Mephisto 2745 – Don Manley

Author   glhPosted on Categories Mephisto
I thought I was in for a very quick solve here, with most of the long answers going in at a first (or second) glance. It was a bit of poring over dictionaries to get the top left and bottom right corners sorted out.

As I start typing this, I still have two pieces of wordplay to completely sort out (15 across and 4 down), hopefully something will come to mind.

Away we go…

Across
1 ORCAS: DORCAS (biblical woman of good works, who is fortunately in Chambers) without the D
6 THETES: THE (article) before TES (Times Education Supplement)
11 AIR KISS: IRK(distress),IS in A,S. My aunt does these and it’s even more annoying than a real kiss from an aunt
12 SOFT: F in SOT
13 PROMPTURE: MP in ROT in PURE
15 LU,MME: didn’t remember it from my schoolboy but LU comes from LIRE – to read, then MME for madame
16 CHIRRE: HI,RR(bishop) in CE
17 TARNISHABLE: (HERBAL,STAIN)*
19 PAT-LIDS: PAT, then SLID with the S moved to the end
23 SPILLER: ILL(not good) in SPER(m)
26 STONE CIRCLE: anagram of CONCRETE,IS,L
29 TEIAN: anagram of NATIVE less V
31 CRI DU CHAT: CH in (AIR,DUCT)*
32 HOSE: HOUSE without U
33 SOIGNEE: (IS,GONE)* then (romanc)E
34 ‘OST,YAK
35 LOSE(miss),L
 
Down
1 OARLAP: 0,A then PAL reversed about R
2 (p)RIMU(s)
3 CREMATIONIST: CREATIONIST with (Darwinis)M inside
4 SIRENISE: I get SIRE(father) and IS in NE but can’t quite see where the NE comes from
5 PSOCID: P(soft), CID(hero) with SO(thus) inside
7 (r)HO,PI
8 ESTRAY: YARE(easily handled) reversed over ST
9 TOUR,BILLIONS
10 ST,EVEN
14 RELIE(f)
18 HAIRTAIL: sounds like HARE TALE
20 ATTAR: RATTA(n) reversed
21 PSYCHO: YC in (POSH)*
22 SNIDEY: ID in YENS reversed
24 PITHOS: I liked the use of “Attic” here – TIP reversed, then HO, (chao)S
25 RAN,SEL(ler)
28 LUGA: A,LUG reversed
30 AG(r)EE

6 comments on “Mephisto 2745 – Don Manley”

  1. Re 4dn: by = né, yes? Begetting and all that? So it is is in by, and all the clue after by is the def.
      1. I also had that construction. Had no problems with this one with a lot of down clues going straight in including the long ones.
  2. No problems for me either and I actually understood how every clue worked.

    George, you wouldn’t be saying that about aunts if you’d met some of mine.

  3. First attempt and managed all bar Pat Lids; I understand the solution but have never heard the expression. Would someone enlighten me?
  4. Made a decent fist of this but had seven missing in the end (Rimu, Lumme, Relie, Teian, Ransel, Losel, Agee). It was great fun making up unknown words from wordplay and then finding they were indeed in Chambers (Oarlap, Thetes, Soignee, Cri du chat, Ostyak). Thought Air Kiss was terrific.
    George – thanks for confirming my understanding of the ones I got and explaining the ones I didn’t.

    Edited at 2013-04-16 12:10 pm (UTC)

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