Guardian 26,132 / Rufus

46 comments on “Guardian 26,132 / Rufus”

1. Thanks Eileen
   I usually enjoy Rufus as an easy start to the week, but I didn’t like this one. A lot of the clueing was so loose that I “checked” the answers to convince myself that they were right (one of them – GATEWAY for 29ac – wasn’t, though in this case the actual solution was well-clued).
   Why does “dry” = “healthy”, except in a very general sense?

2. Sorry, muffin – ‘dry’ slipped through the net: I entered it as the obvious parsing and meant to come back to it to look it up. As it was the first entry, it got missed. I can’t find a definition that satisfies me – anyone?

3. I can remember having lots of pots in my schooldays which helped me get impot which I’d never heard before. If you subscribe to the ‘alcohol is terrible in all forms’ creed, then dry = TT = healthy I suppose.

4. I had come across the idea of 17ac, but we always spelled it IMPO (which makes more sense, really, though Chambers only has IMPOT)

5. Re 2d I took “dry cell” (cryptically) to be the opposite of “damp cell” (= unhealthy accomodation for prisoner)

   Re 15a I had Abolition (thinking of the slavery act), then noticed that Avolition (the state of not being able to do anything, basically – hence “the end of the act?”) seemed to work better – so I changed it. Abolition is the answer after all – and it turns out avolition isn’t in Chambers (whole page in wikipedia though).

   I found this generally strange and dificult. I only got 17a after noticing comments on the Guardian site about how people hadn’t heard of it, which sent me to the dictionary. Thanks for the blog.

6. I suppose a dry cell is healthier than a damp cell for a prisoner. Had much the same experience as muffin. i put in ‘laid out’ for 18d which seemed to fut the clue. I wish rufus might one day be given a chance to do a prize crossword. At his best he is excellent.

7. Oh Herb got in while I was typing!

8. And of course I mean fit not fut at 6. The type is so small on this i-pad I can hardly see it. My excuse anyway.

9. Thanks, herb and xjp – that works for me.

   [And, of course, DRY CELL was not the first entry – it was the first down one – so I had no excuse for missing it.]

10. Thanks, Eileen. I thought the top half was a doddle, whereas the lower half was trickier in places. IMPOT beat me and I don’t fully accept ADMITTED as a double definition.

    BTW, 26 is CHAIN GANGS (plural).

11. Didn’t know ‘impot’ but guessed that it was an abbreviation for ‘imposition’ so wrote in ‘impos’ as I would rather have a stab at the answer and get it wrong than resort to the dictionary. Got the rest right though, but considered a number of the clues rather weak.
    At 6d, I presume that ‘rarely taken’ is an indication that the solution is an uncommon usage.

12. Checking in Chambers, I now see that ‘bypath’ is defined as a little used route. When I type ‘bypath’ into my iPad it wants to split it into two words.

13. I also pondered whether 23A might also be addicted – clueing here was also rather loose.

    Thanks for blog

14. Thank you, Median @10 – corrected now.

15. I am familiar with ‘imposition’ (not that my school teacher gave me that punishment).

    Few Indians would think of ‘lines’ – another word that Rufus and others have clued in crosswords – but I have never heard it or seen it in writing here in India.

    Impot is rare and schoolboys’ slang. How it can be an abbr. of ‘imposition’ beats me. If it were just ‘impo’ I can understand, for I use ‘anno’ for annotation!

    At 24a I had the answer but I couldn’t enter it immediately because of the spelling variants (loofa/loofah).

    Qn: Where there is a spelling variation, should clueing make it very clear which one is intended?

    For crossword setters in India entering Indian words in the grid is a great problem because of spelling variations that abound.

16. I have just scrolled up and seen that muffin too has it as ‘impo’.
    Now I remember. In school we had ‘compo’ for ‘composition’. These abbreviations did not wait for the age of texting or SMS.

    [P.S. These small sums still keep us in the days when we went to the elementary school, don’t they?]

17. Perhaps 23a is clearer if you think of admitting people to an institution from the point of view of the institution itself. My college decided to take/admit me in spite of a so-so interview, and so on. Perhaps more conclusively, Chambers has “to admit” as a definition of “take”. I disagree with Berny @13 (can’t see addicted as an answer) and Median @10. The clueing is not easy but it isn’t loose either here.(Chambers also defines grant as “admit as true”, so there can’t really be any doubt about either half.)

    It’s really a very clever spot by Rufus. I wonder if it’s its first outing.

18. Thanks Eileen and Rufus

    A mixed bag as others have noted. I tried impos in Chambers and found impot (my second choice).

    My favourite was 20d I’m afraid! I also liked 12a and 27a.

19. Thanks for the blog Eileen.

    I also found this a mixed bag and failed on IMPOT — never heard of it before and got a little fed up trying to guess the missing letter once the check button had confirmed IM-OT.

    I parsed 1dn as others have noted: ‘healthy accommodation for a prisoner’.

    I liked the surface of 8dn!

20. Tricky one.

    Wordweb Online identifies IMPOT as British Public School Slang. It is therefore not a good word for a crossword. There are more people in Greyhound Racing (for example), but obscure slang from that arena would cause howls of protest, despite being more widely used.

21. Another non-fan of IMPOT here. After getting everything else I assumed it must be “impos” as some kind of abbreviation of “imposition”. Even Googling for “impot” just gets me pages and pages of French taxation (though “impot punishment” does get a useful top result). I was at uniform-wearing private school in the 1980s and never heard of impositions – is it a generational thing perhaps?

22. Isn’t “abolition” at 15D just what you do to “end” any (legally-enacted) “act”? Though remembering the “Abolition Act” did help me on my way to that conclusion.

23. Thanks R & E. On IMPOT I dimly remember this: http://www.friardale.co.uk/Cassell/02-%20Billy%20Bunter%27s%20Banknote.htm

    Does anyone still read this tosh?

24. Is it accurate to describe a loofah 24ac as a brush? It is more like a sponge, although it is not an underwater plant.

25. Matthew Marcus @22
    I’m not sure about this one. In my experience, one can abolish something like slavery, but to bring an end to something enacted in legislation the Act is repealed. I often find that I am unconvinced by Rufus’s clues, but usually enjoy his puzzles more than this one.

26. I always thought a loofah was more of a sponge than a brush. Impot was vaguely familiar from Billy Hunter. I thought that “End of an act” would have been better. Other than that an enjoyable Monday.

27. Bunter not Hunter! Curse you Android

28. I have tried not to be negative about Rufus puzzles over the last few months but some of this one was rubbish. The clue for IMPOT was barely cryptic and if you didn’t know the word there was absolutely no other way of getting it. The clues for 3dn and 6dn were also barely cryptic but at least the answers were slightly easier to work out, and I thought the clue for ABOLITION was poor. Just very lazy cluing IMHO.

29. I must take issue withAndyB. I enjoyed this and had no problems with anything except ‘impot’. I have never heard of it and never called punishments impositions. I agree with Derek Lazenby; public school slang is known to a very small fraction of solvers (as the replies show).

30. Thanks, Rufus, thanks, Eileen. Are we sure it is ABOLITION? “Avolition” appears to be more appropriate. Of course an Act (law) is not abolished, it is repealed!

31. I took dry to be healthy as in not drinking.

    Impot beat me

32. I didn’t think Rufus could get any worse but he’s managed it in spades today.

    Truly awful as has already been pointed out.

    I also failed on IMPOT and although the rest of my grid was correct I was even more unsure of some of the double def answers than normal.

    I suggest that the Guardian considers employing a Crossword Editor to avoid further embarrassments. 😉

33. I thought this was OK, but once again perhaps just a few too many clues followed by question marks, with vague/stretched definitions.

    IMPOT came to mind from the French tax angle, and I guessed it might have had the use here, but I’d never heard it.

    I’m with you JC, on “repealed”.

    Thanks all.

34. @32 Brendan (not that one): doesn’t the Guardian employ a Crossword Editor? i.e. does it just accept the puzzles sent in my setters without vetting them in any way?

35. Whoops: “by setters” not “my setters”. I don’t even have any dogs.

36. drofle @ 34
    I think Brendan was being ironic.

37. It’s been a busy day, with no time to revisit this since early on.

    I agree with the majority that 17ac is a rather unfair clue, in not following the convention of cluing lesser known / obscure words with pellucid wordplay. As has been pointed out, one really had to know the word to deduce the answer from the clue. I wasn’t familiar with it but eventually guessed it backwards from ‘imposition’, then went with the analogy of ‘depot’ and ‘compot’ and was quite surprised to find it in Chambers.

    For what it’s worth, I’ve now checked the ‘cheat’ button online, which confirms that the answer to 15dn is ABOLITION. I must confess to never having entertained AVOLITION, which I can find in none of my dictionaries. The nearest is SOED, which has ‘avolitional: not volitional’.

    I was uneasy about this clue because, of course, as has been pointed out, an act is repealed, not abolished [the Repeal of the Corn Laws is still firmly fixed in my mind from O Level History], which is why I linked it to the Abolition Of Slavery Act.

    I’m now wondering if there might be another bit of play on the other meaning of ‘end’: the *end* [objective] of the 1833 Act [also from O Level History!] was the end[ing] [abolition] of slavery.

38. I suppose Rufus puzzles are like Marmite – and even for those that love them the Rufusisms are usually spread thinly. Here they’ve been laid on with a trowel (that’s a bricklaying allusion) so thems what hates ’em will really have detested this one.

    I found it a particularly enjoyable challenge. It’s not what I’m naturally good at so I get that extra buzz when I do succeed – and I have to admit that I failed to twig the intent of many straightforward clues here at first sight because the key words were so well buried.

    Staring at clues like these rarely does the trick. Best to leave them and come back with fresh eyes in the hope of one or two “pings”.

    OTOH I don’t buy IMPOT. Slang and “inside-baseball” terms from all walks of life I’m fine with but in general we get too much Eton/Oxbridge/varsity stuff – too much academic ivy-waving. Rufus is usually more free of it than others.

39. So it’s a class thing?

    I think obscure words in daily crosswords are just out, unless there’s a very good reason why they’re in.

40. I think obscure words in daily crosswords are just out, unless there’s a very good reason why they’re in. (Paul B, @39)

    I think I agree (if you find that a crossword should be fully solvable without asking help from Mrs Chambers and the like).

    Today, Quixote (in the Independent) had “Menhaden”.
    Also obscure but the difference is that it was a hidden solution, so clearly gettable from construction.
    For me an example of “a very good reason why they’re in” – that is, if no other normal word fits.
    [btw, “methadon” would have done the trick – but then it’s the Don who knows more words than any other setter 🙂 ]

    The problem with IMPOT is that the alternatives for ?M?O? are not great either – Ammon perhaps, ambos, smoor?

41. One person’s obscurity is another person’s commonplace. I seem to remember STYROFOAM PEANUT causing a bit of a stir amongst those whose goods inwards consist only of hardback books – whereas for those of us “in trade” they’re an everyday thing.

    The latest thing seems to be that we have to know every imaginable term for different shapes of pasta – other foodyisms too – and every type of tea (sic) – now that the chattering classes call real tea “builders”.

42. @sil #40

    Collins has EMBOG “to sink or plunge into a bog”

43. JS @41

    “in trade”, “foodyisms”, “chattering classes”. So Paul B is right. For you it IS a class thing. I agree with PB and Sil.

    You’re not really fine with slang and “inside-baseball terms” (now there’s a commonplace metaphor) from ALL
    walks of life, are you? I suspect you are familiar with a wider range of obscurities than most of us. How are
    you on DL’s Greyhound Racing?

44. Not sure what to say there rho – you seem to know more about the inner workings of my mind than I do.

    I only learned “inside-baseball” recently from one of AC’s excellent blogs on the G site – just thought I’d let it out for a run (if that’s not a Greyhound racing term).

    I seem to recall a statistic (from way back) that Greyhound racing was the second most popular (after football) spectator sport in the UK – yet the BBC never covered it despite giving endless daytime coverage to horse-racing as well as many other sports.

45. I agree ‘impot’ is a rubbish clue. How about Im not (2,3) instead.

46. I ticked 2d, 8d, and 21d. 17a was rubbish. At least give me some cryptic work to build it from.

    Thanks all.

Comments are closed.