Whenever I set up to solve a Mephisto, I naturally have my copy of Chambers at hand. Normally, I look through all the clues and answer all the obvious ones (well, obvious for Mephisto) before I get serious and start checking in the dictionary for possibly relevant words, either for the wordplay or for the answer.
However, for this puzzle, my Chambers remained unopened. I felt confident about the wordplay and answers that I saw and solved, so I just kept going. All of a sudden, in about 45 minutes, the puzzle was complete! Well, Don Manley’s wordplay is usually very clear, but this was the first time it took me all the way to the end. My LOI was fremescence, a word I had never seen but which I was absolutely sure of based on the wordplay.
Now let’s see if I can blog it…..
| Across | |
| 1 | Ruffled cook concealing what’s bad (6) |
| FRILLY – FR(ILL)Y, my FOI. | |
| 6 | A crowd round edge of village with a basic form of life (6) |
| AMOEBA – A MO([villag]E)B + A. | |
| 10 | Gathering for men being old, lacking energy in posture (9) |
| STAG DANCE – ST(AG[e]D)ANCE. | |
| 12 | Letter just produced, first off (4) |
| RESH – [f]RESH, a Hebrew letter. | |
| 13 | Roman boy in dog’s mess? (4) |
| PUER – A double definition, which I got from the first one, not knowing pure/puer, as used in tanning. | |
| 14 | Imagine identity getting almost eroded (6) |
| IDEATE – ID + EATE[n]. | |
| 15 | Bid made by mean person wanting minimum of expenditure (6) |
| MISERE – MISER + E[expenditure], a card-game type of bid. | |
| 16 | I cut a lump out — a flowery cluster (9) |
| CAPITULUM – Anagram of I CUT A LUMP. | |
| 17 | Old cut offered by markets rejected — a trick! (9) |
| STRAMACON – MARTS backwards + A CON. I imagined this must be either hair or meat, but it turns out to be neither. | |
| 20 | Is woman diminished without kids? (9) |
| ISSUELESS – IS SUE LESS? | |
| 25 | A new atomiser for perfume (9) |
| AROMATISE – A + anagram of ATOMISER. | |
| 27 | Clear the foreign weed? (6) |
| NETTLE – NETT + LE. | |
| 28 | Sign on vehicle recently parked outside Public Library (6) |
| L-PLATE – L(P.L.)ATE. | |
| 29 | Bird lacking right food (4) |
| CAKE – C[r]AKE. | |
| 30 | Agent with ingratiating manner (4) |
| GMAN – Hidden in [ingratiatin]G MAN[ner] | |
| 31 | Flow of water seen in journey around one green (9) |
| RIVERTIDE – R(I VERT)IDE. | |
| 32 | Tiny bird in waste water (6) |
| PETITE – PE(TIT)E. | |
| 33 | Redundant old site, derelict, containing nothing (6) |
| OTIOSE – O + anagram of SITE around O. Pronounced osh-ous. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Supporting fashionable position, say (11, two words) |
| FOR INSTANCE – FOR IN STANCE, a bit of a chestnut. | |
| 2 | Change again as dieter taking new course (6) |
| RE-EDIT – Anagram of DIETER. | |
| 3 | Immigrant in one ship that is heading north (5) |
| ISSEI – I S.S. + I.E. upside down. | |
| 4 | Part of chemical to be effective in upsetting sickness (6) |
| LACTAM – L(ACT)AM, MAL upside-down. | |
| 5 | Nasty headless bogey to disappear, as before? (4) |
| YGOE – Anagram of [b]OGEY, a bit of Spenserian English. | |
| 6 | A mother in charge of father initially (6) |
| ADAMIC – A DAM I.C. | |
| 7 | In short time a small egg is seen as sacred object (6) |
| MANITO – M(A NIT)O. | |
| 8 | Silver coin the French female put in bowl (7) |
| ECUELLE – ECU + ELLE, where put in appears to be a ‘resulting in’ indicator. | |
| 9 | Soup bishop tipped over in riotous social occasion? (6) |
| BEER-UP – PUREE B upside-down. | |
| 11 | Growling maiden in unrestrained display of temper about to be restrained (11) |
| FREMESCENCE – FRE(M)E + SCEN(C)E. | |
| 18 | Applaud Information Technology incorporating the latest in slick software (7) |
| ROOTKIT – ROOT ([slic]K I.T, with a rather vague literal for a very specific bit of software. | |
| 19 | Gloom once of daughter, brought up inadequately (6) |
| DREARE – D + REARE[d]. | |
| 21 | Everyone must wear fixed helmet (6) |
| SALLET – S(ALL)ET. | |
| 22 | Old farm animal slaughtered for Easter (6) |
| STEARE – Anagram of EASTER, a bit of a reversed cryptic. | |
| 23 | Liveliness of goblin, character ultimately making maximum ascent (6) |
| ESPRIT – SPRITE with the final E moved upwards to the front. | |
| 24 | Instruments from India borne by celebrities (6) |
| SITARS – S(I)TARS, a bit of an &lit if you remember what was going on in 1967, upon the Beatles return from India. | |
| 26 | Happened to get love — a relief? (5) |
| CAMEO – CAME + O. | |
| 28 | Rare game with large number getting no score (4) |
| LOTO – LOT + O, a rare spelling variant, anyway. | |
Agreed – the wordplay made this one crystal clear. Good thing, too, it took a lot longer to tackle the other Sunday barred puzzle.
Very straightforward.
Re. 8d: ‘PUT IN’ might be an instruction to the solver.
Re. PUER or PURE: from what I remember of the history of trades and crafts in mediaeval Glasgow, the white ones were much sought after.
Well, finished it … in nothing like that time or style, but delighted to get there!
Solving Mephisto is an art, and the more you do it the easier it is. It involves trusting the wordplay, and having a feeling for the more obscure aspects of language. For example, I was fairly sure that fremescence was correct, because it seems to be a properly formed Latinate word.
I wished I had tried this one.