Comments on: Guardian 24648 / Rufus

By: Paul B

Paul B — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:18:22 +0000

Well, at least JUMBLES ALE made me chuckle. Not generally up to scratch though, as opined passim.

A few technical points: why ‘entered’ as the containerind at 9ac? Past tense doesn’t seem very good for the cryptic reading.

13ac, in what sense ‘of a’?

20ac, I don’t understand what this clue is meant to be – presumably some kind of CD?

5dn seems to say ‘subsidiary indication gets it there quickly’ – where’s the definition for EXPRESS DELIVERY in that?

8dn uses ‘but rather’ as an aid to making sense, but … oh, all right then.

19dn makes ‘a’ redundant.

21dn doesn’t use its indicator actually to indicate, but it’s close: there are three letters either side of the hidden word, so it is in a sense the ‘heart’.

Not one for the shoebox.

By: Derek Lazenby

Derek Lazenby — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:13:02 +0000

mhl, no it wasn’t old news, I’ve only been doing these regularly since the end of November when I came out of the H nursing my leg. So thanks for that.

Dang, another dictionary people want me to buy! I’m semi-retired and the pension doesn’t kick in for several years. Dictionaries are thus not high on my spend list.

Pity there isn’t some freely available facility on the web. Oh well, never mind.

In the meantime, I’m afraid I’ll have to keep asking and you’ll have to keep telling. I’m sure there must be some subject you can swamp me with questions about just to make things even.

By: Ralph G

Ralph G — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:42:47 +0000

Thanks mhl for the ‘legal right’ link: all you ever wanted to know about ‘liens’ and didn’t like to ask. Especially liked the ‘inchoate lien’.
13 above; thanks Steven for the ‘old bailey’ link. Quelle trouvaille!
Martin, Stiofain 16-17: thanks for pointing out the hidden witticisms.
20a (19 above); Ray, I agree about the parsing but I think it works OK if you just take the whole clue as a cryptic definition (better than some of the others).

By: ray

ray — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:53:23 +0000

Found this to be one of those strange puzzles where you think “I’ll get nowhere with this”, but one answer eventually forms and the rest drop into place in rapid sequence. Didn’t think much of euphoric=sent in 17a and didn’t feel 20a read very well – “didn’t remain=went” o.k. but it’s a bit iffy to get from “wholly calm” to ” to pieces”

By: Dave Ellison

Dave Ellison — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:50:48 +0000

Well, whizzed through most of this, but slowed down on the last half dozen.

4d Why the ? – is it an attempt at an &lit?

6d Why “young”? Without it, it would have the sidetrack advantage of making one think of running shoes.

By: stiofain_x

stiofain_x — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:17:40 +0000

Martin R
I thought there was something going on with word pairings in columns and rows there is
TURN SCREWCAP
IN HOCK EXTENDED
NOTES WELL SPENT
and a few vaguer ones but maybe im reading too much into it.
I enjoyed this one typical Rufus fun and no major quibbles.
Stiofain

By: MartinR

MartinR — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:00:08 +0000

6dn – read the entire column, and raise a glass, with the smile!

By: liz

liz — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:38:34 +0000

I thought 25ac and 4dn were pretty non-cryptic too. I also thought 13ac was a bit weak. Got caught out with ‘screw top’ even though I got 8dn and didn’t get ‘stropped’ at all. But I did like 6dn, which raised a smile.

By: mhl

mhl — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:33:45 +0000

Derek Lazenby: This may be old news to you, but just in case: Hugh Stephenson has mentioned the hyphenation issue and his policy a couple of times in his newsletter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crossword/update/story/0,,2283397,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crossword/update/story/0,,1521155,00.html

By: steven

steven — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:10:46 +0000

At http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ if you enter stropped in the keyword box there are 2 cases where stropped is mentioned. This is always a good place to try out words and see how they’re used and when they were used.