Guardian 26,299 by Rufus

by

Well it’s Monday, it’s Rufus. You’ve probably got a good idea what’s coming.

The usual mix of cryptic and double defs and easy anagrams but a slightly awkward grid without starting letters for so many CDs. Bit rushed as I’ve got to run off to do the Indy now…

Defs underlined where appropriate.

Across

8 Communiqué roughly pasted to front of church (8)
DESPATCH
PASTED* & CHurch

9 Instinct for money in the market (5)
FLAIR
L symbol for Pounds in FAIR

10 Drawn and knotted (4)
TIED
Double definition

11 An example of extreme wear (6,4)
FRAYED EDGE
Cryptic-ish def

12 Blunder, giving bribe with a pound note (6)
BUNGLE
BUNG bribe & L pound again & E a musical note

14 Rose made arrangements to name date (8)
EMANATED
[NAME DATE]* I did try [ROSE MADE]* for a while…

15 Take pleasure in note going to Irish writer, say (7)
REJOICE
RE & sounds like JOYCE

17 Leading frigate almost wrecked, debris seen (7)
FLOTSAM
Ahh the nautical stuff starts, F(rigate) & ALMOST*

20 Tenacious advocate (8)
ADHERENT
Double def both a tad tenuous

22 A truce arranged for vicar’s assistant (6)
CURATE
[A TRUCE]*

23 A representative body (10)
DEPUTATION
Cryptic def

24 Look out for a Stone Age dwelling (4)
CAVE
Double def

25 Man without work strides along (5)
LOPES
LES around OP

26 Get even (8)
EQUALISE
Cryptic def

Down

1 Line of sight? (8)
RETICULE
Cryptic def again, cross hairs in an eye piece

2 Took off commercial about keep-fit exercises (4)
APED
AD around P.E.

3 Choke is left out (6)
STIFLE
[IS LEFT]*

4 They are bound to be shocks (7)
SHEAVES
Cryptic cum double cum literal def, a shock is a group of 12 sheaves

5 Last, despite expectations (5,3)
AFTER ALL
Double def

6 Sex gene producing a criminal (10)
MALEFACTOR

A sex gene could be a MALE FACTOR

7 You put your foot in it, in a manner of speaking (6)
BROGUE
Double def, quite liked this one

13 They may rise up in a frightening situation (5,5)
GOOSE BUMPS
Cryptic def

16 Rent at a high level? (8)
CREVASSE
Cryptic def

18 Militant to take steps on arranged visit (8)
ACTIVIST
ACT & VISIT*

19 He refuses to work for more pay, perhaps (7)
STRIKER
Cryptic def

21 Yelped when beaten — with a resonant voice? (6)
DEEPLY
YELPED*

22 It checks population growth (6)
CENSUS
Cryptic def

24 Common complaint caught by the elderly (4)
COLD
C(aught) & OLD

*anagram

32 comments on “Guardian 26,299 by Rufus”

  1. Thanks Rufus and flashling
    Usual mixture entertaining and irritating clues. I too liked BROGUE best.
    DEPUTATION might just as easily have been “delegation” (one definition for “delegation” in Chambers is “deputation”). I only find out that it wasn’t the answer by “Checking”.

  3. Thanks for the shock explanation muffin but we cant find any reference to specifically 12 sheaves. Just curious for a reference to that number of them.

  5. I looked up shock in one of my dictionaries at home, can’t remember which but suspect BRB which said usually 12 of them.

  6. Thanks Rufus & flashling; reasonably entertaining.

    I didn’t much like ‘get even’=EQUALISE. Preferred the MALE FACTOR and the BROGUE.

    SHOCK, according to Chambers is also sixty. 😮

  7. Surely 1 down incorrectly defined. a reticule is a small bag. The cross hairs in a telescope is known as a graticule.

  10. Thanks Rufus and flashling

    A bit tougher to finish off than normal for me with SHEAVES and FRAYED EDGE the last in.

    Don’t know whether there were 12 sheaves or not in a shock (we called them stooks here) … when I was carting them in during my school hols … it didn’t matter … as long as there wasn’t a bloody snake under the last one!!

  11. Muffin@1 – no, 23ac couldn’t just as easily have been “delegation” because of the U checker from 13dn. It’s why it is called a crossword.

    I found this more frustrating than most Rufus puzzles. RETICULE was my LOI and I was pleased when I went to my Chambers afterwards and found it was correct. There wasn’t exactly another way to get to the answer if you don’t know the word, and the same could be said for SHEAVES/shocks and CREVASSE. Was the clue for STRIKER even cryptic?

  12. Bit of a while since I posted here for various technical reasons, but hey.

    Rufus’s cryptic defs still nark me at times, 23ac being an example. It doesn’t seem to me at all cryptic as the answer maeched what I perceived to be the surface reading. I was thinking the answer might have been something int he “doppelganger” or “lookalike” line. That said, CREVASSE (which I didn’t get), I thought was clever.

  13. @Andy B…I too wondered about STRIKER being cryptic but I like the way it works – suggesting a person who refuses because (s)he doesn’t want more pay, but meaning “one refusing to work in order to get more pay”. Interesting way of twisting one’s words.

  14. AndyB @ 11
    I always look at the across clues first, and it irritates me when a clue (in isolation, admittedly) has more than one valid solution. This is the big problem I have with so-called “Quick” crosswords, hence I rarely attempt those.

  15. ……..in fact that clue was so loose that my first thought was, as it was a Rufus, that the solution might have been “parliament”.

  17. I had c*n*** for 22d, & had it been a Paul puzzle, would happily have penned “condom”!

    chas @16: I agree, crevasses can occur in ice sheets at very near sea level.

  18. Thanks all

    I did much worse than Bruce @10 since ‘frayed’ and’sheaves’ remained uncompleted until coming here.
    Very much the trickiest Rufus I have ever tried
    Is a crevasse always at a high level?

  19. Muffin @ 14, in an American-style crossword, that’s the normal way of things: they simply define the word (sometimes cryptically or punnily, with a question mark to indicate such funny business, but usually just literally), and there will usually be many possibilities until you solve some of the crossing entries. The gist of the puzzle is that only one set of possibilities lets all the words fit properly. Just use a pencil

    Of course, in the American version, every letter is checked (i.e., part of two words), which makes it work better.

    Like you, for that reason I often have difficulty with Quicks–lacking confirmation for half the letters makes it very hard, especially with U.K. cultural things I don’t have referents for (Labour politicians, television actors, cricketers, and the like).

    The other problem with Guardian Quicks (gripe time) is that the definitions aren’t as clever as you see in a high-quality American crossword (or in the Guardian cryptics, naturally).

  20. I agree that this was trickier than usual for Rufus.It took me a long time to get reticule which I thought had only one meaning. Perhaps Rufus is toughening up-or perhaps l’m not as perceptive as I thought. Heigh ho!

  22. Found this unusually difficult for Rufus – last in was RETICULE, and although I’d heard the word I didn’t know why. I had DELEGATION for DEPUTATION until I saw that GOOSE BUMPS had to be right. Also took me a while to sort out the NE corner…

    Thanks to flashling and Rufus

  23. Usual Monday fare.

    Although, re Muffin @1, more irritating than entertaining.

    Possibly also more “quick” than “cryptic”.

    Thanks to Flashling and Rufus

  24. I quite agree with posters about CREVASSE. A crevice occurs in rock, a crevasse in ice. The altitude is irrelevant.

  25. Thanks for the puzzle and blog.

    Does anybody else find it much harder to do a Rufus puzzle online than with pen and the adtual paper? Just find that with all the crpytic and double defs it is more like a Necker cube (you see it or you don’t) with the online version. Don’t seem to have the same trouble with other setters (for me equally hard)

  26. I too found this very hard. As Andy B said, if (like me) you haven’t heard of the word reticule, there’s really no possible way of getting it. Even with all the crossing letters ?e?i?u?e, there must be hundreds of words that might plausibly exist, so a dictionary is no use.

  28. I am beginning to find Rufus’s cryptics too clever by half. I had condom for 22D which didn’t help…

  29. @mrpenney & muffin, I don’t think I’ve done a quick or concise crossword for 20 years for that very reason, and why I didn’t do Rufus crosswords until ended up with this blogging spot.
    Folks who think cryptics are hard don’t realise we’re doing the easy one.7

  30. I have come to Guardian very recently, this is my fourth Rufus. In general I find Rufus a little easier than others, may because there a lot of cryptic definitions and punny definitions.

    Thanks for the explanations.

  31. I’m new to Cryptics… this is my third ever (two Nutmegs before this). Can anyone recommend a good setter for beginners, preferably Guardian? And second question, can someone explain CREVASSE (16D) to me?

  32. Tom Davies – a warm welcome to the genre! Endless mental pleasure lies ahead for you.

    Have you tried the Quiptic puzzles in The Guardian on Mondays? They are meant to be a slightly simpler version (but in truth they often fail in that aim…sadly). Rufus is normally the easiest of the standard Guardian ones, but he always has quite a few fairly odd clues (like today), so might not be ideal for starting with (although you can always solve the easy clues and then come on here for the ones you can’t yet do). If you solve the Guardian crosswords online you have various ‘cheating’ buttons, which might be helpful while you are learning. The Financial Times crosswords are usually one notch more straightforward than The Guardian. You can print those out from their website.

    The idea of 16d is that ‘Rent’ is a noun, not a verb as you might think from reading the clue. So it’s Rent= a rip, a tear, a crack, a gash, an opening etc. And it is found ‘at a high level’ (e.g. up in the mountains). So here a crack [in the ice] up in the mountains = a CREVASSE.

    Not the world’s greatest clue, but very Rufus!

    Hope you get as much pleasure from Cryptics as I have done.

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