
11	ARIARY: A (adult), (b)RIARY – unless the Y can come from “old, thorn”, which I can’t seem to justify
12	PUN,I,ER – I think ER and HAH are linked as interjections? Eahy to get from definition
13	RIOT,GR,R,R,L: in Chambers inimitable style, a young woman who plays or enjoys an aggressively feminist style of punk rock music. I got to hang out with an examle, JD Samson (formerly with Le Tigre) after her set opening for Peaches last month – here’s an example (yes, she’s wearing a house on her head). A little further investigation and the guy with the camcorder about 5 rows in front of me did upload some footage from the show.
14	CLARE: CLARET (blood) minus T
16	BICORNE: COR in BINE (COR for “my” is popping up regularly)
17	RIBES: hidden – black and red currant.
18	CALAMINT: (ALCMAN,I)*,T – got the MINT part before the rest
19	CHESTILY: L in (IS,TECHY)*
22	TIBIA: hidden reversed
23	SEA BEET: BEE in SEAT. For a while this sat as SEA BEE? on my puzzle
27	ISRAELITE: I,(EARLIEST)*, &lit
28	AIR-DRY: AIRDRIE with Y replacing I.E. – I’d not heard of the town, but Google Maps knows where it is
29	SUNSET: I expect TES is Times Education Supplement, with NUS reversed
30	ADVENTURE: (TAVERN,DUE)*

Down
1	BAN,C: a judges bench – BAN as a curse is in the first definition in Chambers
2	URIOLITHIASIS: (IT’S,HILARIOUS)* – not sure how hilarious this is, I’ve heard it’s really painful
3	MIRACLE BERRY: (I’M,CLEAR)*, BERRY (sop, second definition of BERRY in Chambers). I had a friend who ordered some of these online a while ago, they’re meant to make sour things taste sweet, I don’t know how they went.
4	MARROW: double definition
5	LYONNAISE: (ONLINE,SAY)* and a nice definition
6	T,UGH,RA – not sure how the RA fits into here, but a TUGHRA is a monogram
7	INRO: because the letter I is in R(i)O
8	MIRABILE, VISU: MIRA (star in Cetus), (VISIBLE), U – had the V and U first in this clue, made the second word easy. Edit: I had VENU in as a mistype originally*
9	SERPENT EATER: secretary bird or markhor (a wild goat in Asia)
10	OR(=before),LIST,A,T: a weight-loss drug
15	HELLENISE: IS in HELLENE – got this from the definition, but it turns out HELLEN was the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha. He was the partiarch of the HELLENES… am I overthinking this?
16	BACTRIAN: CAB reversed, (IT,RAN)*
21	YB,RENT: first part is BY reversed – put a bookmark in the page with YCOND, YCLAD, YDRAD, YBLENT and YBORE as a Mephisto reminder.
24	NADA: NARMADA minus ARM
26	(f)LUTE

6 comments on “Mephisto 2571 – Paul McKenna”

Thanks George – 13 would never have occurred to me and consequently I missed 7 and 10 as well.

In 11ac, I thought the “old thorn” was the old letter written like a Y but pronounced “th” (as in “Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe”)

I think you have a typo in 8dn – VISU not VENU.

What is the “wild nanny” in 9dn? I got the answer from the definition but don’t follow the rest.

Kurihan

PS – in 6dn I think the RA is AR (Aramaic) reversed (preposterous).

And scrub my question about 9dn – I missed it as a double def.

This was difficult to get started with few, if any easy clues. Ultimately, its sheer outrageousness made it solvable. After all, how many other words contain a RRR sequence?

I finished with two quite simple ones. I had to Google Madagascan currency to get Ariary. It does not seem to be in my edition of Chambers. I also missed Chestily on the first flick through Chambers because the self-important meaning does not occur under the main heading, you have to look further down to chesty.

I have the same quibble as George about the unexplained E at the end of Hellenise

ARIARY is in the Chambers 11th edition but not the 9th. Although it has been around for a while, it appears the official currency was the franc until 2005.

George, you have a mistake at 14A. The answer is CLARY being a plant whilst CLAR(T=time)Y is Scots for dirty. I also can’t explain the extra E at the end of HELLENISE.

13A is just a wonderful word. As I was filling the grid by solving the down clues it took all my faith in obscure words to stick with “RRR?” at the end of something – but there it is in Chambers!

This was a reasonable standard puzzle I thought.

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