Mephisto 2931 – Don Manley

I started this last Saturday night and remember either having a good brain night, or just flying through this one and the Azed in one sitting. A look back and there’s a mixture of familiar and non-familiar words, but I think I had seen most of the wordplay elements.

There is a liberal amount of checking across quadrants in the grid too – some grids turn the Mephisto into four mini-puzzles, but this one has longer answers spanning a few parts of the grid.

By the way, if you enjoy Mephisto style grids and want to try an easier (though often American-styled) thematic puzzles, this week is the Wall Street Journal’s HEX puzzle – it is usually on the first Saturday of the month. Give it a go.

And away we go…

Across
1	SARS: double definition, plural of the SAR fish and a flu-like disease we all went bonkers about a few years ago
4	SOPHISTS: P(quiet) and HIST(silence) in SOS
10	PHIALS: HI in PALS
12	LEV: remove the end from LEVY
13	ANNELID: anagram of LAD and NINE
14	CARMINATIVE: VITA reversed in CARMINE red
15	TA,LOOK,A
16	PREIF: or PRE-“IF”
18	CARLIST: or CAR LIST
23	TERROIR: TERROR surrounging I
24	PHAGE: PAGE containing H
25	YOICKED: shorten YOB and decapitate SICKED
27	MANNALICHEN: I inside an anagram of CHANNEL with MAN at the front
28	ENDIRON: anagram of DINNER with O inside
30	LOB: shorten LOBO
31	MESAIL: ES(as in “thou art = tu es”) inside MAIL(armour)
32	SUBAHDAR: anagram of BARS,A,HINDU minus IN
33	TYTE: hidden in naughTY TEmptress
Down
1	SPLIT CAP: because the phrase paniC APparently has the word CAP split inside it
2	RIVALRY: anagram of LIAR,VERY missing (on)E
3	SAPROLEGNIA: anagram of REGIONAL,SPA
4	SLO-MO: LO,M inside SO
5	PINNATE: PATE(a starter I’ll pass on) containing INN
6	HANAPER: REP,AN,AH all reversed
7	SOL: SOLD(got rid of) missing the D(LSD penny)
8	TRIVIA: TRI(p), VIA
9	SADE: SHADE missing the H
11	PETRARCHIST: anagram of SCRIPT and HEART
17	FORDABLE: ORD(point) in FABLE(story, narrative)
19	INEARTH: hidden in fINE ART Here
20	STYLOID: anagram of SOLIDITY less I
21	ROKELAY: OK in RELAY
22	NHANDU: HAND inside NU(Nunavut) – Nunavut became its own territory in 1999, just before I moved from Canada to the US
26	ICKER: remove the top from PICKER
27	MESS: double definition
29	DAB: BAD reversed