Comments on: Guardian 24,714/Rufus

By: brr

brr — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:32:26 +0000

Thank goodness for Rufus. This was ideal for duffers like me. Big Amy made me smile too.

By: liz

liz — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:26:49 +0000

Ray — I thought the same as you about 2dn at first, but I think now that ‘mainly’ just about rescues it.

By: ray

ray — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:33:54 +0000

25a – interestingly UNISON is of course a union, so the answer almost contradicts the clue.

By: ray

ray — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:27:22 +0000

22d – surely using his or her makes it gender specific , whereas oldie can be either ? I didn’t really see any problem with “one’s” in this context.

Big Amy seems to be getting regular outings.

2d hardly seemed cryptic to me, so I spent ages looking for an alternative to LLOYDS.

By: JimboNWUK

JimboNWUK — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:11:12 +0000

First time I was glad to have the Saturday Prize puzzle in order to pad out my lunch break! Good for newbies like Pricklewedge I suppose (he said grudgingly)

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:46:48 +0000

Barbara – I considered the “being”=”person” idea but then surely “one’s” doesn’t make sense: it should be “his” or “her”.

By: Dave Ellison

Dave Ellison — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:49:15 +0000

Well, with so much praise for 12a dare I present dissent? I too toyed with Midas, till I got 3 down. But my objection is that it doesn’t quite work: it should be more like “Gold retriever….”. Had the fleece been made of copper, would “Cupric retriever.. ” work? (Yes, I know, there is no such dog)

By: Barbara

Barbara — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:15:27 +0000

re: 22dn Oldie
An excellent clue. If you read ‘being’ as ‘person’, then the answer calls for a noun.
The def. is: being(person) past one’s prime.

By: Pricklewedge

Pricklewedge — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:13:15 +0000

Thoroughly enjoyable and my fourth ever completed grid. At last I seem to be getting the hang of this cruciverbal lark

By: Derek Lazenby

Derek Lazenby — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:19:14 +0000

I’d like to tell you it was a quick finish too, but I’ve no idea, too many other demands on my time this morning, but the various bits probably didn’t add up to that much.

WRT comments RE 12. How does Google help? The off-line proggy Wordfinder or, ahem, cough, Chamber’s Word Wizzard or the Dictionary, Rhyming, Crossword Puzzle, Scrabble, Quotations, Thesaurus, Anagrams & Pig Latin site would be more useful.

Or has the new verb “to google” already become debased such that it now means any search activity rather than the specific type of search provided by Google?