Guardian 26.143 – Rufus

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The last Rufus of the year, a very quick solve for me, perhaps helped by there being fewer than usual cryptic definitions. I don’t really have anything to add, except thanks to Rufus, Happy New Year to all, and see you in 2014.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. MACBETH Scotsman takes girl to see play (7)
MAC (nickname of or slang for a Scotsman) + BETH (girl’s name)
5. ADVANCE Go ahead — make a loan (7)
Double definition
10. BRIG Key equipment in a sailing vessel (4)
B (key, in music) + RIG (equipment)
11. KEEP MOVING Order one still refuses to obey (4,6)
Cryptic definition
12. EVENTS They happen to upset Steven (6)
STEVEN*
13. ORGANDIE Fabric on instrument to perish (8)
ORGAN (instrument) + DIE
14. ALERTNESS Warn head to display vigilance (9)
ALERT (warn) + NESS (head)
16. QUIET Still quite upset (5)
QUITE*
17. SPECS Spots, we hear, before the eyes? (5)
Homophone of “specks”; specs = spectacles
19. ERRONEOUS Wrong, or sure one is wrong (9)
(OR SURE ONE)*
23. DIPLOMAT Certificate goes to leading tactful envoy (8)
DIPLOMA + T[actful]
24. LETHAL All the difference between life and death? (6)
(ALL THE)*
26. AFTERSHOCK Dessert wine may give one a further jolt (10)
AFTERS (dessert) + HOCK (wine)
27. GODS They’re very high in theatrical circles (4)
Cryptic definition – “the Gods” refers to an upper circle in a theatre
28. ELITISM Government by the best? Have a wry smile about it (7)
IT in SMILE*
29. INTRUDE I’d turn awkward on a point and butt in (7)
(I’D TURN)* + E
Down
2. ARRIVAL A Sheridan character, we hear, is coming (7)
Homophone of “a rival”, i.e. a character in Sheridan’s play The Rivals (in a production of which, many years ago, I saw the late Margaret Rutherford in the role of Mrs Malaprop)
3. BEGAN Started, for instance, during Prohibition (5)
E.G. in BAN
4. TAKES IN Collects cheats (5,2)
Double definition
6. DAMAGE Injury puts years on mother (6)
DAM (mother) + AGE (years)
7. ADVENTURE Coming over a river, which may be exciting (9)
ADVENT (coming) + URE (river in N. Yorkshire)
8. CONFINE Bound to be against punishment (7)
CON (against) + FINE
9. DEMONSTRATION Upset, stand it no more — protest! (13)
(STAND IT NO MORE)*
15. RECOLLECT Don’t forget to get together again (9)
RE-COLLECT
18. PAINFUL Arranged Cup Final doesn’t start — distressing (7)
([c]UP FINAL)*
20. OILSKIN Use suntan lotion? It can also help in the rain (7)
To use suntan lotion might be to OIL your SKIN
21. UNAIDED All by oneself, helpless? (7)
Double definition (just about)
22. AMUSES A group of inspirational females entertains (6)
A + [the nine] MUSES
25. TIGER Formidable opponent of note in a row (5)
G (another random musical note, cf 10a) in TIER

24 comments on “Guardian 26.143 – Rufus”

  1. Thanks Andrew and Rufus
    The top went in very quickly, but the bottom required more thought. I particularly liked AFTERSHOCK.

    Some oddities. Andrew gives UNAIDED as “double definition (just about)”. I would go further – it seems to be a single definition given twice – what would you call that?

    Doesn’t “bound” = “confineD”?

    Is “arranged Cup Final doesn’t start” OK for an anagram + indicator of “up final”? I don’t think I’ve seen this construction before.

  2. Re Muffin @1
    Bound=Confine when they are both nouns.
    You could arrange CUPFINAL to make CPAINFUL, and then take off the C, in which case the construction works perfectly.

  3. Pretty straightforward I thought, which is just as well as I continue to wrestle with Saturday’s prize puzzle.
    Re. muffin @1, I think that ‘bound’ and ‘confine’ are o.k. although the use is uncommon: in lots of places riders ‘beat the bounds’ as a traditional ceremony to confirm borders. Bound is being used as a noun here. I also don’t have any problem with the clue for ‘painful’: arranged indicates the anagram, and doesn’t start signals that the first letter of ‘cup’ is to be excluded from the string of letters to be rearranged. Seems fair enough to me.

  6. Thanks, Andrew and Rufus.

    I think the nouns ‘bound’ and ‘confine’ are perhaps both better known in the plural: eg, ‘beyond the bounds of possibility’ – or the example that George gives – and, as in Mark Antony’s speech over Caesar’s corpse:
    “And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
    With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
    Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
    Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
    That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
    With carrion men, groaning for burial.”

    The anagram at 18dn works for me, too. There’s a rather similar [not identical, I admit] example in today’s Quiptic: Retaliating after a fashion, student leaves to gain favour (10)

  7. A very quick solve indeed, but pretty unobjectionable and non-Rufusian apart from 21. This seems a suitable puzzle for a developing solver without infuriating the more experienced. Rufus is obviously able to follow the normal rules for constructing a cryptic crossword, so it’s a shame the editor doesn’t press him to do so more often.

    Thanks, Andrew, for the blog.

  8. For “bound” as a verb, Chambers gives “to set bounds to, to limit or restrain”. This meaning comes from words related to “boundary”, and seems not to be closely related to “bound” as the past tense of “bind”.

    I can match Eileen’s Julius Caesar quotation with one from Hamlet II.ii: “I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”

  10. Thanks, Andrew

    I often find Rufus a bit trickier than most contributors but the relative dearth of cd and dd clues made this one of the quickest solves of the year for me. Good quality clues, nevertheless, though I found MACBETH a bit disappointing as the whole solution is also a ‘scotsman’.

    Like muffin, I was puzzled at first by ‘bound’ (rather than ‘bind’) = CONFINE, but this sort of tense error is not something that a compiler of Rufus’s pedigree would commit – so I pondered a bit more and realised than the words are synonymous as nouns. Clever.

    I used the ‘dessert wine’ trope myself in a puzzle some time ago, only to find that it is the invariable construction used to clue AFTERSHOCK (though, admittedly, the word doesn’t pop up very often).

  11. Thanks Andrew and Rufus.

    I didn’t find this quite as enjoyable as normal. I thought using ‘upset’ three times as an anagrind was not very good. In ‘Injury puts years on mother,’ I thought the convention in a down clue was that A is on (top of) B? In this case it is B on A [DAM AGE] – is that usual?

    I particularly liked OILSKIN and AFTERSHOCK.

  12. Thanks for blogging, Andrew. Rufus has been back on form recently imho. I think this is what people have come to expect on a Monday: something reasonably simple but with some nice twists.

    I’ve always spelt/spelled it ORGANDY, but learnt/learned today that there is an alternative spelling.

    Are musical keys that random, Andrew? There are only really seven of them from a crossword setter’s point of view. I’d rather that than ‘little boy’ for ED, RON, JIM, TOM, SI, WILL, JO, NICK or numerous others …

  13. I was going to write that this was the easiest Guardian cryptic ever, until the SW held me up. But it’s here that we find the best clues, perhaps, AFTERSHOCK (my favourite too) and PAINFUL amongst them.

    So not the easiest ever. But maybe 16 the easiest clue?

  15. Re. izzythedram@14

    Something lethal provides the bridge between life and death. You only experience it when you’re alive and afterwards, well, …

  16. As others have already noted this was a straightforward but enjoyable puzzle, and I for one certainly didn’t miss Rufus’s usual number of cryptic definition and double definition clues. SPECS was my LOI after PAINFUL.

  17. Thanks all
    AsI waited a whole 10 minuts for the nurse to call me in to re-do my dressing I was so grateful for a perfectly set distraction……

  18. Having got through this in record time, I turned to the Quiptic (which I’ve rarely looked at before) and polished that off in no time as well. I know that’s partly the point of the Monday crossword, but I wonder whether a sterner online challenge would make more sense. Just a thought………

  19. I am celebrating. Got all the answers, parsed all the clues, didn’t miss a Nina or a theme. I think that’s a first for me. We beginners appreciate these easier puzzles. Thanks, Rufus.

  21. I think 21d UNAIDED is rather good. ‘helpless’ is definitely CD. ‘All by oneself’ is a straight D, but it is an ambiguous one, and for me a nice misdirection because my first thought was of the song All by Myself, on which Wiki is QI.

  22. I agree with slipstream 19: A helpful challenge for this novice who was pleased to have remembered ‘ness’ from a previous puzzle and will now hold another type of material in his head for future solutions. Whether this is typical of Rufus I know not but it is nice to spend ten minutes filling in answers and feeling that you might actually know what you are doing for once. Having said that, can only connect “dam” with “mother” when I add “in law” to the end…

  23. Welcome comments from slipstream and Pilchards. After lots of years I’m still learning, and the puzzles change too as setters think of more devious tricks to frustrate us all.

  24. Slipstream: it was a helpful puzzle to one or two old timers, who’ve had their solving confidence mangled by one or two offerings of late as well…

    Thanks all.

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