Last Saturday I was still a bit under the weather, and couldn’t get anywhere with this puzzle. It really wasn’t that difficult, but I wasn’t sharp enough to tackle it, and couldn’t get any of the four long answers, which is the key to solving this particular grid. So I put it aside and forgot about it until Friday.
As it turns out, the puzzle wasn’t that difficult for a Mephisto. Yes, the parsing of vaginicolous is a bit tricky, and a lithotripter doesn’t come up every day, but the cryptics are instructive if you follow them. It was actually gorilla that baffled me the longest, even though that is the only English word that will fit, but I eventually saw how it worked.
| Across | |
| 1 | Tree snake’s run off (4) |
| ACER – [r]ACER. The racers are mostly found in North America. | |
| 5 | American steam loco mostly puffed out east (7) |
| BULGINE – BULGIN[g] + E. | |
| 11 | Rue action resolving Lord Advocate’s surety? (9) |
| CAUTIONER – Anagram of RUE ACTION. | |
| 12 | City’s original governor (5) |
| URBAN – UR + BAN. A ban is the governor of a banat. | |
| 13 | Bagpiper’s snigger about triplets (5) |
| TRINS – SNIRT backwards, a Scots word. | |
| 14 | I am furious about working period coming very early (7, two words) |
| IRON AGE – I R(ON)AGE. | |
| 16 | Machine, one mostly standard in Tube, permanently installed there? (12) |
| VAGINICOLOUS – VA(GIN,I,COLOU[rs])S, where the literal refers back to tube. | |
| 17 | Pastry coating — mine used to be hard (7) |
| EGGWASH – EGG + WAS + H. An egg-shaped bomb or mine, as you might expect. | |
| 20 | Remove edge from choice fillet (4) |
| LIST – Triple definition. | |
| 22 | Agreement over bonds account’s not right (4) |
| REPO – REPO[rt]. I was annoyed when I finally saw this – average repo balances at the Fed are one of the key liquidity measures. | |
| 23 | Italian port managed to get in oil (7) |
| OTRANTO – OT(RAN)TO. Otto is also known as attar. | |
| 24 | One thinking they know Elizabeth, the late queen? More informed about son (12) |
| BESSERWISSER – BESS + E.R. +WIS(S)ER. | |
| 28 | Old money in Africa we’ll mostly keep in circulation (7) |
| EKPWELE – Anagram of WE’L[l] + KEEP. | |
| 30 | With the second doubling shun result of advancing revolution (5) |
| AXOID – A(-v,+X)OID. Some Roman-numeral arithmetic is required here. | |
| 31 | Herbivore set on eating pie (5) |
| TAPIR – TA(PI)R. Pie is a mixture of type, and pi is an alternate spelling. Tar here means to set on, and it comes from a different Germanic root than the black tar in the bucket. | |
| 32 | Prevailed over one refusing to admit Russia’s backing (9) |
| SURREINED – DENIER RUS backwards. | |
| 33 | Outdoor benches are set out beside river Dee (7) |
| EXEDRAE – EXE + D + anagram of ARE. | |
| 34 | Hear poet dropping name (4) |
| OYES – [n]OYES. Alfred Noyes, not the first poet one thinks of nowadays. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Force changes to volume in fluid rock formation in a quake (7) |
| AQUIVER – AQUIFER changing the F to V. | |
| 2 | Anxiety about storm taking last of green seaweed (9) |
| CARRAGEEN – CAR(RAGE)E + [gree]N. | |
| 3 | Sink for instance without management buyout (5) |
| EMBOG – E.(M.B.O)G. | |
| 4 | An Aussie barman’s right is overridden by idiot British (12, two words) |
| BANANA BENDER – BANANA + B + [bart]ENDER – I think. Let me know if you disagree. | |
| 5 | Sharp ridge above German fortress (4) |
| BURG – BUR + G. | |
| 6 | Note record height location for Dutch (7) |
| UTRECHT – UT + REC + HT. | |
| 7 | Stone crusher came down closer around split (12) |
| LITHOTRIPTER – LIT HOT(RIP)TER. Hot in the sense of nearer to guessing the correct answer. | |
| 8 | Heavy skunk-like creature’s not unknown south of Gabon (7) |
| GORILLA – G + [z]ORILLA. G is the IVR code for Gabon. | |
| 9 | Name of architect rejecting department in blue (5) |
| INIGO – IN[d]IGO. Inigo Jones was a famous 17th-century architect. | |
| 10 | Ruble used in Estonia formerly (4) |
| ERST – E(R)ST. | |
| 15 | Perhaps badger me over debris pile in excavation (9) |
| MUSTELINE – M(US,TEL)INE. A tel is an ancient debris pile, beloved of archeologists. | |
| 18 | Term encompassing strumpet’s baby infant primarily (7) |
| WOSBIRD – WO(S[trumpet’s] B[aby] I[nfant])RD. A brilliant &lit. | |
| 19 | Help over supporting red lichen patches (7) |
| SOREDIA – SORE + AID upside-down. | |
| 21 | Men after thrills initially love bullfighters (7) |
| TOREROS – T[hrills] + OR + EROS. | |
| 25 | SNP’s put out, aggrieved about money (5) |
| SMORE – S(M)ORE. | |
| 26 | Mounted unknown old foot soldier in India (5) |
| SEPOY – Y + O + PES upside-down. | |
| 27 | Produce light poetry for recitation (4) |
| LASE – Sounds like lays, as in a minstrel’s lay. | |
| 29 | Stock of Bibles belonging to a family, English (4) |
| KINE – KIN + E. A bible is a type of cow, at least in the world of Mephisto. | |
Last time, I solved everything on Sunday and then regretted occasionally during the ensuing week that I didn’t have a few clues left to crack as a brief distraction. (Not that I wanted to go to the archives to start another one!) I finished this just a few hours ago, after starting with KINE and TOREROS last week, and for days BESSERWISSER was the only grid-spanning answer I’d found. The others all came rather late.
GORILLA was my last one too!
A “bible,” in Mephisto, is “The third stomach of a ruminant, with many folds like the leaves of a book.” So any group of cows is a “[s]tock of [b]ibles.”
Two corrections:
4D: “idiot British” indicates (nana, B) wich replaces the rt (= “ right”) in “bartender”
29D: Kine is “Stock of Bibles” because Chambers indicates that “kine” is a term used in the Bible (or at least the King James version, which has 25 uses of “kine” – one modern translation has none). I hope we will never define an animal by one of its organs unless that’s a recorded meaning. Unless there’s a printing of Chambers that has plain “Bible”, “(Bible)” should indicate that it isn’t a definition, but usage indication.
One error again, this time AXOID. Just could not get the parsing right. I started with SURE = ‘VOID, thence VOOID and finally to OVOID along the lines of ELLIPSOID. Then 27d scuppered that at which point I lost the plot on 30a
KINE I thought was very neat.
If the pun in your last line was deliberate, then very ‘neat’ indeed.
Anyone watch the 1971 dramatisation of Sunset Song broadcast last week by the BBC? It was rife with recent Mephisto words. A very moving story about crofter life in the Means in the early 20th century.
I remember it well. The books, on the other hand, are a really turgid read.
Re. 13a: not sure what the bagpipers of Brittany, Ireland, Galicia and Asturias would have to say about this.
Not too many troubles with the puzzle but thanks for introducing me to BESSERWISSER which I expect to use many times in the near future.
Who is Larry? BTW Nice Puzzle. I knew 13A was TRINS but somehow managed to submit TRIOS. Grr. LIST is a pretty amazing triple obscure definition. Couldn’t parse BANANA BENDER or MUSTELINE. Thank-you John and Vinyl (and Peter). P.S. Yes BESSERWISSER is a great word.
This is a personal dedication – you had to be there. The five people around the table on Friday found it quite amusing.
57.12, so an extended solve for me. I would have liked to see the double V in AXOID being two Vs, one inverted, but 5 to 10 is obviously what is meant, though rather less innovative.
Happy to be in the elite Mephisto crowd of Besserwisser and Besserwisserinnen.
George and I were considering the possibility of doubling medieval Roman numerals – now that would be innovative – F to R to T!