Mephisto 3182 – No biffing, please!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Mephisto

This was not too terribly hard, and it was possible to look up a number of the answers with the starting letters.   However, Q-Boat was rather difficult, and required a dictionary search, since E-Boat and U-Boat were also possible.     However EB and UB turned out to be nothing, so I had to search on.     We also have two ladies from long ago, identified in the clues only by their surnames, but  Mephisto solvers will  know of them.   Nepit could have been difficult, but fortunately II was able to use the cryptic and look it up.   The rest of the answers were fairly typical of Mephisto, where miscellaneous knowledge of old words and things, along with their spelling variants, definitely comes in handy.

Across
1 Previously silent old lady’s stiff and tense (9)
MUMBUDGET – MUM + BUDGE + T.   I’m not sure how budge = stiff, but the only possible answer.
11 Pipe kept behind bar in vessel (5)
Q-BOAT – QB (Queen’s Bench) + OAT (a pipe made from an oaten straw).
12 Lawyer in argument opposing beheaded aquatic mammal (7)
ONDATRA –  [c]ON(D.A.)TRA.   I wasn’t expecting D.A, here, but was looking for ATT in the middle.
13 First light rain starts to fall? More than a bit (5)
NEPIT – [o]NE + [s]PIT.   A nepit is 1.44 bits, among other things.
14 Poet’s named to sum up quickly (7)
HOTFOOT – HOT + FOOT, in the sense of a column of numbers footing.   Het would be more historically correct, but what did Spenser know about strong Germanic verbs of Class VIIB?
15 A riveting trip for a cutter (6)
PRUNER – P(RUN)ER, where riveting is an enclosure indicator.
16 Chinese papers recalled in Washington perhaps (5)
DINAH – HAN ID backwards, to give us Dinah Washington.
17 Ireland featuring in London museum gallery (7)
VIRANDA – V(IR) AND A.   If you biff veranda, you’ll get into all kinds of difficulties.
18 Weaverbirds searching endlessly around grassy land (7)
QUELEAS – QUE(LEA)S[t].
24 Drums, for instance including exotic tabla (7)
ATABALS – A(anagram of TABLA)S.
25 Edinburgh shows qualified fire fighters right to quit (7)
EFFEIRS – Anagram of FIRE FIGHTERS – RIGHT, a typical Mephisto clue.
29 Mammal foremost in trees annually, year after year (5)
TAYRA – T[rees} A[nnually} + YR + A.
30 Haji primarily aspires to contain resistance from wives and lovers (6)
HARIMS –  H[adj] A(R)IMS.   Once again, unwary biffers will be punished.
31 Popular Canadian sledges one avoided en route (7, two words)
IN TRANS – IN + TRA[i]NS.
32 Dessert was a failure, lacking depth (5)
BOMBE – BOMBE[d], one of the few easy clues.
33 Wood perhaps one featuring in native story (7)
NATALIE –  NAT(A)LIE, trickier than the Dinah Washington clue because the capital letter in Wood won’t be noticed.
34 Look on small business to provide part of organ (5)
LOBUS – LO + BUS.
35 Many stick out for protective gear north of the border (9)
NICKYTAMS – Anagram of MANY STICK.
Down
2 Very plentiful universal shares bourse floated (7)
UBEROUS – U + anagram of BOURSE.
3 Work in canteen, mostly for small money as before (7)
MOPUSES – M(OPUS)ES[s], apparently a bit of obsolete slang.
4 Right away, Scottish kid good for game in the street (5)
BAING – BAI[r]N + G.   Hard to find in Chambers, you have to look up ba.   Fortunately, the cryptic is quite simple.
5 One grumbling after losing his head is the Speaker (7)
UTTERER –  [m]UTTERER.
6 Writer of something misguided English head of humanities dismissed (7)
GNOMIST – Anagram of SOM[e]T[h]ING, one that keep me guessing for a while.
7 More than one rum as if at parties (6)
TAFIAS – Anagram of AS IF AT – for once, rum actually is rum, and the anagram indicator is parties.
8 Test on NHS reveals veteran’s bruise (5)
STONN – Hidden in [te]ST ON N[hs].   Presumably, the veteran remembers fifteenth-century words.
9 The old track time travelling (5)
TROAD –  T on the ROAD, of course.
10 Fan hears cracking musical releases (9)
CATHARSES –  CAT(anagram of HEARS)S, where fan is the anagram indicator and cracking is the enclosure indicator.
15 NHS notification going around quite wrong? Leads to workplace protesting (9)
PIQUETING –  PI(anagram of QUITE)NG, a witty allusion to the pingdemic.
19 Timeless Croatian troubles concerning ministers? (7)
AARONIC – Anagram of CROA[t]IAN – the double A had me fooled for a while.
20 Going forth to acquire a book in a commercial style (7)
SALABLY – SAL(A B)LY.
21 Mum on edge starts to bring anti-depressants from a part of the kitchen (7)
MARIMBA –  MA + RIM + B[ring] A[nti-depressants], where the kitchen is a slang term for the orchestra section.
22 Lead with choice behind (7)
PLUMBUM – PLUM BUM, a clue that is getting to be a bit of a chestnut.
23 Pole at the bottom, catch endless flipping fish (6)
SERRAN –  N + ARRES[t], all upside-down.
26 Network one’s following up in old lighthouse (5)
FANAL –  LAN + A + F, all upside-down.
27 Song that’s appropriate for an audience (5)
FYTTE – Sounds like FIT.   You might have heard of the answer in the subtitle to The Hunting of the Snark.
28 Early grub with turnip or carrot? (5)
WROOT – W + ROOT, with grub as a verb.

13 comments on “Mephisto 3182 – No biffing, please!”

  1. ….because I found this almost totally inaccessible, and gave up after 22 minutes, having only managed half a dozen answers in the SE corner.
  2. I found this to be of mid-level difficulty, but I have an error because a rogue R somehow made it into the grid to produce EFREIRS/RYTTE. I had parsed these clues correctly so this must have been a typo. It’s hard to spot errors when you don’t know the words but I should have spotted this one.
    ‘Stiff’ is just one of the definitions of budge. Under the same definition it can also mean pompous or… lambskin fur. Go figure.
    1. I found this hard but these days I tend to find most Mephistos that way inclined.
      Please K, can you tell me what “Go figure” really means? i can’t pin down a meaning for it.. I’m serious, on the face of it it means “You work it out for yourself” but perhaps it means “Your guess is as good as mine, I don’t know either?”
      1. It’s just a way of highlighting something odd or surprising, with a kind of figurative shrug of the shoulders. So yes it’s like ‘your guess is as good as mine’.
      2. It’s a calque on Yiddish *gey vays*:
        Both Leo Rosten, The Joys of Yinglish (1989), and Robert Chapman & Barbara Kipfer, Dictionary of American Slang, third edition (1995), trace the expression to the Yiddish expression “gey vays” meaning, literally, “go know.” Here is Rosten’s entry:

        Go figure A Yinglish variation of the Yiddish Gey vays (“go know”). 1. A expression of surprise that something unexpected happened. [Example:] “Go figure the engine would explode!” 2. A confession of ignorance. [Example:] “Go figure he was a crook!” 3. How could I have anticipated something as crazy as that?! [Example:] “Go figure her brother was a prize-fighter!” 4. Could anyone in the world have been expected to make allowances for such an improbability?! [Example:] “Go figure the whole building would sink right into the bog!”

  3. Found this hard. RH went in quickly, LH had to be chipped away at over a long while. Thanks for explaining SERRAN.
  4. The word Q-boat does not appear in Chambers.
    I have been solving the Mephistoes for five years now.
    This was not one of your better clues.
  5. Found this one pretty straightforward with Q-BOAT and IN TRANS giving me the most trouble. Fun puzzle.
  6. I found this hard and ended with one pink square…. I had an unparsed U BOAT, thinking vaguely that it might have something to do with U-bend. Hmm. But then I also failed to parse NEPIT and PRUNER. Thanks Tim and V.

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