Mephisto 2577 – Paul McKenna

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Mephisto
This took about 2 hours in four goes, scattered over gaps in the snooker on the box. I used Chambers after about 6 answers were in, and found the SE corner hardest – 32, 34, 28, 25 were last in.

Across
1 MEADOW FESCUE – O(de) in (we faced Muse)*. This brought back memories of a stinker of a Times clue 20-odd years ago – FESCUE, an unknown type of grass for me at the time, with “Birkenhead” for the FES part – some bloke called F E Smith became Lord Birkenhead. The sort of reference I had to ask older solvers about at the Times championship.
10 (b)OATER – oater is US informal for a Western. Anyone want to complain that (punter = boater) is unindicated def by example? As you’ll guess from much previous discussion, I don’t think it matters, even for strict Ximeneans (like Paul McKenna, as far as I know), when part of wordplay like this.
11 BLAINS – L in basin*
12 STOC = cots rev., C(onservative), A=first ante = before, DO=party. If you want to grumble a bit about “party before first” indicating “first before party”, I think I might join you. I was wrong about this, not realising that a can stand for “ante”.
13 F = fellow, L, I/C = “in command” – directly, not just because “in charge” means the same. A flic is a policeman, and so is a “myrmidon of the law” – hence “Possibly a Myrmidon” in the clue.
15 NO IRISH = “lacking fiery passion” – see Irish in C.
16 ARE = a – reversing the usual “are” in the clue for A in the answer, AWAY = match – an areaway is a US passageway
17 N,ACHE – nache = rump
18 VITREUM = (vitreous) humour – (virtue, M(ake))*
24 S.O.(RITE)S.
26 AD(j)UST – two tricky defs here – adust=melancholy, which I managed to guess, and concert=adjust, which needed checking as the implication of the rest of the clue
27 R = “take Latin” (abbrev. for recipe = take), OUNDLE = a public school near Peterborough.
29 S(ADS)ACK – “sad sack” is a US misfit, and a sack is a train of silk from the shoulder of a “sack dress”
31 L(W)EI – 1/100 of an Angolan kwanza
32 SE-TENANT = a pair (or more) of stamps in an attched block, with one differing from the others in value or design – presumably the kind of oddity that increases value. C = constant, in SECANT = function, is changed to TEN = X
33 ERU(pt.),VIM – a tricky one this, relying on the solver’s knowledge of Hebrew grammar. My under-used copy of Hebrew in Three Months confirms that most masculine nouns take -im for the plural (e.g. goyim, from which I guessed this when there were enough checking letters – the plurals cherubim and seraphim come from Hebrew too). An eruv is an area where public activities normally forbidden on the Jewish sabbath are permitted – presumably a masculine noun, though the same book tells me that some masculine nouns use the feminine plural ending, -ot. Current Chambers doesn’t give a plural for eruv. There’s an eruv in NW London which got into news stories about 8 years ago because of some fuss about the boundary poles and wires required to define some parts of its boundary.
34 ROU(m),GE = rev. pf e.g. – “roun is” an old spelling of “room”, and “rouge” is a scrimmage at Eton – or so says Chambers. The wikipedia article on the Eton field game says that the scrum is a “bully”, and a rouge is roughly the same as a try in Rugby.
35 TAPESTR(y),E=English,AMER. = American – this had to emerge from checking letters and the def, as I didn’t know dosser=tapestry
 
Down
1 MOSH = dance, AV = Ab = fifth Jewish month, a moshav being a farming settlement in Israel.
2 (n)EATER,(d)IE – only sorted out the wordplay while blogging – while solving, I’d thought of both beater and beat as possibles for “better”, not knowing whether the US applied to this (it does) or to “stamp”. I also Googled just now for “Erie press” but decided the machinery I found was too obscure.
3 AT = appropriate tech., OKE = “clipped” version of ‘okay’. And an atoke is a a sexless part of a polychaete worm, apparently.
4 ORCA = grampus – rev. of ACRO(bat = flap)
5 W,H(AN)AUS – extended families in NZ
6 ELOINER – someone who removes = (ocean liner – can)*
7 SAFRANINE (dye) = (Asian fern)*
8 C,I,L,ICE – a hairshirt as well as the spiky thigh ring seen on the albino monk in the Da Vinci Code
9 ESC.,HEW
14 CARES,S=sons,I’VE
19 ENTASIS = (in tasse)* – the visual trick resulting from the fattening of architectural columns in the middle
20 MOO=low,K=krone,TAR=sailor – a mukhtar/mooktar is an Indian lawyer
21 MELA = a Hindu fair,N,G,(Xim)E(nes)
22 H,AS,LET – Mrs B claims to despise offal but likes haslet – don’t tell her there’s tripe in there!
23 DUD = bouncer (a dud cheque, or a female breast? – take your pick),(th)E,UP = lift
25 SETTE(e),R – a settee2 is a boat, and “Mike of this parish” is Mike Laws
28 D(W)AU.,M – a sudden sickness – also dwam and dwalm
30 C,ERE = “ear” – not sure about the role of “in” in the wordplay here – “starting to collect in lug, as is said”. To cere is “to cover with wax”, apparently different to “wax”, but this is another meaning of “wax”. Also not entirely convinced by ‘starting to collect’ for C, but it’s a close call.

10 comments on “Mephisto 2577 – Paul McKenna”

  1. I thought this a difficult puzzle which I failed to finish at one sitting. I had to go out after just over an hour. I would think our overall times were about the same.

    I didn’t help myself by entering (p)LAYER at 10A and didn’t sort that out until I got MEADOW across the top, which immediately threw MP…. at 1D into question. I share your gripe at 12A which was made rather harder by the “party before first” construction. Also CERE which I actually thought was a poor clue.

    ERUVIM is the missing plural that gave rise to the discussion on last week’s blog.

    I thought 2D EATERIE was very difficult to parse. I wrote it in from checking letters but took an age to work out the construction.

    In this week’s puzzle 2578 the clue to 28D is missing from the Times web site. I’ve e-mailed Mike Laws but if somebody has the paper and can post the clue (NOT the answer)on this blog, I would be grateful.

    2. The Club bulletin board hav published a request for the missing clue – I hope this will get a response soon, given that the checking letters don’t force a single answer.
    3. Just seen, posted by Mike Laws elsewhere:

      28 Look into publicity for old estate (4)

  2. I did almost all of this in one session, but with Chambers nearby, it was certainly a case of “the wordplay looks like it’s going towards this, let’s find out if it’s a word” school of solving. Also helps that there’s a halfway decent Indian restaurant here called Mela.
  3. I found this much tougher than the previous week’s (and today’s) but got there in the end, albeit with 11 question marks against clues I didn’t fully understand. I was thankful for the search function that comes with the iPod version of Chambers.

    7dPenguin and I used to have a haslet sandwich probably once a week in our student days. I had no idea it was full of hoof scrapings, eye jelly and the like.

    Jimbo and I were at cross purposes in the week. I thought the missing plural was for winhau but presumably if the plural is just an s it isn’t mentioned.

    1. That’s about right – if you look at the rather inaccurately-named “spelling rules” section you’ll see a statement that irregular plurals are indicated. This includes cases like radii/radius, but not (e.g.) circuses where the word has “become English” and a Latin plural is never used. The implication is that as far as Chambers is concerned, the plural of eruv is eruvs. Looking at eruvim on Google, I just got “did you mean eruvin?” – and it seems from wikipedia, for example, that eruvin is also a correct plural.

      Edited at 2010-01-24 09:51 pm (UTC)

  4. I finished but there were a few clues where I didn’t fully understand the wordplay – thanks for the blog Peter!

    At 27ac, I hope penfold noted my comment last week that it was a good idea to remember R=take!

  5. Thought that this was a cracking puzzle. Ran out of time with four to complete in the SE.

    This week’s is easier. Jimbo, the printed puzzle doesn’t have the clue for 28D either! Also, are you now in a position to publish the results of your “Mephisto Dumbed-Down” survey?

    JamesM

    1. A while back I said in the blog that I believed the puzzle had been dumbed down a bit and that one puzzle in particular was far too easy, even for new solvers.

      Since then we went back to average difficulty levels followed by a couple of more difficult ones. Then came this one, the hardest for some time. So I’m hoping that standards have been raised up after an unfortunate dip.

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