Guardian Cryptic 26,963 by Rufus

by

The puzzle may be found athttps://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26963.

The only setter I would try to blog while keeping more than an eye on the Murray – del Potro match, so apologies for any mistakes that I missed. On the subject of mistakes, I think there are a couple of uncharacteristic ones by Rufus – indeed the whole puzzle strikes me as a little out of the ordinary for him, with more envelopes than usual, and a couple of charades in which the particles are clued as a unit.

Across
1 BAILIFFS Factors in debt collection (8)
Cryptic definition – ‘factor’ in the sense of an agent.
5 OBERON Dream king who is from Borneo (6)
An anagram (‘from’) of ‘Borneo’, for the King of the Faries in A Midsummer Nighr’s Dream.
9 COMATOSE Comes to a settlement while unconscious (8)
An anagram (‘settlement’) of ‘comes to a’.
10 WINNOW Separate success right away (6)
A charade of WIN (‘success’) plus NOW (‘right away’).
12 LATHE Turner writes bilingual articles (5)
A charade of LA plus THE (‘bilingual articles’).
13 INAUDIBLE Even the most generous would be deaf to such appeals (9)
Cryptic definition.
14 GAINSBOROUGH Painter wins town in local elections (12)
A charade of GAINS BOROUGH (‘wins town in local elections’).
18 BREAKTHROUGH Penetrate enemy defences — a significant development (12)
Double definition.
21 NIGHT OWLS Late partygoers provide their own lights (5,4)
An anagram of ‘own lights’. If you think ‘provide their’ is an adequate anagrind, we beg to differ.
23 SCOPE Room with a view? (5)
Double definition. I have given the second definition as an allusive reference to SCOPE as an abbreviation for telescope, say, but it could equally be the colloquial use as a verb.
24 ASH BIN Refuse collector maybe has turned writer (3,3)
A charade of ASH, an anagram (‘maybe’) of ‘has’ plus BIN, a reversal (‘turned’) of NIB (‘writer’).
25 CLARINET It’s instrumental in having wine around (8)
An envelope (‘around’) of ‘in’ in CLARET (‘wine’).
26 TIGGER Row about a child’s horse, a friend of Pooh (6)
An envelope (‘about’) of GG (or gee-gee, ‘a child’s horse’) in TIER (‘row’).
27 ASCRIBES A writer’s attributes (8)
A charade of ‘a’ plus SCRIBE’S (‘writer’s’). Definition as a verb.
Down
1 BUCKLE Belt up or bend over (6)
Double definition.
2 INMATE An item reserved for a jailbird (6)
An anagram (‘re-served’) of ‘an item’.
3 IN THE DARK Unaware of how developers work (2,3,4)
Definition and cryptic reference to non-digital photography.
4 FASHION SHOWS Where to see working models? (7,5)
Cryptic definition.
6 BUILD Construct a house as advertised, we hear (5)
Sounds like (‘we hear’) BILLED (‘advertised’).
7 RUNABOUT Transport required to organise a fight (8)
A charade of RUN A BOUT (‘organise a fight’).
8 NEW DELHI Capital we held in another form (3,5)
An  anagram (‘another form’) of ‘we held in’.
11 CAR-BOOT SALES Second-hand markets operating close to Basra (3-4,5)
An anagram (‘operating’) of ‘close to Basra’.
15 REGISTRAR One who holds match records (9)
Cryptic definition.
16 ABUNDANT Ample supply coming from British sailor and German worker (8)
A charade of AB (‘British sailor’) plus UND (‘and German’) plus ANT (‘worker’), which leaves ‘supply’ doing nothing in particular.
17 HEDGEHOG Restrict dangerous driver — he’s often flat out on the road (8)
A charade of HEDGE (‘restrict’) plus HOG (‘dangerous driver’ – I think that it only has that sense in the combination ROAD HOG)
19 HOBNOB Head of house, recent pupil and Head mix informally (6)
A charade of H (‘head of House’) plus OB (old boy, ‘recent pupil’ – why ‘recent’?) plus NOB (‘head’).
20 BERTHS New arrivals, we hear, at the docks (6)
Sounds like (‘we hear’ again) BIRTHS (‘new arrivals’).
22 TWICE Now and again (5)
Cryptic definition.
completed grid

36 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26,963 by Rufus”

  1. Thanks for the blog, PeterO.

    I agree that NIGHT OWLS was not clued terribly well – I got it, but couldn’t parse it. Penny only dropped when I came here.

    I laughed out loud at HEDGEHOG – my clue of the day.

  2. Thanks Rufus and PeterO

    I thought this was better than the average Rufus. I enjoyed OBERON, COMATOSE and WINNOW (“right away” generally meaning “remove R”).

    I thought that “Where” is 4d indicated a singular location, so I went for FASHION HOUSE – corrected when BREAKTHROUGH was solved.

    I was OK with NIGHT OWLS, but I thought “writes” in 12a a bit odd, and I don’t think “with a view” quite works for SCOPE.

  4. Thanks Rufus and PeterO

    I cant get my head round 13A. What has generous got to do with inaudible? Grateful for any clarification.

    Thanks

  5. pex @4
    Yes it’s a bit odd. I think the point is that even people very willing to help wouldn’t respond to requests that they can’t hear. I don’t think there is a phrase “inaudible appeal” though.

  6. I failed to solve 23a and 24a

    My favourite was RUNABOUT. I felt sorry for the poor flattened hedgehog 🙁

    pex@4 – I think if the request/appeal was inaudible, even the most generous would not respond as they would not be able to hear it.

    Thanks PeterO and Rufus

  8. Thanks muffin & michelle. I wondered if there was something more concrete to justify the wording. It seemed a bit vague even for Rufus.

    As long as I’m not missing something. On with the day ….

  9. Thank you Rufus and PeterO.

    I enjoyed this puzzle having managed to solve it in a reasonable time, usually I take ages.

    At 21a I thought Rufus was asking us to parse NIGHT OWLS to get “own lights”, thinking he might have taken un coup de jeune…

  12. Cookie@10 I don’t think that works because abundant is an adjective not a noun. It would have to be abundance for supply to be part of the definition.

  14. Hi All.

    Like michelle@6, I felt very sorry for the hedgehog. My LOI.

    I too saw 16d ABUNDANT as “ample supply”.

    I liked this puzzle (should we have a Facebook facility where we can just click “Like” or other alternatives like “Love”, “Sad”, “Angry” etc.)?

    Just kidding. I would hate it if this online forum ever became so reductionist!

    I circle my favourites as I go. I had six in this puzzle. Won’t bore you, but there are some Mondays when I think: despite that he is not seen as being the cleverest of setters in the judgement of the aficionados, Rufus does come up with some gems, like 11d CAR-BOOT SALES.

    Many thanks to Rufus, PeterO and other contributors. Despite being a bear of little brain, as in the clue for the friend of 26a, TIGGER, I have to say that I really enjoy the crosswords and this forum, with all that is contained therein – quirkiness, dedication to task, exchange of intellectual challenge and occasional storms in teacups.

    I appreciate this connected community very much.

  15. Jason@7

    I am fine with “now and again” = twice

    it implies now = one time, and again = another time => twice

  16. Normal Monday service has been resumed.

    Took a while for the FASHION SHOWS penny to drop, and it was needed for most of the rest of the NW corner to fill. Otherwise no problems.

  17. I thought this rather more substantial than Rufus is usually. It certain
    took me rather longer to complete although this was mainly because of SCOPE
    which took me far too long to see.
    Quite an agreeable start to the crossword week.
    Thanks Rufus.

  19. Harder for me than the typical Rufus.

    Of course, we don’t have “car boot sales” here, we have “trunk sales.” I’ve commented before on how odd it is that parts of motor vehicles should be one of the areas where British and American English differ so sharply. (By the time the car was invented, ideas were already crossing the Atlantic pretty quickly, so you’d think the words attached to those ideas would too.)

    Also, here a bailiff is the security officer in a courtroom; I had no idea that in Britain it was a debt collection thing.

    I share the already mentioned quibbles about 16D, 13A, and 21A. I’d also add the sloppy homophone indication in 20D–I had to hit check since it could just as easily have been BIRTHS as BERTHS. Also, I personally dislike clues like 18A–double definitions where the two definitions are actually the same sense of the word. (A breakthrough in the sense of a major development is just a slightly more figurative extrapolation from the military type of breakthrough).

    Another clue with random extra words is the one for OBERON. Wouldn’t “Dream king from Borneo” be just as good?

  20. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I came here to find out what an inaudible appeal was, and I remain unenlightened. Reading the comments, it doesn’t seem like there is such a thing…

  21. I write in the hope of clarifying one solution and suggesting subtler setting than is attributed to another.

    13a inaudible – ‘I am deaf to your needs’ would imply that the speaker is selectively choosing to ignore the appeals of another; a more generous person would wish to respond to any and all appeals providing they are audible.

    20d berths – is this slightly more clever than parsed here? The docks contain berths but we hear that the doc’s handles the new arrivals or births.

    My continuing thanks to setters, bloggers and the 225 community.

  23. ‘Inaudible appeal’ sounds quite natural to me, though ‘mute appeal’ is maybe more usual? But it doesn’t have to be a common phrase for the clue to make sense, does it?

  24. All pretty straightforward, but for some reason that seems unaccountable in retrospect SCOPE and BERTHS took me as long as the rest of the puzzle

    Thanks to Rufus and PeterO

  26. Thanks both,

    Like muffin @2 I thought this was a good Rufus. There seemed to be more anagrams than usual and they were well hidden. 8d and 14d took me some time to spot. Gainsborough (14a) is a town in its own right, of course.

    OED is happy with ‘scope’ as a shortened form of many viewing instruments. I’d mainly think of the telescopic sight of an air rifle. Strangely, OED doesn’t have a main entry for scope meaning ‘space’ or ‘ambit’, which appears to derive from ‘scope’ meaning the distance between the rear feet and forefeet of a horse when running, or something like that.

  27. Enjoyed some like Night Owls and car boot…but too many ‘almost cryptic’ for my taste. R is the one setter where I need to fill in in pencil as he has too many’it might be that’s.

  28. Thanks to Rufus and PeterO. I finished very quickly, even for a Rufus puzzle, though I did pause at the end, after all the crossers were in, over HOBNOB and especially SCOPE.

  29. Two of you (Julie and pagan) have expressed your particular appreciation of this community of bloggers, commenters and setters, and I’d like to echo your sentiments.

    Even when I had a break from the Guardian (bar a couple of crosswords) for the whole of July while I was in Australia, I still kept up to date with this forum from time to time and enjoyed the interesting discussions and banter. I don’t know of a better crossword forum.

    I often give Monday crosswords a miss, but I needed a break during a big shopping day today and decided to tackle the Suguru, the Cell Block and the Rufus crossword. I can see why Rufus, with the sort of natural elegance of many of his clues, continues to appeal to some, but (1) I tend to prefer something more varied and challenging and (2) I thought, as others evidently did, that Rufus left himself open to criticism today for some lazy clueing.

    I thought 25a CLARINET, 26a TIGGER, 27a ASCRIBES and 11d CAR-BOOT SALES were good examples of Rufus’s elegance. However, the clues to 13a INAUDIBLE and 18a BREAKTHROUGH seemed rushed, as though they were the first drafts of clues that should have been worked on before deciding they were good enough. Also, a few other refinements could have been made, like writing ‘how developers used to work’ instead of ‘how developers work’ in 3d IN THE DARK.

    Thanks anyway to Rufus, and to PeterO for the blog.

  30. Alan Browne @29: people still use chemicals to produce photographic prints in traditional darkrooms. Developers work exactly as they have always done if you choose to use them instead of going digital.

  31. Thank you John @30. My ignorance shone through, it seems. I take back the specific criticism concerning dark rooms, although there were other clues I also had in mind when suggesting that they could do with some refinement before committing them to print.

  32. We felt this was pretty poor clueing too. We picked on insufficient anagrinds and superfluous words, ‘who is’ in 5a, ‘settlement’ in 9a, ‘writes’ in 12a, 13a was just odd, ‘provide their’ in 21a, ‘it’s instrumental’ in 25a, in 3d it’s where not how, ‘another form’ in 8d, ‘supply’ in 16d, ‘at the’ in 20d. Noticeably worse than most Rufuses, where we always put up with the CDs etc as a matter of course!

  33. Rioverkill @32
    Yes – it was the superfluous words in particular that I had in mind when commenting on the need for refinement in some of the clues.

  34. Rioverkill @32: at the risk of sounding like a photography bore, I have to point out that all film developing is done in the dark and all colour print developing is done in the dark (inside light-tight drums that have been loaded in pitch dark conditions). That justifies ‘how’ for me (light exclusion being an essential part of the developing process). Black and white print developing is done in an open tray in a darkroom with a red safelight.

  35. Thanks PeterO and Rufus.

    I found this typical Rufus fare with insertion of a number of answers waiting for all the crossers – just to be sure.

    No new words for a change. But worth the effort as ever. So thanks again.

  36. Thanks Rufus and PeterO

    Always good to get back to one of the more straightforward Guardian puzzles – well certainly when one is as far behind as I am !!

    This one did take a little longer than usual from this setter for some reason – maybe because he does set slightly differently as Dante in the FT which is where I do most of my puzzles these days.

    Ended with a few clues at the bottom – HOBNOB, ASH BIN (which needed all of the crossers) and SCOPE as the last one in.

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