Guardian 26,730 /Rufus

52 comments on “Guardian 26,730 /Rufus”

1. Pretty gentle – though the NE corner stopped it being one of his easiest – liked LEOPARD and YARMOUTH. Just been discussing ADONIS on the other side – 28 appearances in the Guardian archive, 8 of them by Rufus, most recently 26700 just over a month ago…

   Thanks to Rufus and Eileen

2. Thank you Eileen, thank you Rufus. Good start to the week. I was unsure about the parsing of 6 across and agree with Eileen about the definition too.

3. A pleasant straightforward workout. Thanks to both.
   BTW Eileen, you need to leave the ‘A’ in 16a for it to work.

4. Thanks Rufus and Eileen
   I enjoyed this one. Particular favourites were BUCHAREST, LEOPARD and ANDORRA. Wasn’t sure about the ELFIN = ARCH.

   Does it weaken 10a that UNISON is iteself a “trade organisation” (as you say, Eileen).

   Some people (not including me) might spell DRAMATISE with an unchecked Z instead of the S. I suppose that doesn’t really matter as it isn’t a Prize puzzle, but it is a bit of a proglem.

5. Thanks, Parky – corrected now.

   Morning, muffin

   Chambers gives ‘mischievous’ for both elfin and arch.

   Re DRAMATISE: I wouldn’t dream of using a Z myself, so I have no problem [or proglem]. 😉

6. A good Rufus with the exception of 6a, which was definitely a bit odd. Favourites were YARMOUTH, CHOPIN and ANDORRA. Had to look up TAFFRAIL, which is rarely needed for a Rufus puzzle. Thanks to him and Eileen.

7. Eileen – Re DRAMATISE: Americans would probably like to make a drama out of a crisiz.

8. Thanks, drofle 🙂

9. Thanks Rufus and Eileen.

   This crossword was just right for me. YARMOUTH, LEOPARD, BIREME, TAFFRAIL and BUCHAREST were fun.

   Both the OCED and Collins give DRAMATIZE first with DRAMATISE as an alternative, can somebody account for this? Of course there is ‘dramatization’…

10. A good level for a Monday. LOI was TAFFRAIL. I didn’t know the word but, once the crossers were in place, my limited knowledge of Welsh rivers and better familiarity with bird names made it the most likely answer. I too wasn’t entirely happy with LIED.

    Favourites include BIREME, DRAMATISE, SMUGGLERS and ANDORRA, but particularly BEDS.

    Thanks to Rufus and Eileen.

11. Thanks Rufus & Eileen.

    At the beginning I thought of Royal Navy for 1A. Like jennyk @10 I assumed that TAFFRAIL was the answer to 25. I see it’s not a kind of Welsh transit system but comes from Dutch taffereel panel.

    I liked SMUGGLERS with the misdirection about runners (I thought it was something to do with railways.) I also enjoyed YARMOUTH and BEDS.

12. Thanks Rufus and Eileen

    Nice ease into the week with this one – done at the tail end of lunch. Today the answers flowed in continuously – must have just been on his wavelength!

    Liked YARMOUTH and BIREME. Finished with ELFIN, ENDURE and RAINY because that’s where the trail led to, rather than they were the toughest.

13. Re dramatise, I now use the s but my English teacher reviled it as a newfangled perversion. It may be one of those cases where the older usage has survived in American English.

14. Had PIEBALD for 6d so that scuppered me in 6a and 9a.

15. Herb @13, yes, and I think people are so afraid of using an Americanism that they now always plump for the ‘s’.

    My newest dictionary is dated 1995, could someone check in a later dead wood edition?

16. Cookie @15; Chambers, ODE & Collins all have dramatize first with alternative of dramatise.

17. ELFIN / TAFFRAIL were my last in. Didn’t know the ‘arch’ side of ELFIN; did know TAFF, being quite up on my Welsh rivers (and Towy would have made even less sense), and RAIL, but TAFFRAIL didn’t seem very likely. Then again it’s nautical …

    Looks like I was the only one who essayed TWOER for a while at 3d.

18. Robi @16, thank you.

19. Herb @ 13 – Yes, as I understand it we use to use -ize spellings in England and they have survived in the US.

20. ‘ize or ise?’ – see here, especially the last paragraph: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/03/ize-or-ise/

    I just think ‘ize’ looks ugly and, from a teaching point of view, since some words have to end in ‘ise’ [eg surprise – see the article] it’s easier to stick with that.

21. TAFFRAIL was new to me otherwise pretty straightforward. Probably not one of this setter’s easiest but not difficult. I liked SMUGGLERS,BEDS and SECONDARY. BIREME was LOI.
    Thanks Rufus.

22. Thanks Eileen and Rufus
    Pretty straightforward as others have remarked though some clever cluing.
    Re 6 a – on reflection I think it must be ‘led’ (was first) around ‘I’ since otherwise it would involve guessing a word (albeit an easy one) and then making an anagram of it (as Eileen notes) which is not usually resorted to, I think.

23. Eileen @20, thank you, that is a good decision.

24. Hi Tupu @22

    I think that’s what people call an indirect anagram and I think they’re generally frowned upon, but I’m not sure. The alternative seemed to me rather inelegant, for Rufus.

25. Hi Eileen
    Indirect anagrams. Yes. I seem to remember they are strictly non-Ximenean, but – that aside – they seem to be extremely rare in any case. Cf. http://cryptics.wikia.com/wiki/Indirect_anagram

26. Thanks, tupu.

    [You continue to confuse me [@22 and 25]: to capitalise or not to capitalise your name? 😉 ]

27. Apologies, Eileen, re confusion. I marginally prefer lower case, but sometimes the I-pad autocorrects! No offence taken either way.

28. Thanks, Eileen.

    24a was my only difficulty: though familiar with trireme for the triple-banked version, I couldn’t recall whether the double-decker was a bireme or a direme. Fortunately I guessed the right one.

    13d: Guardian style is -ise, not -ize. Nonetheless, a crossword clue should have a unique solution, so I feel the clue needs a wordplay element (or a checked S) to be unambiguous.

    [BTW, Ernest Gowers, in his edition of Fowler, says that preferring -ise to -ize is taking a cue from Kent in King Lear: “Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter!”]

29. Thanks to Eileen for the blog.

    My first attempt at 1a was SHIPS CREW which fits the clue just as well as ROYAL NAVY or YACHT CLUB. It seems to me that Rufus often does this sort of thing: give an ambiguous clue so you have to get several crossing letters in order to pick the right alternative. Rather sloppy of him.

    I disagree with the definition of 24a: a bireme is any sort of ship with two banks of oars – it does not have to be a warship.

30. Thanks to Rufus and Eileen. My instinct is to use -ize except when doing Guardian puzzles where I assume -ise is the appropriate choice. For some reason I’ve encountered BIREME (but not “trireme”) a lot lately though not necessarily here. My last in were LEOPARD (from the crossers) and BEDS (the degree was new to me). A quick solve but fun.

31. Despite one or two oddnesses, I thought this was a very happy and successful crossword – and a nice easy bit of fun to solve. I even admired many of his CD clues! (I must be in a good mood!).

    Perfectly judged standard for the Monday slot, I’d say.

    Many thanks Eileen and Rufe.

32. Chas @ 29 – Yes indeed: Rufusian sloppiness is all part of the Monday package. But because his puzzles are so relatively easy, such clues can usually be solved in due course.

33. Thanks all
    I cannot say I warm to the Monday compiler!
    Last in “smugglers”, couldn’t get away from sneakers etc.
    Like muffin @4 I didn’t appreciate elfin = arch (pace big C.)

34. 25a had me fooled — I ran to an online list of Welsh rivers. From which I gather that their generic name for a river is “afon” and there are some pretty weird names in there.

35. 25a A taffrail is the wooden topping on the rails of a ship……thus reference stern

36. Chas @29, the OCED gives bireme n. hist. an ancient Greek warship, with two files of oarsmen on each side.

    Apparently there is a lot of confusion over the term http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bireme

37. I don’t see anything wrong with having to use crossers to settle an ambiguity – it is a crossword after all and not a set of discrete quiz questions

38. @37
    Unfortunately the ambiguity with DRAMATISE isn’t helped by the crosser – the S/Z is unchecked.

39. El Ingles @34 – if you think the Welsh rivers have strange names, at least Welsh is spelt phonetically – Scottish Gaelic is far more complicated!

40. There wasn’t a problem with the S/Z (shades of Roland Barthes 1973 there) since you could choose one or the other.

    It seems Collins lists verbs IZE first, ISE afterwards, which should help to clarify for us which have the Greek endings: the ones that don’t, as we see, can’t be spelled with a Z anyway.

41. As with Eileen and others, I always spell these words with an S, as it saves having to remember which ones must be spelled with an S.

42. Nice crossword and nice blog.

    I enjoyed the comment of Miche @ 28 re Gowers and also was in sympathy with his comment – never mind Chambers – that a bireme doesn’t have to be a warship. Think about John Masefield’s “Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir”.

    (Yes, I know Nineveh was miles from any sea coast…)

43. @trailman, I thought of “twoer” as well, and also “twins”. I had to cheat to get “twain” but then it seemed obvious from the clue. Had to cheat on taffrail and bireme as I have never come across these before. Also elfin = arch was not obvious to me. Other than that I managed to finish it all.

44. … and (re #42) that there were no quinqueremes in Nineveh …

45. Didn’t like “get in a pickle” at all. That suggests a verb, and I’m sure everyone concerned knows that the verb is “marinate”.

46. I’m sure that “everyone concerned” knows that dictionaries (Chambers, Collins and others) define MARINADE both as a noun and as a verb synonymous with “marinate”. 🙂

47. This has stuck in my mind from my very first blog here [seven years ago!]:[I’d always thought one marinated food in a marinade but I find that marinade is an alternative form of the verb.]” 😉

48. [I would have been roundly chastised at school had I spelt “authorize” (for example) with an ‘s’. I still find the ‘s’ version rather boorish. On the whole, however, I have spent the most recent decades reprogramming myself to use an ‘s’ mainly as part of my general rearguard action against the American onslaught upon our wonderful language. Sad really since, unlike others here, I still find the ‘s’ use to be the uglier. Such differences in taste help the world go round….and forward?!]

49. Oxford/OUP still use the -ize endings as far as I know; the rest of the U.K. seems to have standardi*ed to -ise, hence DRAMATISE in the Graun.

50. Enjoyable puzzle. Thank you, Rufus and Eileen. Thought the quiet runners in 14d were SILENCERS, as in cars, but that did not fit with MALINGER in 21a. Disappointed not to be able to show off my O Level Greek in the ‘ise’ vs ‘ize’ debate (you did it already, to use another Americanism).

51. Meant to add that Eileen @20 has made a good point: this could be definitive for Grauniad puzzles?

52. Thanks Eileen.

    Typical Rufus.

    1ac could have been Shops Crew or Royal Navy as noted above and 11 could have been A LA CREME.

    Several others were barely cryptic.

    One has to do puzzles by this setter in pencil.

    Then again, there are a few gems like BUCHAREST and TAFFRAIL.

    So thanks, but….

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