Greetings and apologies for the delay.
While in hospital recently I managed to have a serious problem with my laptop which meant that my PC Doctor had to reformat the hard disk and onsequently I lost all my documents, stored email, mail addresses, passwords, etc. Yesterday I managed to get a replacement password but it wouldn’t let me back into the site afterwards. Thanks to Neil W for sorting it out.
Now where was I? Yesterday’s Rufus puzzle. Not as much fun as a normal Rufus puzzles and one clue rather made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Some nice anagtrirams and the usual clever cryptic definitions, although I thought 15a a bit contrived though I can see what the clue was trying to achieve, it sort of missed the mark for me, personally. Would liked to have seen the anagrams spread throughout the puzzle a bit more, but that’s a small point.
Solving time: 11 minutes
ACROSS (*)= ANAGRAM (CD)=CRYPTIC DEF (R)=REVERSAL
1 HOLY WAR (CD)
5 ARNOLD A RN + OLD Rugby being Rugby School Dr Thomas Arnold its most famous Headmaster.
9 FOURSOME MORE OF US(*)
12 PARADE GROUND (CD) Nice clue.
15 APOCRYPHAL LAY CHAP PRO (*) See above
17 RAN Hidden answer
19 AID A + I’D
20 VIETNAMESE NAVIES MEET (*)
22 INTRANSIGENT RENTING ISN’T (*) Another really clever clue attached to a smart definition.
26 ORGIES RISE + GO (*)
27 BARBECUE (CD)
28 SIT-UPS I PUT (*) inside S S (On board [ship])
29 TALENTS Double def. A talent is a biblical measure of money.
DOWN
1 HAFT H + AFT
2 LAUD Homophone of Lord
3 WISEACRE WISE (perceptive) + ACRE (Middle-eastern seaport)
7 OBITUARIES (CD)
13 CALAMITOUS TO A MUSICAL (*)
18 CANNIBAL Hmm…..
21 WAKE UP New one on me. See Chambers def (2). WAKE is the spray generated by a moving ship.
25 PEWS (CD) Nice clue – form being a type of seat.
Cannot understand reasoning for 13 across
Despite the above query, a tightly clued and very cleverly contructed crossword
Well done, Puck
This placeholder is for comments about yesterday’s Rufus Berny, not today’s.
CANNIBAL is no doubt politically quite incorrect but… nonetheless quite amusing given the snooker misdirection…
Hey, what’s a bit of incorrectness between Rufus fans? I enjoyed this one — completed it all very quickly, then came here to look for deconstructions of the less obvious halves of some clues, then (stalled by the temporary placeholder) went back to the newspaper and deconstructed them all for myself.
Er… having looked again, I must confess that I hadn’t unravelled the inner workings of 28 across.
It’s an anagram of I PUT inside SS
(i.e. On board Ship)
See abbreviation of S S.