Mephisto 3125 – Tim Moorey

11 comments on “Mephisto 3125 – Tim Moorey”

1. ….took me around 20 minutes of a 45 minute solve. These were ANTE (it was suspiciously “too easy” for a Mephisto, so I didn’t trust it !), IN LIMINE (stretched my ‘O’ Level Latin somewhat), and AMIS (who I’ve barely read, although I did get through “Lucky Jim” many years ago).

   Thanks George for parsing PERE where ‘pera’ was an unknown. You have a minor typo in 7A.

2. As you say George a very straightforward one. I have no scribbles or workings on my paper.

   You do seem to have huge problems in the US coping with this virus. Is that down to Trump’s performance or are there other factors?

3. 7a doesn’t work on that basis. You have to bring the ‘I‘ forward not ‘aback‘ to get the solution. Unless ‘M‘ is an abbreviation of ‘me’ in Chambers arcane world? Mr Grumpy
4. I had to cheat to finish this: I was struggling with IN LIMINE partly because I was unsure of two of the crossing answers:
   > AIMS had to be the right answer but I didn’t understand the wordplay. Moving something ‘back’ in a word is, as Mr Grumpy points out, to move it to the right, but I couldn’t find any support for M = me. After submitting I realised that it’s ME = MI (the musical note) reversed!
   > INNIT seemed most likely but it could conceivably have been INUIT.
   Other than that quite straightforward.
   Stay safe George: I haven’t been out since masks became mandatory in shops here so I don’t know if people are complying or not but there seems to be a huge problem of non-compliance in your part of the world. I spoke to someone I used to work with who lives in Cary the other day and he and his wife (who is immuno-compromised) are still basically not going out. It’s all rather worrying.

   Edited at 2020-07-26 09:21 am (UTC)

   1. Ah yes, very good. The musical interpretation certainly works much better. But then ideally the ‘me’ in the clue would best be indicated as homophonic? Eg ‘English novelist has me audibly taken aback in places’. Mr Grumpy
      1. ME and MI are both in chambers as different spellings so it’s not a homophone.
         1. Ok. . . But then the clue isn’t exact is it? It asks us to reverse ‘me’. It’s just a quibble, and it works in mephistoland. I just thought my suggestion would have been more precise? Mr Grumpy
            1. It’s asking us to derive MI from ME and then reverse that. This is a standard and very common crossword construction: see 19ac for instance.

               Edited at 2020-07-26 11:42 am (UTC)

5. As I am just starting to try Barred crosswords this was just at my level, and I like the detailed explanations. Thanks in advance
6. Thought of Amis, but couldn’t see how the clue worked, taking ‘I’m’ at face value, and not bothering to check if ‘aim’ could mean ‘place’. Sidetracked by knowing Mr Moorey’s habit of mucking about with his name in clues. Eventually bunged it Sims, after an alphabet trawl on google, who was an English novelist, then only sussed how the clue worked when I checked the solution yesterday.

   The rest of it was pretty straightforward.

   Edited at 2020-07-27 01:05 pm (UTC)

7. Thanks for working out the MI part of the AMIS clue, I did not notice that while I was writing it up. Sorry I didn’t get around to changing, I had the opportunity to play golf at a course that was doing a lot of things correctly – checking people in from their cars, hooks on the holes so you could lift the ball out with your putter, and they let me walk the course which is rare in the US.

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