Guardian 25,353 / Rufus

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The scheduled blogger has gone AWOL so here is an analysis of the clues. I didn’t solve this puzzle (I have just parsed the clues from the published solution) and so cannot comment on its difficulty, enjoyability etc (I’ll leave that to others) but it did strike me that there was a lot of blurring of the edges when it came to some of the double/cryptic definitions.

Written in haste so there may well be some typos or errors.

Across
7 SUBALTERN SUB (warship) ALTER (change) N (direction)
8 STUMP double def.
9 ADRENALIN A *(N IRELAND)
10 LIONS cryptic def.
12 GROOVE *(GO OVER)
13 SKI-PLANE SKIP (spring) LANE (passage)
14 BACKS UP def. & cryptic indicator
17 BLUBBER ditto or double def. – take your pick.
20 OBSOLETE SO LET (allowed) in OBE (honour)
22 SÉANCE SEAN (Irishman) CE (church)
24 STATE double def.
25 ADVERTISE IT reversed in ADVERSE (not keen) – ‘raising’ would be OK as a reversal indicator in a down clue but not here.
26 COAST cryptic def.
27 SWEETENER WEE (small) in *(RESENT)
 
Down
1 MURDER RED (revolutionary) RUM (spirit) reversed
2 FACEBOOK FACE (encounter) BOOK (reserve)
3 ETHANE [piec]E THANE (Macbeth, for example)
4 TRAIPSE *(PIRATES)
5 AT WILL A TWILL (fabric that is woven)
6 EMINENCE double def. (though not really)
11 RILL cryptic def. – ‘burn’ as in stream.
15 AMBITION cryptic def.
16 USED double def.
18 BEAUTIES BEAU (dandy) TIES (draws)
19 MEADOWS *(MOWED AS)
21 OBTUSE *(BOUTS) E (note)
22 SKEWER cryptic def. – one for the Sunday roast.
23 COSSET *(TESCO’S)
 

10 comments on “Guardian 25,353 / Rufus”

  1. Thanks Gaufrid for stepping in. Fairly straightforward, although I wondered about ‘it’ in 25.

    I liked LIONS and SKEWER.

  2. Thanks Gaufrid, and of course to Rufus for the mainly enjoyable puzzle. I don’t really understand ADVERTISE, since “is not keen” suggests to me AVERSE rather than ADVERSE (to say nothing of the raised “it”). And government report = STATE? How does this work? Is Rufus suggesting that a government and a state are somehow the same? Baffling. But I enjoyed SUBALTERN, AMBITION and many others.

  3. Thanks Gaufrid for the blog.
    Smack the hand of the person who ought to have done it.

    I thought the clue for 8a was weak: catch (as in catch out) would have been a perfectly good answer. As it was I had catch until I got 5d!

    I liked 9a: usually Northern Ireland is a pointer to the letters ‘NI’ – I have never seen Ireland used as anagram fodder. Well done Rufus.

    I’m glad that 3d wanted Thane rather than a specific one. I remember Thane of Cawdor but there was another thane as well and I cannot remember his name.

  4. Many thanks Gaufrid and also Rufus

    Fairly typical Rufus with quite a lot of lateral thinking required. His definitions can be hard to fathom e.g in 22d which turns out to be cryptic rather than double. Similarly with 26a.

    25a was also hard until I realised that ‘bill’ can be a verb as well e.g .’ he was billed as the star of the show’.

    3d (where e = ‘final piece’) was also hard to parse at first.

    Enjoyed 9a, 14a, 17a, 27a.

  5. Many thanks Gaufrid and Rufus

    I considered this to be a tad harder than our usual Monday Rufus but none the worse for that.

    I wasn’t sure about RILL which certainly failed to give me a thrill.

  6. Hi Wanderer @2
    I agree that, in 25ac, AVERSE is perhaps closer to ‘not keen’ than ADVERSE but the latter does mean ‘opposed to’ so I let it pass.

    State and Government are synonymous for example ‘State funded’ or ‘Government funded’.

  7. Thanks all
    A very welcome change from Rufus. Although I found 75% straightforward there were a few which extended my entertainment by an hour or so (26ac, 22ac,22d). I considered ‘joint’ to be reefer or knee etc but not meat!
    My criticisms would be the same as wanderer’s so I won’t repeat them.
    I think ‘Glamis’ is the other thane.

  8. Thanks for replying, Gaufrid @6. And yes I can accept government and state as synonymous in the example you give.

    When I objected, I was thinking along the lines of a sentence such as: “During his time as head of government, Silvio Berlusconi has undermined the dignity of the Italian state,” in which case they are very different concepts!

  10. Thanks Gaufrid & Rufus…a tad more testing from the latter today I think.

    STUMP = confuse seems stretching it a bit. SKIP = spring is tenuous.

    COAST & SKEWER I really enjoyed.

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