Guardian Cryptic N° 26,275 by Rufus

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[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here

The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26275.

Even for Rufus, this puzzle seems heavy on the CDs and DDs, and a couple which are just Ds.

 

Across
1. Being in the wrong scene, exit (9)
EXISTENCE An anagram (‘in the wrong’) of ‘scene exit’. Excellent clue.
6. One of them will take you back in the car (4)
GEAR Cryptic definition.
8. Remain silent? No, just the opposite (8)
CONVERSE Double definition (or however you want to describe the clue).
9. Unrehearsed parts of the actor’s speech (2-4)
AD-LIBS Definition.
10. This may be arranged after the draw has taken place (6)
REPLAY Cryptic definition.
11. A demand for attention (4,4)
LOOK HERE Cryptic definition.
12. Turkish leader free to return to Moroccan port (6)
AGADIR A charade of AGA (‘Turkish leader’) plus DIR, a reversal (‘to return’) of RID (‘free’).
15. Substitutes a man that’s good with bad (6,2)
STANDS IN A charade of ST (saint, ‘a man that’s good’) plus AND (‘with’) plus SIN (‘bad’)
16. Sailor determined to be acquitted (8)
ABSOLVED A charade of AB (able-bodied ‘sailor’) plus SOLVED (‘determined’).
19. In high spirits, knock beer back with Edward (6)
ELATED A charade of ELA, a reversal (‘knock back’) of ALE (‘beer’) plus TED (‘Edward’).
21. Arsenal manager (8)
ARMOURER As Arsène Wenger does not fit, this is essentially a definition.
22. County clubs (6)
STAFFS Double definition; the ‘county’ is Staffordshire.
24. Time to publish paper (6)
TISSUE A charade of T (‘time’) plus ISSUE (‘publish’).
25. They give a seat to one standing (8)
ELECTORS Cryptic definition.
26. Large birds in cages (4)
PENS Double definition; a pen is a female swan.
27. Poor puss finished, hanged (9)
SUSPENDED A charade of SUSP, an anagram (‘poor’) of ‘puss’ plus ENDED (‘finished’).

Down
1. Leave secretly for the match (5)
ELOPE Cryptic definition.
2. One who is ill and not operable? (7)
INVALID Double definition.
3. Leisurely way to enter a Scottish river (5)
TARDY An envelope (‘to enter’) of RD (‘way’) in TAY (‘a Scottish river’).
4. Stacks of chalk required by dressmakers? (7)
NEEDLES Double definition, with reference to the western tip of the Isle of Wight.
5. Let off steam, perhaps? (9)
EVAPORATE Cryptic definition.
6. Celebration to be enjoyed for a night, we hear (7)
GALAHAD Two wordplays and no definition: a charade of GALA (‘celebration’) plus HAD (‘enjoyed’); and Sir GALAHAD was a KNIGHT (‘night, we hear’). For my money, a great improvement on one definition and no wordplay.
7. Fruit popular in French inn (9)
AUBERGINE An envelope (‘in’) of IN (‘popular’) in AUBERGE (‘French inn’).
13. Fabric, being dear, replaced (9)
GABERDINE An anagram (‘replaced’) of ‘being dear’. I wanted to spell the word as gabardine, which does not fit the anagrist, of course; both versions are in Chambers.
14. Northern banker retrieves recovery (5,4)
RIVER TEES An anagram (‘recovery’) of ‘retrieves’.
17. More than one player is wearing new boots (7)
OBOISTS An envelope (‘wearing’) of ‘is’ in OBOTS, an anagram (‘new’) of ‘boots’.
18. Architectural highlights (7)
DORMERS Cryptic definition.
20. Made work play, perhaps (7)
ADAPTED Cryptic definition.
22. Investment but not necessarily of capital (5)
SIEGE Cryptic definition.
23. Sacked and burnt (5)
FIRED Double definition.

46 comments on “Guardian Cryptic N° 26,275 by Rufus”

  1. Thanks, PeterO.

    As often, a couple of very neat cds (I liked 18d and 20d), and a few that I hesitated to write in because I thought “It can’t be THAT obvious, surely?”

    I was defeated by SIEGE, though. I didn’t know that one definition of “investment” is “blockade.”

  2. A gentle stroll through puzzle land. No particular highlights for me except perhaps 6d, as most were write-ins on the first pass.

  3. Thanks PeterO and Rufus

    Usual mixture of amusing and very strange clues. I liked ELECTORS, ELOPE and NEEDLES, but didn’t like DORMERS, ADAPTED or SIEGE (why “capital”? I suppose it refers to money, but it is a bit clunky).

    TARDY doesn’t mean “leisurely” in my dictionary.

    As PeterO says, AD-LIBS isn’t a cryptic clue – this wouldn’t be out of place in the Quick.

  5. PeeDee @4.
    A novel may be adapted into a play, and an item may be adapted to make it function. A poor clue I think, but it just about works, which, I’m afraid, is more than can be said for some others.
    I generally defend Rufus’s puzzles, but this one should have been spiked by the editor.

  7. Thanks all
    “a novel may be adapted into a play” does not convince me in the slightest.

  8. muffin @ 3

    SIEGE in this context refers to laying siege to any town or city, not necessarily a capital one. It isn’t a financial reference at all, so imo is very smooth.

    hth

  9. Thanks Rufus and PeterO

    This one annoyed me a little while completing it, but I mellowed a little when looking over it again. I think that 20d is more about making a ‘work’ (novel, drama, etc) into a play … so in long hand “Made a work a play” – then it nearly works.

  10. Simon S @8
    Yes, I saw that sense of “investment”. I still don’t think the clue is well constructed, so we must disagree!

  11. Thanks for the blog, PeterO. The only times I resort to the check button when solving a Rufus puzzle are for clues such as 9ac and 21ac — I couldn’t believe these straight definitions could slip by the editor!

    I suppose that ‘Arsenal manager’ is making a play on the capital ‘A’ but this is not enough, particularly as the team were originally called Woolwich Arsenal after the South London armoury.

    This is a pity, because elsewhere were some typically elegant surfaces and decent wordplay. I liked 1ac, 7dn and 14dn.

  12. A typical Rufus puzzle, as others have already said. I agree with Simon S@8’s parsing of the clue for SIEGE. As far as the clue for AD-LIBS is concerned I really can’t see how this is anything other than a straight definition. On the other hand, I thought the clue for GALAHAD was excellent.

  13. Thanks for the blog.

    I’m going to pedantically point out that steam is produced not by evaporation but by boiling – evaporation produces vapour. So 5d didn’t work for me.

    Best clues (out of a pretty poor bunch): 1a and 14d. Too many CDs and DDs, and too many uncryptic, single definitions.

  14. muffin @3 – I agree about TARDY, it’s just wrong. But SEIGE is not clunky at all, it’s one of the better efforts.
    otter @13 – I don’t think you’re being pedantic. STEAM is just wrong.
    PeterO – I think you’re (uncharacteristically) unfair about ‘Arsenal manager’. You were obviously misdirected so it’s a genuine, if easy, CD.

    As regards ADAPTED I think GeorgeC @5 is nearly right. It is a DD and ‘work’ means function, rather than such as novel. I can’t think of any work that has been adapted for the theatre, but plays are often adapted for the screen. Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’ springs to mind.

    I think the surface links work and play in the sense in which Jack may be made a dull boy. Some of our setters obviously find their work fun.

  15. If you have a piece of machinery which is not working you would repair it to make it work. If it is working but in an unsuitable manner you would adapt it to work different.

  16. Quite straightforward apart from SIEGE (my last in). I agree that’s OK as a clue but it’s not really soluble without aids if (like me) you aren’t familiar with that meaning of investment, but I’ve never been interested in military history.

    Thanks to Rufus and PeterO

  17. RCW, I have a hairdryer that doesn’t work with my plug sockets. Fortunately I can adapt the device – by means of an adaptor.

  19. rhotician @14. Novels adapted for the stage: e.g. Nicholas Nickleby (RSC) – there must be many more.

    Thanks Rufus and P3eterO.

  20. RCW – No it’s the device, in this case the drier, that doesn’t work. The socket works fine with my TV.

    cholecyst – You’re right of course. Les Miserables is an even more noteworthy example. I’m still reading ‘play, perhaps’ as a separate, albeit loose, definition.

  21. rho and otter –

    I had a quick skim through some technical articles: ‘steam’ and ‘water vapour’ are used pretty much interchangeably as terms for for the gaseous state of water. What comes off tepid water during evaporation is precisely the same stuff that comes off boiling water during boiling.

  22. PeeDee @ 21
    While I agree that “steam” and “water vapour” both contain the same things (isolated water molecules), steam – i.e. water in its gaseous state – can only exist at temperatures at or higher than the boiling point of water. This is the temperature at which the saturated vapour pressure of “evaporated” water becomes equal to the external pressure. This enables bubbles of water vapour to form within the liquid, without being squeezed shut by the applied pressure, and hence the liquid “boils”.

  23. PeeDee, I must concede that. And no need to refer to technical sources. Chambers will do. Steam is just water vapour. And you see it produced in lots of everyday situations by evaporation, rather than boiling. (Though not if your glasses are steamed up.) It’s just that I can’t think of evaporation as having played a major part in the Industrial Revolution.

  27. muffin @22

    “steam – i.e. water in its gaseous state – can only exist at temperatures at or higher than the boiling point of water”. Not so. Your further point about boiling is nearer the mark – boiling is a form of evaporation at a high enough temperature to occur through the body of the liquid, not just at its surface. As PeeDee @21 points out, “steam” and “water vapour” are pretty much the same; if there is a difference in common usage, I would have thought it is that steam is water vapour made visible by the presence of condensed water droplets (I did say common usage), and that can happen by evaporation below boiling point, if the air above the liquid is at a lower temperature than the water.

    rhotician @20

    I really do not see how you can claim ‘play, perhaps’ as a definition, however loose, for ADAPTED. At a pinch, the clue might be regarded as what has been dubbed a sesquidef, with definitions ‘made work’ and ‘made work play, perhaps’ (with ‘work’ taken as a novel or whatever).

    rhotician @14

    The first definition of TARDY in Chambers is “slow”, so I do not think that the equation with ‘leisurely’ can be dismissed out of hand (the tardigrades, slow-moving microorganisms, come to mind).

  28. Well 22down makes sense now I know the answer but it didn’t previously. So annoying given how easy the other clues were.

  29. PeterO @27
    As you say, common usage (again!). True steam is, as a colourless gas, invisible; what is commonly referred to as “steam ” – the “misty vapour” – is water droplets in the liquid state.
    I don’t think that any we can go any further on this!

  30. Rufus seems to play a little fast and loose with CDs. “Arsenal manager” is simply a clue that looks like a CD (what else could it be?) that is actually just a straight D, but I suppose he feels it fair.

    As always, a bit overdense with the CDs as well.

  31. re the last sentence of my post @29 – all the right words, but not necessarily in the righr order!

  32. I usually like Rufus and was happy with most of this, even 5D. Even after reading the blog I still don’t understand 20d.

  33. JohnM @32

    We seem to have two possible readings:

    1) as a cryptic definition, for which, to paraphrase, the clue has to be read as “made a work (a novel, book or whatever) into a play, possibly” – ADAPTED for the stage.

    or

    2) A cryptic definition as in 1) plus a second definition in the partial ‘made work’, this time to be read as “made something (whether a hair-dryer or whatever) operate” – ADAPTED for use.

    Despite all the steam let off in the blog, I think the consensus is that 5D is passable.

  34. PeterO, Again I have to concede. Some of the blessed Araucaria’s looser stuff was open to two readings and sometimes gave rise to contention here. I think his attitude was that neither was more ‘correct’ than the other, as long as we all got to the answer.

  35. I do wish setters would stop using ‘banker’ for river. It doesn’t make sense. (Any more than ‘bedder’ would.) If I were editor I’d ban it.

    ‘flower’ is fine. It’s hackneyed of course but I would not discourage it; for the benefit of beginners. Now it is time I shut up.

  36. Well what a hotch-potch.

    Lots of write ins, too many DDs and CDs.

    Too many weak/incorrect clues.

    And one insoluble clue unless one knew an esoteric meaning of “investment”

    All in all the usual Monday malarkey 😉

    Thanks to PeterO and Rufus

  37. No clue is insoluble, not even one which depends on supposedly esoteric knowledge. Crosswords are a game/competition between setter and solver: if the setter has wider knowledge that the solver, then it’s one up to them.

    So today’s case in point, investment > siege, would not be esoteric to anyone with a mild interest in military history when sieges were still a feature.

    If a solver doesn’t have that knowledge then they have an opportunity to widen their vocabulary. And if you don’t want to widen your knowledge and vocabulary, and just stay within the confines of what you know, why do crosswords?

  39. Generally the same observations others have made, but diverting enough over a pint.

    The one which jars a little though, for me, is GEAR. I can’t see how the clue can relate to other than “gears”, plural.

    What, if anything, am I not getting?

    Thanks Rufus, PeterO and all.

  40. Martin P @ 39
    I was going to say that (in most cars, at least), there is only one reverse gear, but, on reflection, I think that I agree that “gears” would be a better answer.

  41. I was indeed hoping someone would comment on the “banker” thing. Who the heck actually calls a river a banker? I agree that “flower” is fine, since -er has the meaning “a thing that does [verb].” A river is indeed a thing that flows. It is not, however, a thing that banks. Airplanes bank, and so do investors (the kind with money, not the kind with artillery, of course). But rivers HAVE banks, which is not the same thing. They don’t angle upward (bank) every time they go around a bend, do they?

  42. mrpenney @ 41

    If they didn’t angle upward, they’d carry on and wouldn’t go round the bend, surely :^)

  43. Simon S @37

    Interesting comments. However I must take issue with your opinion that a “mild interest in military history” would make one familiar with “investment” in this sense.

    I, in fact, did guess this answer which must have been lurking in my subconscious somewhere. A quick check in the SOED confirmed this.

    However we do have a large group of solvers on here who refuse point blank to use any aids, not even a dictionary. (A group of which I am not a member) My point is that to use such an esoteric word as the answer to a CD is patently unfair to this group. The crossers didn’t really help as many words were possible but were all equally unlikely.

    We are apparently expected to put up with the dross that Rufus so often offers us on a Monday on the grounds that he is asked to provide an “easy” Monday puzzle. I suspect that this error laden offering failed to meet the brief this week.

  44. Brendan @ 43

    Truncation is often a good way to try to make a point.

    “a mild interest in military history” is not the same as my “a mild interest in military history when sieges were still a feature”.

    I’m aware that some solvers have a policy of not using aids, ergo, in my opinion, they want to stay within the confines of what they already know. I don’t understand why anyone would only want to be asked to solve ‘problems’ that are totally within their existing knowledge? Self-imposed limits preclude expansion, don’t they? And if that pre-existing knowledge is less than the setter’s, is that a shortcoming of the setter or the solver?

  45. Since I may be partially responsible for starting this debate about aids and military history: I am more than happy to use a dictionary when I have one to hand but I like to do the crossword on paper away from electronic devices and this often means I don’t have access to the big red book, particularly when I’m in my lunch break. So I can see both sides of the argument, but I would expect to be able to do Rufus unaided at least 9 times out of 10. I think my comment made it clear that I thought the clue was fair despite my ignorance, since looking the word up in the dictionary turned it into a write-in.

  46. Brendan @43 – I solve puzzles without aids, but that does not mean that I feel unfairly treated if a setter uses a word whose meaning I do not know. Quite the opposite.

    If my knowledge is inadequate then I fail to complete and the the setter wins, simple as that. Afterwards I look stuff up and learn something new. A crossword with no new words or meanings at all is a dull crossword.

    I’m not defending this puzzle, but siege was one of the better clues (whether I solved it unaided or not).

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