Greetings, barred-grid fans.
I thought this was on the gentler side of things, and the pun in the top row showed up immediately which is rare for me. Some pretty generous long anagrams and I was done and dusted in about 20 minutes. What did I do with the rest of my Saturday night? Must have been something fun since I can’t remember.
How did you get along?
| Across | |
| 1 | Poet Laureate and fit dog (6) |
| PLAGUE – PL(Poet Laureate) and AGUE(fit) | |
| 6 | Legal eagle is fair about sticker on Indonesian car (6) |
| JURIST – JUST(fair) surrounding RI(IVR code for Republic of Indonesia) | |
| 11 | What’s paid in case urn gets smashed? (9) |
| INSURANCE – anagram of IN,CASE,URN. You could think of the definition encompassing the whole of the clue. | |
| 12 | As told gags cause breakdown (4) |
| LYSE – sounds like LIES(gag can be a made up story) | |
| 13 | Debit? Be prepared for what goes out (7) |
| EBB-TIDE – anagram of DEBIT,BE | |
| 14 | No longer declare a wine European (5) |
| AREDE – A, RED wine, and E(European) | |
| 16 | Engineer scam about, eg, ibuprofen and paracetamol (12, two words) |
| GENERIC NAMES – anagram of ENGINEER SCAM | |
| 17 | There in Rome wine expert is absent (4) |
| ECCO – PROSECCO(wine) minus PRO(expert) | |
| 18 | Old difficulty back in marshal’s retention of youth? (7) |
| NEOTENY – O then NET(difficulty) reversed inside the Napoleonic era marshal Michel NEY | |
| 21 | Series involving support and Republican governor (7) |
| STEERER – SER(series) containing TEE(support) and R(Republican) | |
| 22 | Keen on wearing stuff pulled from bins mostly (4) |
| INTO – IN(wearing) then TOT(something retrieved from the rubbish) minus the last letter | |
| 24 | Time for bacon and eggs in hot old colony with Pam (12, two words) |
| COLLOP MONDAY – anagram of OLD,COLONY and PAM | |
| 28 | Clogs left in narrow passages (5) |
| GLUTS – L(left) in GUTS(narrow passages) | |
| 29 | New car and one must accept end of Stirling Moss, say (7) |
| ACROGEN – anagram of CAR and ONE containing the last letter of stirlinG | |
| 30 | Backbone in lamb (4) |
| GRIT – double definition, the second being “in lamb” | |
| 31 | Glum line adopted by Smithers surprisingly (9) |
| MIRTHLESS – L(line) inside an anagram of SMITHERS | |
| 32 | For instance, cracking opinions may be frightful things (6) |
| BEASTS – AS(for instance) inside BETS(opinions) | |
| 33 | Supplier ripped into Sister (6) |
| STORER – TORE(ripped) inside SR(sister) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Fag end in papa’s coat (6) |
| PELAGE – LAG(fag end) inside PEE(P, papa) | |
| 2 | Unordained though privileged parishioner set page right (9, two words) |
| LAY RECTOR – LAY(set), RECTO(page), R(right) | |
| 3 | Want muscles? No charge in middle of week (7) |
| ABSENCE – ABS(muscles), then NC(no charge) inside the internal letters of wEEk | |
| 4 | Previously plotted against subordinate with difficult time (12) |
| UNDERWROUGHT – UNDER(subordinate), W(with), ROUGH(difficult), T(time) | |
| 5 | Person who’s dependent on amino acid for old eye remedy (7) |
| ESERINE – E(a person with no regular income) then SERINE(amino acid) | |
| 6 | Judge unopened tinnie as sweet in Oz (4) |
| JUBE – J(jube) and TUBE(tinnie) minus the first letter. A gimme for someone who grew up in Australia in the 70s | |
| 7 | Who’d grab solution for redevelopment? (12) |
| URBANOLOGIST – anagram of GRAB SOLUTION | |
| 8 | Carriage some aristocrat hailed (5) |
| RATHA – hidden inside aristocRAT HAiled | |
| 9 | International clown enjoying success (4, two words) |
| IN IT – I(international), NIT(clown) | |
| 10 | Very small shirt not specified by hostel (6) |
| TEENSY – TEE shirt, then NS(not specified) and Y(youth hostel) | |
| 15 | Cautious about leaving camp occupied (9) |
| TENTATIVE – C(about) removed from TENT(camp), ACTIVE(occupied) | |
| 19 | Sappers collectively lifted explosives — they single out nobility (7) |
| ERMINES – RE(sappers) reversed, then MINES(explosives) | |
| 20 | Type of lasting quality starts to emulate neat artist (7) |
| ENDURER – first letters in Emulate Neat and then Albrecht DURER | |
| 21 | Substantive covering stuff to soothe itch in some places (6) |
| SCRAMB – SB(substantive) containing CRAM(stuff) | |
| 23 | Headless blusterer who’s fond of mystery (6) |
| OYSTER – remove the first letter from ROYSTER(blusterer) | |
| 25 | Rifles, many loaded with round (5) |
| LOOTS – LOTS(many) containing O(round) | |
| 26 | Swinney’s worthless on account of admitting vacuous rancour (4) |
| ORRA – O/A(on account of) containing the external letters of RancouR | |
| 27 | Turn up this large fish (4) |
| WELS – reversal of SLEW(large number) | |
I started on Monday and finished on Tuesday, during breaks in my workday. Quite fun, and even got the pun (pretty obvious this time).
I unwisely biffed lay reader, which caused a little trouble. I also biffed eserine, which had just appeared in some other puzzle, and turned out to be correct. There are few obscure words here, and the ones I’d never heard of like neotony and acrogen come from known classical roots. It was actually Collop Monday that gave the most trouble.
Good puzzle for newcomers to Mephisto. I completed it Sunday evening with the wordplay of IN TO, NEOTENY and TENTATIVE left to unravel. These came to me later in the week.
I was curious to see whether collop Monday is still celebrated. There are a few references to it in recent newspaper articles published around the time of Lent. All seem to indicate that it was from the past. But apparently Scotch Collops are still a thing.
A remarkable number of clues that didn’t require Chambers-checking in this.
I definitely needed the BRB for 27dn though, where the temptation to bung in EELS was strong. The wordplay is a reversal of ‘turn’ – one of the definitions of SLEW in Chambers – and the definition is ‘large fish’ (see the definition of ‘sheatfish’ in Chambers).
Same here. I was thinking “slue” was the more common spelling for the “turn” meaning but I had that backward. My LOI.
27dn: I was torn between WELS – clearly backwards SLEW, but not in my Chambers (except under sheatfish, as keriothe says – strange to say, I hadn’t thought of looking for that!) -and EELS, on the grounds that SLEE might be a variant of SLEW, although I wouldn’t call eels “large” fish. Why is E a person with no regular income (in 5dn)? I got the answer, but was puzzled over the parsing.
That’s actually in Collins, even.
9.
a. a person without a regular income, or who is dependent on the state on a long-term basis because of unemployment, sickness, old age, etc
b. (as modifier)
E worker
See also occupation groupings
Some UK governmental bureaucracy thing.
WELS is in the latest Chambers defined as… ‘another name for the sheatfish’.
E is also in Chambers: ‘in advertising and marketing, a person who has no regular income or who is dependent on state benefit’.
Thanks. Sadly, my Chambers is vintage 1998. Fortunately, most newer coinages can be checked via Google, but I didn’t get round to checking E.