This was a tale of two halves for me. The right hand side of the grid filled up very quickly indeed, but with little spillover to the left hand side of the grid, where I didn’t ever find clues to come in a rush and had to put it together one scrap at a time.
There is a funny story about this one – I started it when I got to rehearsal early (in July I’ll be singing the role of a conspirator priest in a revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar”), and the only entries I had written in were WIDDERSHINS and PSST. A few members of the cast at this point decided I just made up words to fit the spaces, and came up with a few other great suggestions for what should go in my unsolved entries – 2 across was BUGGUP or BINKIP or BQZYWP.
I think they are just jealous that I bring a diversion for when our chain-smoking musical director is habitually late.
Away we go…
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | UPDRAW: UP(top), DRAW(attraction) definition is pull out as in to pull out of a well |
| 5 | BACKUP: K(ept) in the town of BACUP. I had never heard of the town of BACUP, and I thought it was interesting that one of the first things that shows up when you google it is this article… |
| 9 | WIDDERSHINS: anagram of DID,NHS,WIRES |
| 10 | CANTILENA: CAN(john, lavatory) then an anagram of LATE,IN – a singing exercise |
| 12 | RUNTED: or RUN, TED |
| 13 | IDENT: TRIDENT missing TR |
| 17 | HARIM: H(Henry the unit), then first letters of Amble Round In Marks |
| 19 | WAR,H,ABLE |
| 20 |
OLD LIGHT: remove the first letters of |
| 21 | SHARD: double definition |
| 23 | NAIAS: anagram of ASIAN – found in Chambers under NAIAD |
| 25 | R,ON,INS |
| 26 | GOLF LINKS: LINKS(couples) after the Volkswagen GOLF |
| 27 |
ARTICULATES: remove the first letter from |
| 28 | S,MOCKS |
| 29 | YEASTS: anagram of SAY,SET |
| Down | |
| 1 | UNCROWNS: CROWN(hit) in UN, S |
| 2 | DINNERPAIL: sounds like DINNA PALE |
| 3 | ADIEU: anagram (Foreign) of AID, then EU |
| 4 | WELDABLE: DAB in WELL(satisfactory), E |
| 5 | BREW: sounds like BROO (in Chambers under BUROO) |
| 6 | CHAD,A,RIM |
| 7 | UNKNIGHT: UN(one, again), KNIGHT. I wondered if there was a deeper meaning behind having UPDRAW, BACKUP, UNKNIGHT and UNCROWN in the top half of the grid, I can’t see anything |
| 8 | PSST: hidden in bishoP’S STortford |
| 11 | PEREGRINES: anagram of PERSEVERING missing the V |
| 14 |
TAGHAIRM: anagram of A, |
| 15 | CHORAGIC: OR and AG in CHIC |
| 16 | ALDERFLY: anagram of A,DRY,FELL |
| 18 | METISSES: MISSES containing ET |
| 22 | VOLAE: VOLE surrounding A(acreage) |
| 23 | NYAS: SAY(approximately), N all reversed |
| 24 | FLUS: FLUSH missing the H |
I need peace and quiet to solve Mephistos – part of the enjoyment for me is time on my own.
I also struggled with CHADARIM, as a result of a funny quirk of the Chambers app. Usually it completes words for you, so if for example you type in WIDD, WIDDERSHINS comes up. So having derived CHADARIM from the wordplay, I checked it (as I usually do) by typing CHADA into the app, but only CHADAR came up so I thought CHADARIM must be wrong. But it turns out that if the word doesn’t have its own entry (CHADARIM is a sub-entry under CHEDER) the app can’t find it in this way and you have to type in the whole word for it to appear. In the big red book CHADARIM appears on its own so you don’t have this problem, but the book is a bit big to carry around on planes.