I found this one a bit on the tough side. It’s not that there were no easy clues, but they seemed to all be located on the right side of the grid. This made for a speedy half-solve, but in the end I got most thoroughly stuck for a while. But somehow, I found the quality that was needed to finish my solve, and powered through. Cracking the long anagram for the grooving tool was a key step in opening up the left-hand side, but it still took a while.
Much of the difficulty come from the use of the obscure meanings of common words, which is considered fair enough in Mephisto, but often leads to the solver rejecting the correct answer that the wordplay clearly points to. Only by searching through every last meaning in Chambers do you finally realize that yes, that really is the answer, and here’s why.
I also had a couple that I biffed fairly easily, but couldn’t parse. I probably would have managed to figure them out eventually, but instead I parsed a couple for Jeremy, and got a couple parsings back in trade. So now everything is reasonably clear, and I will be able to finish the blog without further research.
| Across | |
| 1 | Apple sent back this note (6) |
| TENNER – RENNET backwards. Darwin or Dickens, anyone? | |
| 6 | Value support for single-decker, say (6) |
| SETTEE – SET + TEE. Yes, a settee is also a single-decked vessel. | |
| 11 | She milks another who walked out on the boards? (9) |
| EXACTRESS – EX-ACTRESS, one of the few easy ones. | |
| 12 | One that gets muezzin going in the morning (4) |
| IMAM – An &lit, I + M[uezzin] + A.M. | |
| 13 | Stewed steak, say, at Le Manoir, yes with extravagant bill to cover (7) |
| BOUILLI – OUI in an anagram of BILL. | |
| 14 | Dutch person on the left is reckless (5) |
| PERDU – PER + DU, both obscure but legitimate abbreviations. | |
| 16 | Old famous sort rejecting new vaudeville (4) |
| OLIO – O + LIO[n], more usually meaning a stew. | |
| 17 | Sovereignty sure fell in a chaotic state (8) |
| SELF RULE – Anagram of SURE FELL, my FOI. | |
| 19 | Gothic architectural features clash with a recent change (12, two words) |
| LANCET ARCHES – Anagram of SLASH + A RECENT. I got the arches easily enough, but struggled with the first word. | |
| 22 | Doubling the act of planting crops finally must be good (12) |
| INGEMINATION – IN(-s,+G)EMINATION, replacing [crop]S with G. | |
| 23 | Inappropriately tells to go old woman who’s kept scraps (8) |
| MISSENDS – MISS + ENDS, as in odds and ends. | |
| 25 | Colleague’s operation into which one goes (4) |
| OPPO – OP + PO, you could look it up. | |
| 28 | Westbound kid I see leaves having been wrapped up? (5) |
| CIGAR – RAG I C backwards. | |
| 29 | Blighter bellows with joy about blue matter (7) |
| CURIOSA – CUR + IOS + A. Io is what they shout in Greek drama. | |
| 30 | Baron, or the equivalent, gets legal compo (4) |
| BOTE – B + O.T.E, two more not-very-popular abbreviations. | |
| 31 | Recurrent bind over admitting revision gives too testing rôles (9) |
| OVERPARTS – STRAP + REV + O. Surprising, because over is used to indicate O, but over itself appears in the answer. I didn’t put this one in until I had parsed it. | |
| 32 | Again awry in the matter of coping? No longer free from risk (6) |
| RESKEW – RE + SKEW. The second element may be doubly defined, as skew can mean either awry, or what coping is made of. Discuss. | |
| 33 | First of demotic Greek characters for vessels (6) |
| DIOTAS – D[emotic] + IOTAS. Fortunately, I had heard of the vessels, so this went right in. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Run out crude oil here? (7) |
| TRIPOLI – An &lit, TRIP + anagram of OIL. Trip as in a trip to the store. | |
| 2 | Mealie nun after shift is deficient in this (9) |
| EUMELANIN – Anagram of MEALIE NUN. | |
| 3 | Drawing close new yard’s fastener? (7) |
| NEARING – N + EARING. An earing is a rope that fastens a sail to the yard. | |
| 4 | Attention-seeker’s occasion for partner swapping? (8, two words) |
| EXCUSE ME – Double definition, referring to the dance-hall frolic. | |
| 5 | Without line dancing babe wants girl that grooves (12) |
| RABBETINGSAW – Anagram of BABE WANTS GIR[l]. | |
| 6 | Home of leaders of coppers in disguise? Dastardly con possibly (12, two words) |
| SCOTLAND YARD – Anagram of DASTARDLY CON, an easy one that broke open the whole right side of the puzzle. | |
| 7 | Core of poetic quip’s heart is a case of pins and needles (4) |
| ETUI – [po]ET[ic] + [q]UI[p]. An American crossword word. | |
| 8 | Peckham’s man with a broom lacking general intelligence, good assiduous sport? (5) |
| TRIER – TRI[g,g}ER, where G is an abbreviation for General Intelligence, and G is an abbreviation for good. Peckham’s man with a broom is Trigger in the UK sitcom Only Fools and Horses, something you will not find in Chambers. One of Jeremy’s parsings. | |
| 9 | Number to call before getting something like a network? (4) |
| TELA – TEL + A. As in the abbreviation before a telephone number. | |
| 10 | Bagel I sent back includes old pickle? (5) |
| ESILE – Backwards hidden in [bag]EL I SE[nt]. | |
| 15 | One of the Pieridae who gave the needle and ended it all (9) |
| CLEOPATRA – The Egyptian queen who gave us Cleopatra’s Needle, and committed suicide. | |
| 18 | White friar’s catechism beginning to illuminate (8) |
| FRASCATI – FRA’S CAT + I[lluminate], a white wine. | |
| 20 | Tough PI struggling with nervous affliction (7) |
| HIPGOUT – Anagram of TOUGH PI, an old name for sciatica. | |
| 21 | We go under ignoring northerner’s film — we give you little rest (7) |
| SNORERS – SNOR[kell}ERS, Kell is a Scots variant on caul, which see – another of Jeremy’s parsings. | |
| 23 | Mould girl from The Broads entering capital initially (5) |
| MUCOR – M(U.C)OR, where u.c. meanings upper case, an a mor is a big awkward girl in East Anglian dialect. | |
| 24 | Soldier is to gather kit from the front (5) |
| SHIRK – SHIR + K[it]. The chief difficulty here is finding the right meaning of soldier, but it’s there. | |
| 26 | God! More than 100 square metres (4) |
| ARES – ARES, presumably more than one are, which is what 100 square metres is. | |
| 27 | Poet’s Latin work picked up on those central to dupery (4) |
| POPE – [du]P(OP)E[ry], the obvious answer. | |
I have some differences from you, Vinyl. I have “home of leaders of coppers in disguise” as the definition for 6 Across, and TELE as the network, which it may not be: TEL + E (Euler’s constant).
For completeness, a Cleopatra is a type of butterfly. And you’re right about Scotland Yard, In common usage it refers to the CID, who operate of course in plain clothes.
Edited at 2021-02-28 09:35 am (UTC)
The A in TELA is indicated by ‘before’ (ante).
I agree that 32 RESKEW is triply indicated (again awry/in the matter of coping) but the first sits a little uneasily with me. For ‘again awry’ to equate to RE-SKEW wouldn’t ‘awry’ have to be a verb? I don’t think you can equate RE to ‘again’ in isolation.
Digging a little way back into Mephisto history, Paul McKenna replaced Chris Feetenby in 2008, and in Paul’s first set of puzzles, I seemed to always be tripped up by his knack of clueing the letter A by hiding it in the surface, so in a Paul McKenna puzzle I’m always on the lookout for the hidden A.