Mephisto 2615 – Tim Moorey

The grid small (but workable) and the entire puzzle printed on about three-quarters of an American letter-size page. I’m noticing that more often than not the dailies do not print on one page now, though I’m with Peter in liking having the serif font. I find Tim Moorey’s puzzles on the easier side of Mephistos, and most of this fell out over coffee without any dictionaries, but there was a fair bit of scrambling to get those pesky last few entries and to clear up some definitions. Still unsure on one piece of wordplay, but it might come to me when writing the blog (it didn’t).

Away we go…

Across
1	AVANT-PROPOS: I got this from the checking letters and am not exactly sure how it works. It’s a foreword. Is it just a cryptic definition based on that Chambers has an avant-propos?
11	PALAY: PARLAY(bet) without the R
12	MUTI: UT(the musical note) in MI(another musical note)
13	ORBITED: BITE in ORD(the point of a weapon)
14	EATER: CH removed from CHEATER
16	OIL-TREE: TOIL with the T moved to the end, RE,E
17	THERENESS: RENE in THE SS
18	REPOTS: hidden reversed in almoST OPERational
20	STANZA: TANZ (German for Dance?) in S.A.
22	ANADEM: MEA(t) reversed with NAD(a) inside, a fillet
24	PICK-UP: Good thing there was that other definition. In looking through the credits for the actor Ronald Pickup, the only thing that I recognised was the TV version of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”.
26	DRAINTRAP: RAIN in D,TRAP, &lit
28	TOTEMIC: (TIME)* in COT reversed
30	UNIT,A: Angolan independence union
31	TRODDEN: ROD,D in TEN
32	RATH: R for B in BATH
33	CUING: CUTTING without the two T’s – got this from wordplay. A cue is a shape in the hair, so CUING is forming this shape
34	HAN,DI,CAPPED
Down
2	VARA: V for L in Brian LARA
3	ALBEE: Edward ALBEE – anagram of EQUABLE less QU
4	NAILROD: anagram of CLAD and IRON without C
5	P.H.,EONS: the heads of darts
6	RU,DIES
7	ODELSTING: DEL in O,STING – the lower house in the Norwegian parliament
8	OUTRANK: OU (man, in Afrikaans) on TRANK
9	STEEM: MEETS reversed
10	WIRETAPPING: RE in I.T. in WAPPING – containers in containers!
11	PORTRAITURE: OR,TRAIT in PURE
15	METER MAID: Not sure if this is a cryptic definition or not – we’ve got TERM in the middle, and (p)AID but not sure were the ME comes from in the wordplay
19	PARTITA: a part of a music suite – anagram of REPAINT+T-EN – I hink “must” is the anagram indicator here
21	ACTED UP: TED in A CUP(golf hole)
23	MAI TAI: sounds like “My tie”
24	PI,C,R,I,C: compounds notorious for the kaboomality. PI as confusing is best known linked to PIE-EYED
25	DO,NAH: a sweetheart
27	REDIP: (DIRE)*,P
29	NENE: EN reversed twice