Mephisto 2498

[toalisi]

Last one and I know I will feel silly when someone helps me!

9dn- Rare chips are cooked with second drop of walnut oil (5)

I have SA?ER

The S from fantads
The A from manubria
The E from zine
The R from lister

Have I gone wrong somewhere.

[GRM]

No, you haven't gone wrong. The answer is SAWER. Anagram of 'are' and 's' for 'second' and 'w' the first letter of 'walnut'

A 'sawer' is a person who saws wood, ie a carpenter. 'Chips' is a word occasionally (rarely) used which also means carpenter.

[greyfox]

Sawer - defined in Chambers as a rare term for a person who makes a living from sawing timber e.g. a carpenter a.k.a. 'chips'. An anagram of are + s(econd) + w(drop of walnut). I don't see where the 'oil' comes from though.

[toalisi]

Thank you both for the answer which clearly is SAWER.

Possibly Kayakamina will come on and give us the definitive breakdown of the clue.

Thanks again.

[Quizmonster]

It's a pretty 'slack' clue, really, given that the word 'oil' is there only because the setter had already used 'drop'...ie some form of liquid had to be given. Had 'piece' or 'element' or whatever been used instead of 'drop', there would have been no need for 'oil'.

[JUNKMAN]

The reference to oil is to do with the part of the clue ' Rare chips are cooked ' - you can cook with walnut oil!

[kayakamina]

Junkman the definition of the clue is 'Rare Chips' i.e an old word for a carpenter - SAWER..

The 'cooked' is an indicator to anagrammatise ARE.

I agree with QM1 about the quality of the clue and have e-mailed the setter Tim Moorey about the use of OIL which seems redundant.

[Quizmonster]

I know that, but it still doesn't make sense...nobody cooks chips with two drops - ie second - of oil. He might just as well have said 'water', given that we don't cook chips in water either. That's why it's slack.

[Quizmonster]

Ah! My "I know that" was in response to Junkman, not to you, K.

[Tichfield]

I think that you can get too worked up about the "correctness" of a clue.

The answer was clear enough - with or without the lubrication of the oil.