OK, we’re back to the normal levels of difficulty, so it’s time to get our your Chambers again. Fortunately, there are a number of easy starter clues to get some letters into the grid, as I took synaesthesia as a free gift from our setter, Robert Teuton. Of course, getting Quaker colour quickly would have been even more helpful, but Mephisto solvers take what they can get. The use of a trade name like Ercol might cause a MER, particularly from overseas solvers, but the answer was rather obvious once I got the Q.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Perhaps grey fake caught out by furniture specialist for us (12, two words) |
| QUAKER COLOUR – QUA[c]K + ERCOL + OUR. Ercol is a well-know UK furniture maker. | |
| 9 | Turkic Asian heading for Ukraine for example, twice (5) |
| UZBEG – U[kraine] + Z.B. + E.G. Z.B. = zum Beispiel, for example in German. | |
| 11 | Hard to excavate around ancient town (5) |
| BURGH – H + GRUB backwards. | |
| 13 | Monsieur fighting unarmed (8) |
| INERMOUS – Anagram of MONSIEUR. | |
| 14 | Massage hip after party (4, two words) |
| DO IN – DO + IN. I’m not sure how to take massage; there is definitely no slang meaning of to kill. | |
| 15 | Transport to Paddington perhaps put out by downpour (7) |
| UPTRAIN – Anagram of PUT + RAIN. | |
| 16 | Byzantine grail that is pure clay (5) |
| ARGIL – Anagram of GRAIL. | |
| 18 | English expressing extremes of skills in throwing and kicking (6) |
| TOEING – TO[-s[kill]s,+E]ING, a brilliant letter replacement-clue. | |
| 19 | Office keeping a Japanese coin back, a gold coin (8) |
| JOHANNES – JOH(A)N + SEN backwards. The trick here is the slang meaning of office, which means john, which means loo. | |
| 21 | Mysterious idol the principle of beliefs apparently in Thailand (8) |
| BAPHOMET – B[eliefs] + AP + HOME + T. Yes, ap is a valid abbreviation for apparently. | |
| 25 | Woman left out breadbasket in chancel of church (6) |
| ADYTUM – [l]ADY + TUM. | |
| 27 | Navy shelled Iceland with old, old speedy vessel (5) |
| AVISO – [n]AV[y] + IS + O. The two-letter country code for Iceland is based on its Icelandic name. | |
| 28 | Colour stencilling of music ensemble on piano (7) |
| POCHOIR – P + O’ CHOIR. | |
| 30 | Harmful beetle we eliminated (4) |
| EVIL – [we]EVIL. | |
| 31 | Frenchman possessing singing voice that closely resembles original recording (8) |
| REALTONE – RE(ALTO)NE. | |
| 32 | Second day holding spade — a way to teach manual skills (5) |
| SLOYD – S(LOY)D. The loy was an Irish spade, while Educational Sloyd comes from Sweden. | |
| 33 | Returning a lot of palm oil (5) |
| ATTAR – RATTA[n] backwards. | |
| 34 | Performing sea shanties round end of jetty perhaps hearing colours? (12) |
| SYNAESTHESIA – Anagram of SEA SHANTIES around [jett]Y. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Question … one to check for somebody (6) |
| QUIDAM – QU + I + DAM. | |
| 2 | Forbidding Scottish muscle with almost power of two (6) |
| ABEIGH – AB + EIGH[t]. Abs are normally plural, but apparently the singular is at least possible. | |
| 3 | Vulgar old lump in Shrek? (7) |
| KERNISH – Anagram of IN SHREK. A kern was an Irish foot-soldier, hence a vulgarian. | |
| 4 | Shakespearean attempt at riddle recalled time involving Mark (4) |
| EGMA – A(M)GE backwards. As for the literal, you could look it up. | |
| 5 | Scottish upset about another cup thrashing (11, three words) |
| COUP THE CRAN – C + anagram of ANOTHER CUP. | |
| 6 | Sordid gains tempt boxing clubs (5) |
| LUCRE – LU(C)RE. | |
| 7 | Japan previously making raid on base (6) |
| ORDAIN – Anagram of RAID ON. The literal is an obscure bit of 19th-century slang. | |
| 8 | What could be making us single? (8) |
| UGLINESS – Anagram of US SINGLE, an &lit. | |
| 10 | Cheese? Me, I’m confused with colours (11) |
| COULOMMIERS – Anagram of ME, I’M + COLOURS. | |
| 12 | Chinese warehouses slashing 50 per cent off their tea succeeded (5) |
| HONGS – [souc]HONG + S. Souchong is the Chinese word for black tea, most often seen in combination with Lapsang. | |
| 17 | Type of memory professor adopted by actually declining Latin (8, two words) |
| READ ONLY – REA(DON)[l]LY. | |
| 20 | Oval gem bats at event (7) |
| NAVETTE – Anagram of AT EVENT. Literally, a little boat in French. | |
| 21 | Spiritual fathers retiring drink bolstering the soul (5) |
| BAPUS – BA + SUP backwards. Ba is from ancient Egypt, which also supplies the ka and the akh. | |
| 22 | Alter two notes and copy semitone (6) |
| PYCNON – Anagram of N + N + COPY. | |
| 23 | Axes religious ballots lacking hint of efficacy (6) |
| PIVOTS – PI + VOT[e[fficacy]]S. | |
| 24 | Sherry casks are turned over under the sun (6) |
| SOLERA – SOL + ARE backwards. | |
| 26 | Evergreen clipped like this always coming back (5) |
| THUYA – THU[s] + AY backwards. | |
| 29 | Insipid watery stuff, not special (4) |
| BLAH – BLA[s]H. | |
Ha, I thought I’d fully parsed everything, but see now that I just bunged in QUAKER COLOUR when I saw the light.
SYNAESTHESIA was my first one in, of course, and then I got THUYA, which was a proper Mephisto solve-an-unknown-from-the-wordplay.
LOI was TOEING… actually, just the E!
There was a boy in my hometown named Argil. Somehow I knew now what that meant. My brother’s middle name is Clay.
I was wondering if “massage” was a typo for… massacre?? DO can be “massage,” I guess (like massaging figures, cooking the books?), but DO is also party. Can’t explain.
That’s the way I took massage: to deceive, which is the first meaning of do in. Not exactly equivalent but the meanings overlap.
One might massage data or the appearance of something to deceive, but the person deceived is not massaged.
I’m not quibbling with you over that.
“Quibble”? 😲
I thought there was a good balance of knowns and readily parsable unknowns. I didn’t have any queries over any of the clues other than the loose connection between ‘do in’ and ‘massage’.
I found Mr Mayer’s cryptic a much harder slog compared with this.
14A: as far as I can tell, the enumeration was “(4)” rather than “(4, two words)” in both print and online versions. That’s because the answer is do-in, which is a kind of massage according to Chambers.
Certainly (4) in my paper and do-in meaning a type of massage is even in my elderly Chambers!
I get to the Mephisto online, going directly via the “Puzzles” along the top of the website. (Not via the “Crossword Club” link).
So the URL for me was https://www.thetimes.com/puzzles/crossword/mephisto-no-3400-5wsqd7lcf
On this version 14A said “(4, two words)”, as per Vinyl1’s blog. It still does.
Thanks for identifying the place where this doesn’t work – I’ll pass on the information.
Moderate one. According to Chambers DO-IN is a form of massage originating in China but the term is Japanese.
I don’t know how I missed that in Chambers! (Was it added to the app as I slept?! Ha) The hyphenated term is not on the same page as the un-, but I guess that may be standard, unlike spelling variations. So… I just… failed to look?!
[Slaps forehead ]
Just noticed that the Chambers definition for DO-IN uses “preventative”… even though the august source’s entry for that word has it as a variant “by irregular formation” of “preventive.”
In my (old) Chambers, it uses “preventatively”, which doesn’t even appear under the entry for prevent! Thanks for mentioning that – I enjoy these little anomalies.
Yes, it’s “preventatively” in my Chambers (app) too.
This was fun, how often do you get to use ZB and EG in the same word?
According to magic Chambers, there’s only the one use!
Yes, I thought that was rather good too. We’ve now had DH (a year or so back) and ZB – watch out for AW (re).
Count me amongst those who didn’t have a clue how QUAKER COLOUR worked – I even missed the QUA[C]K/fake bit. I might have been OK with G Plan. Missing hyphens in Mephistos often deceive me: READ-ONLY was the other one.