Guardian 26,670 / Rufus

This is the first Monday Guardian cryptic that I have solved for many, many months but I see that Rufus is still following his remit of providing a puzzle suitable for beginners and those in a hurry. The customary plethora of double and cryptic definitions, which one either enjoys or dislikes, but which means less typing for me.

I briefly held myself up by entering FREE TIME for 2dn until I returned to 16ac and found that there wasn’t a word that matched M?E?T?R?. Other than that, a very quick and straightforward solve.

Across
9 A lone crab scuttles round by the sea in Spain (9)
BARCELONA – an anagram (scuttles round) of A LONE CRAB

10 Key duet composition (5)
ÉTUDE – E (key) plus an anagram (composition) of DUET with ‘composition’ doing double duty

11 Quits at university levels (5,2)
EVENS UP – EVENS (quits) UP (at university)

12 One of many carried by a caddy (3,4)
TEA LEAF – cryptic def.

13 Show girl without sex appeal? (5)
EVITA – EVA (girl) around (without) IT (sex appeal)

14 Not a big audienceit was for charity (4,5)
POOR HOUSE – double def.

16 Church parade is just part of it (8,7)
MILITARY SERVICE – cryptic def.

19 Small gimmicky articles — book matches, for example? (9)
NOVELTIES – NOVEL (book) TIES (matches, for example)

21 No, I am wrong; she was Ruth’s mother-in-law (5)
NAOMI – an anagram (wrong) of NO, I AM

22 Master takes female, 50, in marriage (7)
MARITAL – MA (master) RITA (female) L (50)

23 Something so cheap as to rule out profit? (7)
BARGAIN – BAR (rule out) GAIN (profit) with an extended def.

24 Refuse / organic food? (5)
OFFAL – double def. – ‘organic’ in this case referring to physical organs rather than the lack of use of chemical fertilisers

25 Banality means one looks for new interests (9)
TRITENESS – an anagram (new) of INTERESTS

Down
1 A meal’s been cooked for sailors (4,6)
ABLE SEAMEN – an anagram (cooked) of A MEAL’S BEEN

2 You do what you like with it (4,4)
FREE WILL – cryptic def.

3 New praise for old Iran (6)
PERSIA – an anagram (new {again}) of PRAISE

4 Firm work with the pen (4)
COOP – CO (firm) OP (work)

5 These heavyweights experienced harrowing times (10)
CARTHORSES – cryptic def. with a reference to ploughing fields

6 A figure of speech satisfied a figure in speech (8)
METAPHOR – MET (satisfied) A plus a homophone (in speech) of ‘four’ (figure)

7 Foreign Office / has its back to the wall (6)
BUREAU – double def. the second cryptic

8 One among the lesser folk, historically (4)
SERF – hidden in ‘lesSER Folk’ with an extended def.

14 It’s not all / bias (10)
PARTIALITY – double def.

15 Seer? (3-7)
EYE-WITNESS – cryptic def.

17 High romance? (4,4)
TALL TALE – cryptic def. or, if you prefer, TALL (high) TALE (romance)

18 Fashionably tailored, he’s concerned with his image (8)
IDOLATER – an anagram (fashionably) of TAILORED with another extended def.

20 Confirm if the light goes out (6)
VERIFY – VERY (light) around (goes out) IF

21 Being annoyed, / informed the police (6)
NARKED – double def.

22 High light, low point (4)
MOON – MOO (low) N (point {of the compass})

23 Note edge of radar echo (4)
BLIP – B (note) LIP (edge)

30 comments on “Guardian 26,670 / Rufus”

  1. Thank you, Gaufrid.

    Quite a few clues that I felt could be satisfied by a number of answers, I felt. Like Wilko, I had FREE TIME until MILITARY SERVICE barged it out of the way.

    Paul NTO – well spotted, missed that.

    Thought NOVELTIES was nicely clued.

    Nice week all

  2. Thanks Rufus and Gaufrid. A pleasant start to the week IMHO. I thought the anagram at 25a was very good!!
    Unless Barcelona is now spelt Barcenola I think some of you have got it wrong!!

  3. Thanks Gaufrid and Rufus

    I liked TRITENESS & IDOLATER and my favourite was METAPHOR. I think there is slight omission in the blog as it should be MET + A + PHOR = a homophone of FOUR.

    New word for me was NARKED.

    I needed help to parse 7d, 20d – I still don’t see why very = light, and 16a – I still don’t get it why a church parade has anything to do with military service.

  4. michelle @6
    Thanks, omission corrected.

    A Very light is “a signalling or illuminating coloured flare fired from a pistol” (Chambers).

    Soldiers and other military personnel used to (still do?) march in formation when going to church on a Sunday morning and this was/is known as a ‘church parade’.

  5. After last weeks disappointing Rufus an excellent return to form. Thanks to Rufus and Gaufrid.

    Michelle@6, if you are used to Scouts/Guides ambling up to church parade, the name originates with the military and is a much more organised affair.

    I had MOOD rather than MOON which sort of works as a dd, though I admit MOOD lighting is generally low rather than high (uplighters?).

  6. Thanks Rufus and Gaufrid.

    All good fun as usual, I don’t know how Rufus does it all.

    Like andyk000 I first entered MOOD, then thought Ah! it must be one of Rufus’s double definitions, so changed it to MOON without spotting the MOO and the N. TEA CADDY, BUREAU, BARGAIN and CARTHORSES I found really good.

  7. Free time here as well. When MILITARY SERVICE eventually came – well, some sort of service, and military was the only type I could think of – I needed to ponder very carefully whether it made sufficient sense.

    Overall, this took me a long time for Rufus. The Barcelona-type clues were in very quickly but many others, especially in the SW, needed much more thought.

  8. Pretty straightforward even by Rufus standards, though I did spoil my paper by writing in FREE TIME and TRIPE. Liked TEA LEAF, SERF and IDOLATER

    Thanks to Rufus and Gaufrid

  9. I got FREE WILL but I was delayed by having TEA bags instead of LEAF. My proletarian roots showing I fear.
    I thought this was a return to form after last week. Liked MOON,CARTHORSES and several more. Enjoyable!
    Thanks Rufus.

  10. Gaufrid@7 and andyk@8 – thanks, now I understand about VERY and the military service/church parade.

    I forget to mention that I also considered ‘free time’ and even ‘free love’ (!) before settling on FREE WILL.

  11. Thanks Rufus and Gaufrid

    This was Rufus right back on top form. Didn’t think that it was going to be after simply writing in BARCELONA and then ABLE SEAMEN, but it improved greatly from there. Not only did I put in FREE TIME before finding the correct FREE WILL as my last one in after MILITARY SERVICE, but I had written in BRIM at 23d initially – couldn’t parse it … and knowing Rufus went looking for other B-I- words and eventually found BLIP.

    Thought that the Seers? clue was his best – has probably been used before, but the first time that I have seen it and liked it ! MOON was also clever, especially after I was able to parse it properly and saw the subtle cleverness. EVITA was another good ‘un.

    Conversely, I wasn’t all that convinced with CARTHORSES – just thought the link back to harrows was tenuous.

  12. Thanks, Coletranesax – I thought that holiday I had was a bit rubbish. Turns out I’d been in Barcenola.

  13. Thanks to Rufus and Gaufrid. Like others I had trouble initially with FREE WILL and got MILITARY SERVICE and OFFAL without fully understanding why – and I did not initially parse the PHOR in METAPHOR, but I still got through quickly.

  14. I found this an enjoyable and fairly straightforward solve, but missed the PHOR/four homophone. I particularly liked NOVELTIES, BUREAU and IDOLATER, mainly for the nice surfaces.

    Thanks to Rufus and Gaufrid.

  15. Thanks, Gaufrid! Count me as another who had “free time” at first. I badly needed your help with 20; my own highly tortured parsing was something like “the answer (light) would be IF when VERY (out, as in out-and-out?) is removed (goes)”…

  16. Thanks Gaufrid and Rufus. I thought this was a great puzzle. Usually I find Rufus a bit hit-and-miss, but today there we few misses and lots of big hits.

  17. I really got stuck on this because of Rufus’s dodgy cryptic definitions: besides FREE TIME I had TEA BAGS instead of LEAF (I can now see this doesn’t work – my mistake) and eventually gave up. So I wasn’t on his wavelength today, alas.

  18. Apologies to Coletranesax@5 – I was tired and didn’t read the other comments as thoroughly as I should have done, including the mea culpa @17. I’ll get my coat …………

  19. can anyone explain the double def for partiality? my dictionary only has definitions related to bias … how does the ‘its not all’ work?

  20. M@rk at #26

    I will try!

    The second def (about which you have no problem) is bias as in prejudice, predisposition, propensity, etc.

    The first def stopped me too for just a few seconds. But I worked it out. It is not a straight synonym. When something is not in its entirety, it is ‘partial’. And when something is ‘partial’, what we have is ‘partiality’! Being partial to somebody is to have bias towards that person.

    Hope this helps. Sorry if I misunderstood your query and have written blah-blah.

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