Mephisto 2605 – Mike Laws

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Mephisto
Solving time: 24:27, without Chambers, except to confirm that NU was right as my best punt on the the “foreign character” in 12.

About as easy as Mephistos get – only about 9 difficult answer words, and quite a few clues that could be used in a daily paper puzzle. Great news for me as I’d forgotten my duties for this one until a panicky check early this morning, and a doddle puzzle means a blog I can complete before breakfast.

Across
1 SKENE DHU – (She, Duke, N=knight)* – slight delay with this one working out the anagram and then the exact order – had “skeen dhu” lightly pencilled until “noistle” or similar looked too daft for 4.
7 A(CT.)A – acta = minutes (of a meeting)
10 A M(PUSSY)AN,’D – one of the dafter spellings you can find under ‘ampersand’
11 YTTRIC = related to Yttrium, no doubt – TR. = transactions, in CITY reversed
12 N(HAND)U – another word for “rhea”
14 A=American,TIT
16 GENET – Jean the writer, or “Jenny” because genet=jennet=”jenny donkey”
17 SAR = rev. of ras=headland,COMA
18 ULAN BATOR (Mongolian capital) = (banal tour)* – I’ve never been to Mongolia, but I’ve certainly experienced banal tours of cities once under Soviet Russian influence. (The kind where you mutter “We’ve been down this street before going the other way, and they’re trying to pretend it’s somewhere new!”, and your wife says “I know dear, try not to make a fuss.”)
20 (h)AMSTER,DAM – I think there’s a missing word in the clue here as I can’t find anything to provide the DAM. If you make it into “Rodent Henry’s disposed of before mother arrives in town”, you have the DAM and what seems a better surface reading.
23 MO(ORE=Scandinavian dosh)SS – I had the unlikely MOOFOSS pencilled in for a while, using OOF=money, one of my favourite funky words from C.
25 COCO (Chanel),A
27 BR.,R.R.
29 R(HE’S)US – (Kievan) Rus is the medieval state that grew into Russia
30 ARIEGE = (I agree)*
31 CAT’S,CRA = arc rev.,DLE = led*
32 Y(GO)E – one of those “y-verb” Spenserian past tenses
33 EO(LIEN)N,E – eolienne is part silk, part wool
 
Down
1 S.(OY=Scots grandchild)A.
2 KITTEN MOTH = (think totem)* – one of my early answers as I chased down the anagram possibilities in 1A by solving the crossing answers
3 (s)EATING
4 EP(I)’S,TLE=let*
5 DUCK’S ARSE – K in (crusades)*
6 U.S.,HER
7 A,YAH = rev. of hay=hey=dance – beginners note that amahs and ayahs are similar people.
8 C(ANN)OT
9 ADUL(t),ARIA – adularia is a transparent orthoclase feldspar, if that helps. More significantly for barred grid solvers, it’s a rock that doesn’t end -ITE
13 DEMO,GORGON = (no grog) reversed – a demogorgon is “a mysterious infernal deity first mentioned about 450AD” – by whom, I have no idea
15 L,AND=with,S=special,M.A.,A,L – Landsmaal is another name for Nynorsk, a literary version of Norwegian. A bit of education – I’d carelessly assumed that if Bokmal was a literary language, Nynorsk must be the non-literary language spoken in every day life.
16 GRA(MERC)Y – Thomas being Thomas Gray who wrote that elegy. GRAMERCY = “great thanks”, from Old French “grant merci”
19 B.A.,CARD=caution=amusing person,I – the “viewed by” in the clue seems a bit loose on a second look
21 SO WET = “very rainy”,O – referring to some recent history
22 SCREEN – 2 defs
24 ED.,U.C. = upper case,(agre)E
26 ESSE=being – hidden in ‘pressed’
28 R=recipe,EYE – see “Reye’s Syndrome” in C for confirmation of Reye=paediatrician

7 comments on “Mephisto 2605 – Mike Laws”

  1. Agreed, the easiest for some time and the week after the hardest for some time. The same thing has just happened on the Saturday puzzle – all very strange.

    I agree with you on 20A

    Mephisto 2606 has not been posted to the club site yet. Thank heavens they’re not running an airline.

  2. As I mentioned earlier in the week, this was my first ever attempt at a Mephisto. I suspected it must be an easy one because after a rather fruitless first go I very nearly finished it in a couple more sessions during the week.
    I enjoyed it I must say: a slightly different flavour to the regular Times. I found much of the solving is done in reverse, i.e. figuring out what the answer must be and then confirming that the necessary group of letters is an obscure word that fits, yielding the dual pleasure of getting the answer and increasing one’s vocabulary. Of course to those reading this I’m stating the blindingly obvious but it’s all new to me!
    I don’t have Chambers so made extensive use of the internet, which is a bit of a cheat but as it was my first go I’m going to cut myself a bit of slack. Of course it also took ages but still, an encouraging start and I’ll keep at it.
    A copy of Chambers is on order.
  3. Got this out with no Chambers but with internet on a train from DC to NYC. Laughed at loud with DUCKS ARSE twice. Once when I saw the answer to the clue, and once when the rude occupant of the seat next to me did a snort of disgust when she saw me write it in. Looking back, I should have then gone to do Cyclops online.
  4. Yes, very straightforward: took me about an hour but didn’t have to refer to C very many times.

    Re 20a: Peter, the clue is precisely as you suggest in the printed version.

    It is strange how the quality and level (or lack) of difficulty varies by the week, every Saturday and Sunday: but I don’t think we are re-entering “dumbing-down” territory yet!

  5. Strangely enough, I also chose this week to have my first stab at Mephisto / a barred grid puzzle, having finished the Times in half an hour and seeking a fresh challenge. Fared well enough to have another go, but will need either Chambers or Internet next time, as, as you will all know, ODE isn’t that much use. Got more than half way before calling it a day and was close on some (‘amah’ for AYAH – we even have one!) and should have been closer on others (CANNOT and the French dept.).

    Needless to say, the blog was much appreciated.

    1. Chambers is more help than the web, because the definitions used for the obscure words (and the obscure meanings of normal words) often turn out to be quoted verbatim from Chambers.

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