Mephisto 2940 – Paul McKenna – Let’s Rename it the River Chanel

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Mephisto
A middle of the road puzzle to start the New Year with no less than eight full anagrams. We appear to have clue padding at 6D, which works perfectly well without the questionable word. At 7D we appear to have a river renamed since whilst the river in question causes amnesia I cant find support for it being called Amnesia. If it catches on this process could be fun – the River Chopper perhaps?

Across
1 LASSIE – L(ASS)IE; lean=LIE; girl from The Great Glen;
5 CHEWED – C-HEWED;
10 PLUTOCRAT – PLUTO-C-RAT; somebody with power aquired through riches;
12 TRAITORHOOD – (radio tho rot)*; WW2 traitor William Joyce being the most famous;
13 APR – A-PR; Annualized Percentage Rate – what it costs to borrow;
16 MANNA – M(elon)-ANNA; honeydew is definition;
17 THE,RISE,OF – (here its of)*; more than in Maine;
18 ERNES – SEE reversed contains RN;
19 IGNORES – (regions)*; Daily Telegraph clue;
21 MADRASA – MAD-RAS-A; prince=RAS; a Muslim college;
22 INERT – hidden reversed (thg)IN-ERT(aeht);
24 PRINCESSE – (press nice)*; a dress in Dijon;
26 SERUM – S(ER)UM;
28 COT – C(l)OT; but=without; the Malbec grape is also known in France as COT;
29 AMELIORATED – (ode material)*;
31 INDECENCY – autonomy=inde(p-end)ency then change p=positive and end=close to C=Charlie (phonetic alphabet);
32 SNUDGE – (mes)S-NUDGE; fine=end; hunks=miser=SNUDGE;
33 LENTIL – LENT-IL; Israel=IL;
Down
1 L-PLATE – LP-LATE; LP=Lord Provost;
2 SURRENDEREE – SUR-RENDER-EE; keeker=eye=EE;
3 STAB – S-TAB; pill=TAB(let); pink=slang for STAB;
4 ECTASIS – (s)ECT-AS-IS; unnatural stretch;
5 CRONE – CR-ONE; crown=CR;
6 HARMONICA – (chairman)* surrounds O=old; club=anagrind; “military” appears to be padding; a HARMONICA is a musical instrument made of bowls filled with different amounts of water that are made to resonate to produce notes made famous by Benjamin Franklin in the 1760s;
7 ETH – (L)ETH(e); the river Lethe is the mythical river in Hades known as the river of forgetfulness. Not my field but Ive never heard it called River Amnesia – coming this way soon perhaps the River Chamberpot amongst others?
8 E,CONVERSO – (ones cover)*; Latin tag;
9 DEDANS – saloons=sedans then change s to D=Germany; spectators at tennis game;
11 CONCRESCENT – CONC-RE-SCENT; becoming one is the definition;
14 PHRASEMAN – (sharp name)*;
15 DISARMING – (said)*-R(M)ING; ignore the capital in the definition=Winsome;
20 GANGREL – GANG-REL; related=REL; child starting to walk in Whins of Milton;
21 MASAIS – MAS(AI)S;
23 TETRYL – TE(TRY)L; Arabic rising=TEL; explosive used as a detonator;
25 IMODE – I’M-(n)ODE;
27 STEN – NETS reversed;
30 LID – (O)-LID; a tile;

11 comments on “Mephisto 2940 – Paul McKenna – Let’s Rename it the River Chanel”

  1. Your html is showing!
    Hey, I’m wondering if “military club” = “mess” is supposed to be the anagrind. Is “club” by itself ever used as such?

    Edited at 2017-01-08 06:32 am (UTC)

    1. There is a military meaning of “club” – to throw into confusion.

      Visible HTML usually means a missing, extra or damaged tag in angle brackets – good luck to Jimbo in the search.

        1. Aha! Thanks. And I was finally able to find that, via Google Books, in A Dictionary of Military Terms, by Edward Samuel Farrow
          1. The first place to look is Chambers English Dictionary (the entry for “club” rather than the missing one for “military club”).
            1. I actually thought it must be in Chambers, if anywhere, but that definition didn’t come up readily on a Google search. I just tried it now at the Chambers homepage and got only the noun.
              1. I’m afraid you have to pay for “Chambers” as used in barred grid crosswords – i.e. “The Chambers Dictionary”. The one available at http://chambers.co.uk/ is “Chambers 21st Century Dictionary”, and that is different (think Concise Oxford rather than Oxford Dictionary of English), despite the fact that the one you need for Mephisto was once called “Chambers 20th Century Dictionary”. If you have an iPad, you can get the right one far more cheaply than in print, and the iPad version is often easier to read as they don’t have to cram lots of definitions into a single paragraph.
              2. I can vouch for the ipad version – it’s excellent and saves lugging that huge heavy book around!
  2. I’ve managed to remove the HTML code but have only partially fixed the formatting. It looked fine when I originally posted it so some LJ corruption here.

    I’ll see if I can fix the formatting later today

  3. Formatting now fixed – had to remove huge amount of corruption within HTML code.

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