Guardian 26,604 by Rufus

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The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26604.

On the whole, I thought this a very good Rufus; the double definition at 15A was rather weak, but the CDs were mostly good of their kind.

Across
9 ENACT
Pass one bill in ten after amendment (5)

An envelope of AC (‘one bill’) in ENT, an anagram (‘after amendment’) of ‘ten’.
10 NOSTALGIC
Looking back at closing moves (9)

An anagram (‘moves’) of ‘at closing’.
11 HONEYCOMB
Sweet store often buzzing with activity (9)

Cryptic definition.
12 LENTO
Given no credit apparently, being slow (5)

LENT O (‘given no credit’, with O for nothing).
13 ABRIDGE
A game to cut short (7)

A charade of ‘a’ plus BRIDGE (‘game’).
15 RELEASE
Free delivery (7)

Double definition.
17 ROPES
One knows them to be well-informed (5)

Cryptic reference to the phrase “know the ropes”.
18 TEA
Leaves for some refreshment (3)

In the way of a good many Rufus CDs, this clue says to me “This is a cryptic definition, so you are expected to read ‘leaves’ as a verb, and be confused”.
20 WAGER
Grew agitated about a gambling venture (5)

An envelope (‘about’) of ‘a’ in WGER, an anagram (‘agitated’) of ‘grew’.
22 SAFFRON
Colour reserved for fans (7)

An anagram (‘re-served’) of ‘for fans’.
25 PARASOL
A shady put-up job (7)

Cryptic definition.
26 BINGE
Begin drunken spree (5)

An anagram (‘drunken’) of ‘begin’.
27 TEST DRIVE
Evaluate performance of stroke on river (4,5)

A charade of TEST (‘river’) plus DRIVE (‘stroke’).
30 INSOLVENT
Broke nine-volts circuit (9)

An anagram (‘circuit’) of ‘nine-volts’.
31 ABHOR
Shun sailor with horror? Not half! (5)

A charade of AB (‘sailor’) plus ‘hor[ror]’ without its last three letters (‘not half’).
Down
1 MESH
Me and mum work together (4)

A charade of ‘me’ plus SH (‘mum’).
2 RAINDROP
Soldiers parachuting — a bit of a shower (8)

RA IN DROP (‘soldiers parachuting’).
3 STAY
Remain a supporter (4)

Double definition.
4 INSOLENT
Saucy books supporting part of Oxford? (8)

A charade of INSOLE (cryptic, ‘part of Oxford’ shoe) plus NT (New Testament, ‘books’).
5 ISOBAR
Boris upset about article describing Met line (6)

An envelope (‘about’) of A (‘article’) in ISOBR, an anagram (upset’) of ‘Boris’. The cryptic definition refers to the British Meteorological Office. In the surface, however, ‘Boris’ is Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and the ‘Met’ is the Metropolitan tube line.
6 WALLFLOWER
One lacking a blooming partner? (10)

Cryptic definition
7 AGENDA
Things to be done in company (6)

Cryptic definition.
8 ECHO
Sound of their own voices heartens the choir (4)

A hidden answer in the centre of (‘heartens’) ‘thE CHOir’.
13 ARRAS
Through which Hamlet drove home his point (5)

Cryptic definition, with reference to the killing of Polonius.
14 DISCREETLY
Prudently involved city elders (10)

An anagram (‘involved’) of ‘city elders’.
16 ENROL
Knowledge picked up about new recruit (5)

An envelope (‘about’) of N (‘new’) in EROL, a reversal (‘picked up’ in a down light) of LORE (‘knowledge’).
19 APPOSITE
Suitable belief accepted by primate (8)

An envelope (‘accepted by’) of POSIT (‘belief’. Chambers: “a statement made on the assumption that it will be proved true”) in APE (‘primate’).
21 GASLIGHT
Neon? (8)

Cryptic definition.
23 FINISH
Polish, perhaps — or not, by the sound of it (6)

A play (‘by the sound of it’) on FINNISH.
24 NETHER
Name and number for subordinate (6)

A charade of N (‘name’) plus ETHER (‘number’).
26 BRIO
Liveliness of Brazilian capital and port (4)

A charade of B (‘Brazilian capital’) plus RIO (‘port’).
28 DRAW
Popular entertainer gets minor rise (4)

A reversal (‘rise’ in a down light) of WARD (‘minor’).
29 EIRE
Big lake rising in Ireland (4)

A reversal (‘rising’ in a down light) of ERIE (‘big lake’).
completed grid

62 comments on “Guardian 26,604 by Rufus”

  1. Thanks Rufus and PeterO

    I failed to solve 8d & 12a and I could not parse 24d (I still do not see why ETHER = ‘number’) but I enjoyed this puzzle anyway.

    My favourites were 26a, 23d, 11a, 5d, 6d.

  2. Ether interpreted as the agent noun numb-er is a crossword chestnut, along the lines of flow-er = river.

  4. Yes, a good Rufus with the usual one or two maddening clues that needed the crossers, such as AGENDA. Favourites were INSOLENT, NETHER, GASLIGHT and ISOBAR.

    Re 21D GASLIGHT: don’t you think this is a double definition, as NE is the gas and ON = light (just about)?

    Thanks to Rufus and PeterO.

  5. Thanks Rufus and PeterO

    Very much a mixed bag. Several really nice clues – 10, 26, 30 (I was looking at the wrong anagram indicator for some time), 4, 5 and 8 – but also several irritating ones. I had FACTS for 17a first, then changed in when I had RAINFALL for 2d, then had to change both to complete. ARRAS was a General Knowledge clue, in that there is no way to work it out from the (non-existent) wordplay. I suppose “Great lake” in 29 would have been to easy, but “Big lake” sounds clumsy.

    Drofle @4
    I see what you are driving at, but “neon” for “light” is commonly used for indicator lights on electrical equipment, so I was happy with DD.

  7. I liked this, nothing too taxing, but there were some quite elegant clues, 5 and 8, and special thanks to Peter O for the extended explanation of the surface of 5.

    A few were biffed, e.g. 24, I have seen numb-er often enough before, but always seem to have a mental block, had trouble with 7 because I biffed LARGO, beware biffing!

    Thanks to Rufus for an enjoyable and fun Monday.

  8. Thanks Rufus and PeterO.

    I really enjoyed this, especially GASLIGHT because it made me NOSTALGIC; I wonder if anyone can remember the original gaslights used in homes etc. At boarding school in England in 1950, a few on some walls were still in use, but I cannot find a good picture of one on the web – I seem to remember they had a knitted kaolin sleeve MESH that hung down and glowed? Perhaps Rufus can?
    Anyway, for me the clue 21d has a double answer.

    I stupidly failed to parse INSOLENT, I always use the term ‘inner sole’, and APPOSITE.

    I also liked LENTO, WAGER, INSOLVENT, RAINDROP, but, best of all, FINISH and ISOBAR!

  9. Thank you PeterO & Rufus.

    Good, solid, Rufus to start the week.

    I wonder what the setter had in mind for the other def in RELEASE? He’s far too experienced to have made a mistake but there seems to be only the ‘liberate’ definition here. Perhaps it was delivery as in a speech (press release, maybe??)

    Took ages in the NW corner through choosing RAINFALL over RAINDROP.

    Enjoyed several but loved the smooth ‘…at closing moves’ anagram for NOSTALGIC.

    Had not come across ‘reserved’ as an anagrind before (SAFFRON), but it now seems so obvious it must have been used before.

    Nice week, all.

  10. Cookie @8 I don’t remember them at school but our first caravan, a 1959 Eccles, had them. The ‘mesh’ you mention was called a mantle and they were usually of silk impregnated with metal nitrites and the metal oxides produced when heated by the gas flame gave a lovely soft light. We still reminisce about quiet evenings reading by these lamps accompanied by their soft hiss.

    Ours were exactly as the 5th picture in this link

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=caravan+gas+lights&rlz=1C1CHUJ_enGB499GB499&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=955&tbm=isch&imgil=WPtZm_FlZl2XWM%253A%253BaVOhTUQy-E11YM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.thomson-caravans.co.uk%25252Fgas%25252Fgaslights.htm&source=iu&pf=m&fir=WPtZm_FlZl2XWM%253A%252CaVOhTUQy-E11YM%252C_&usg=__QMHrNgO17D81P1Vp8Bt8FUouMFM%3D&ved=0CFoQyjc&ei=kNOHVfuWCbDd7QaFpYGYCg#imgrc=aXQ5Tw_Hqr30QM%253A%3BaVOhTUQy-E11YM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.thomson-caravans.co.uk%252Fgas%252Fimages%252Fgaslightsimage4.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.thomson-caravans.co.uk%252Fgas%252Fgaslights.htm%3B274%3B372&usg=__QMHrNgO17D81P1Vp8Bt8FUouMFM%3D

  11. Thanks Rufus and PeterO

    William @ 9: my guess is that RELEASE in 15 also refers to the DELIVERY of a cricket ball, where for instance a bowler can release a delivery from the front, side, or back of his hand. It wouldn’t be the first time there’s been a cricketing allusion in a Rufus.

    hth

  12. Simon S @11 See what you’re getting at. Don’t want to pick this to death but the release is really only a part of the delivery, albeit an important one. I suspect you’re right that this was what he had in mind, however.

  13. William @10, thanks, that was the idea, but I thought the mantles of the school ones were of a delicate crumbly white clay.

    I thought ‘deliver’y was a RELEASE when a baby was born?

  15. William @10
    You can use the “a href” HTML tag to put a long address onto a short link word. It takes a bit of practice to get it right, so use the “Preview” option!

  20. Cookie @13 Yes, they go just like that after they have burned off – just like very brittle white clay, but when you first fit them, they’re just like a little silk bag. Ours rarely survived a journey so we used to take them out and store them carefully in a padded box for travelling.

  21. Hi William
    It is explained in the FAQ. Basically any text in between the “turn on” tag and the “turn off” tag (the same, with a / in front) will have the characteristic set – bold, italic etc. If you look at the syntax for the a href tag, you will see that it contains “=” – that’s where you put the address you want to link to.

    As I said, “Preview” it!

  22. William @20, that rings a bell, thanks. I had assumed they were of ‘kaolin’ like the white columns at the back of the old gas heaters.

  23. Thanks to Rufus and PeterO. I too started with “rainfall” not DROP and got TEST DRIVE without knowing “test” as a river but still proceeded very quickly.

  24. For me, this took more effort than most recent Monday puzzles (but that is not a complaint). I didn’t parse 23d, having missed FINISH/FINNISH. For 4d, I spent quite a while trying to think of Oxford colleges which might be the first part of the answer before having a major PDM.

    I see the two definitions of RELEASE as being verb and noun: “to free” and “delivery from a difficult situation”.

    Favourites are HONEYCOMB, ISOBAR and ECHO.

    Thanks, Rufus and PeterO.

  25. Cookie @8

    Up to the 1970s, my grandparents lived in a house with no electricity (in the middle of London, not somewhere remote). I remember the hanging gas light over the dining table, with the brightness controlled by pulling one of two dangling chains – the forerunner of the dimmer switch, I suppose. Later, when I lived in a farmhouse in Northern Ireland, again there was no electricity so we had wall-mounted gas lamps downstairs (fed by pipes from a Calor Gas bottle outside), and used oil lamps in the bedrooms.

  26. Pretty good Rufus I thought, with ISOBAR my favourite (as a Londoner, it has to be). Couple of problems caused by not picking up anagram indicators: ‘circuit’ at 30a – I’d been looking at ‘broke’, and I bet I’m not the only one – and ‘reserved’ at 22a, already commented on but essentially, when you think about it, a Rufusian cryptic definition leading to an anagrind.

  33. I enjoyed this and sailed through it until NETHER which I puzzled over for far too long before the penny dropped and I remembered the crossword chestnut-NUMB ER.
    Cookie @8. When I was about three years old,my parents and I moved into a rented house in Bootle on Merseyside after the previous occupant had died. This still had gas lighting until my father had it replaced. This must have been around 1947- and I can’t say I remember the gaslamps fondly!
    Thanks Rufus

  34. Thanks Rufus and PeterO

    Took a bit longer than normal for a Rufus – thought that it was just because I had a busy day … and was only half focused. Was another who went for RAINFALL initially – it’s funny, because I wrote in HONEY but didn’t put in the second bit till I had the B from 5d.

    Carelessly wrote in NOSTALGIA instead of NOSTALGIC, which made ECHO much harder than it needed to be. Liked the ARRAS clue – it’s one of those odd events that just stick from the play.

  35. [Peter, no, apart from the smell, I am very frightened of gas. When a child in Wellington, as soon as a faint rattling of glass could be heard, my mother would dash to turn the gas pilot light off before the earthquake developed. Our house was wooden and the inner walls just frames with sackcloth and wallpaper stuck on, very inflammable.]

  36. Found this at the trickier end of Rufus’s spectrum. Last in was ARRAS – for those of us lacking the general knowledge there was nothing to fall back on there. All quite enjoyable, especially ISOBAR.

    Thanks to Rufus and PeterO

  38. Trailman @26
    Yes, as I said earlier, I went for the wrong anagram indicator in 30 to start with.

  39. Nice, easy Rufus to start the week. Saucy doesn’t mean insolent, though, does it? Cheeky would have been better (although too easy, perhaps).

  40. Thanks Rufus and Peter0. A not too difficult and as usual elegant Rufus for the first half hour of the train from Edinburgh to London.

    Cookie – we stayed with our daughter in Japan earlier this year. She was fearsome about the need switch off the gas after use (and about removing our shoes in the house).

    Cookie

  43. AdamH @42
    At balls, ladies without dancing partners sit on chairs, watching. As the chairs have generally been pushed to the sides of the room to facilitate the dancing, they ladies are politely referred to as “wallflowers”.

    They are also real flowers, of course.

  44. I didn’t get test drive as I have never heard of the Test and to me, drive is not synonymous with stroke.

    I also did not get 24d as I forgot this, having queried it previously. Probably because ether does not numb but puts to sleep, often permanently. There is a big difference.

  45. John M & 44

    Possibly another cricketing allusion: forms of stroke can be on, off, cover etc drives.

    hth

  46. Very gentle/easy, Everyman-ish in fact.

    First in was Honeycomb on a strong hunch, and this seemed to put me completely on the Rufus wavelength for solutions such as Arras, Echo, Tea, Gaslight, Agenda, Parasol et al. From then on, almost every solution went in on first consideration.

    In fact I was beginning to question how cryptic this puzzle actually was when I became somewhat stalled in the south east, with Nether and Finish quite well concealed. Once they went in, Saffron was inevitable and that was it.

    I liked Brio, and thought the anagrams for Insolvent, Nostalgic and Saffron were nice, but in general, I await sterner challenges to bring me down a peg later in the week!

  47. JohnM @44

    As Simon Says, cricket is a possible context for drive/stroke, but my first thought is that a tee-shot or drive counts as a stroke in golf.
    Agreed, a numb-er would be more applicable to a local anaesthetic, but surely one of the main purposes of a general anaesthetic is also to numb pain.

  48. PeterO @47
    Golf is certainly a possibility, but Rufus would more probably have been thinking of cricket, I suspect.

  49. The usual curate’s egg from Rufus.

    Of course it’s not allowed to criticise but surely DRAW = POPULAR ENTERTAINER is awful? There is of course another poor answer which is possible. DEAN = POPULAR ENTERTAINER (as in Martin) and DEAN as an alternative spellinge for DENE which is a low sandill or dune. Probably not quite as bad as the “official” answer!

    Thanks to PeterO and Rufus

  50. It might sound a bit archaic now, but in the days of music hall the top of the bill would be described as a ‘draw’ if he or she brought in the crowds.

  51. I am a Rufus fan, although I know he’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I liked this one very much, although I agree with Dinsdale that saucy and insolent are not really synonyms; and ARRAS is unfair because if you don’t know the play you’ve got no way of getting it, and cryptic clues are supposed to give you two goes.

    But overall, a lovely start to the week. Thank you to Peter for blogging.

  52. Tyngewick @50

    But “draw” in that sense means an “attraction” NOT a “popular entertainer”

  54. [haha..good point Paul B…

    “I understand he also nailed your wife’s head to a coffee table.”

    “Yeah, well, he did do that. Yeah. He was a cruel man…but fair.

    He used…sarcasm. He knew all the tricks: dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire.”]

  58. [Sorry, I’m using this as a test. I have tried to post on the Indie and Site feedback threads today, and the posts haven’t appeared.]

  60. CamJ: AC is commonly clued by “bill”, from “account” – someone’s account from a shop might be their bill. And “one bill” should just be read like “a bill”, I think. (I’m not totally sure about this, since it’s one of those somewhat old-fashioned crossword abbreviations.)

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