Guardian 26,526 by Rufus

48 comments on “Guardian 26,526 by Rufus”

1. Thanks, manehi.

   I quite enjoyed this Rufus for a change. I liked AUTOGIRO especially.

   I couldn’t see the explanation of BEAT – I took it as BE AT = start the game, but yours is clearly the one.

2. Thanks Rufus and manehi. Today is my only chance of finishing in reasonable time! The cryptic defs always get me. I was searching Wikipedia for Copenhagen landmarks until BLIND EYE leapt out at me. 3d was rather weak, having DOWN in the clue but 5d gave me a chuckle.

3. Thanks Rufus and manehi,

   I did like the reference to ELBA along with Nelson, that old palindrome attributed to Napoleon came to mind “Able was I ere I saw Elba.”

4. Thanks manehi and Rufus
   A quick solve but quite entertaining. I thought ‘well informed’ was an amusing anagram, and shared. Paul R’s worry about 3d though it took me a few moments to escape from thinking the answer must be the imparsible ‘slowdowns’.

5. Thanks Rufus and manehi
   As ever with Rufus, the check button was much used (for example, 14a – GARGOYLE was the first thing that sprang to mind, but I needed reassurance that it was in Rufus’s mind too).
   I was concerned about 3d too, but I missed the “hearted” part, which I think saves using “down” in the clue.
   Don’t beaters “startle” rather than “start” game?
   I liked LEAD IN (“Doctor Daniel” indeed) and LOOSE.

6. Thanks manehi and Rufus.

   Thought 5d was very good, despite the solution being an increasingly unlikely dream for anyone in the next parliament.

   Felt like there were even more CDs than usual from Rufus. Did anyone else confidently write in BUTTRESS for 14 before the crossers proved it wrong?

7. Mitz@6 – I considered “buttress” for 14ac but decided to wait for some checkers. It took me a while to see LOOSE and after that WEAK LINK was my LOI.

8. Mitz @6, yes I did. Sometimes Rufus is too loose with his cryptic definitions.

9. Yes, good stuff from Rufus with the usual uncertainties, such as GARGOYLE (like Mitz, I also pencilled in BUTTRESS). At least I managed to complete it, unlike Arachne’s offering on Saturday – still wrestling with two solutions. Thanks to Rufus and manehi.

10. Thanks Rufus & manehi.

    I was convinced that 7 was ‘binge,’ until the crossers made that impossible.

11. Lots of concise and often elegant clues as ever from Rufus and his “brief”. I know a lot of people here are not that keen, but for me his Monday offerings are a guilty pleasure!

    Amid the ‘smile-and-write-ins’ there always seem to be two more difficult clues, and for me these were BEAT and LOOSE this time.

    Am I being dense, or is BEAT not really a synonym for “win”? I mean you beat someone but don’t win them, and you have a win but not a beat.

12. Well the only CD I liked was UMPIRE. Usually however Rufus runs a tight ship, as you might say 😀 but today’s has some errors I think:

    1a ‘with’ is padding that misleads unfairly; 9a ‘as’ seems redundant; 13a chestnut; 17a would need to have ‘returned’ to be correct: ‘on’ also used the wrong way around according to the convention; 18a ‘to’ seems padding and redundant; 23a should really have ‘turned over’; 24a should really have ‘needs’; 2d obscure word.

    Disappointed to see nasty and unnecessary comments about me posted at the weekend. I say again I don’t insult people, why should I be treated badly?

13. HH @ 12

    Re your comments above:

    1a Agreed, but once you get the answer it’s clearly correct.
    9a Yes, but does it really matter?
    13a Maybe for you, but I still had to think about it.
    17a I think ‘return’ is OK. It’s clear what is meant. Re ‘on’ convention: it makes perfect sense this way round.
    18a Hmmm. Pretty clear, I think.
    23a You’re being very literal. Solvers will get it.
    24a No. It makes perfect sense as it is.
    2d Obscure maybe, but I got it immediately – it couldn’t really be anything else.

    I don’t think you deserve to get nasty comments, but you won’t accept the looseness that setters use: you are always judging them by a yardstick that they aren’t using!

14. Thanks Drofle.

    Well, at 24a the ‘I’ isn’t the personal pronoun you see in the surface, but the letter ‘I’, which is a singular thing. That’s my difficulty there.

    Cheers
    HH

15. Thanks, manehi.

    When 1a and 5a didn’t immediately spring to mind, I thought this was going to be one of those Rufus puzzles which I find a lot more difficult than most others claim to. However, I soon got going – although the NE quadrant took me longer than all the rest.

    I was another who posited BUTTRESS for 14a but fortunately I didn’t have the courage to write it in.

    20a is a really good and unexpected anagram. Elegant clues, as ever, though I felt that 5a was autological….

16. Thanks Rufus and mane hi

    Actually found this to be a little harder than the normal Rufus with the NE holding on grimly at the end. Finished with WEAK LINK and DRIVING TESTS as the last couple in.

    Was going to grizzle about AUTOGIRO (with autogyro fitting as well and the I / Y light blocked) – I didn’t pick up on the GIRO payment and all was forgiven …

    Didn’t realise that there was a Battle of Copenhagen … and that was where Nelson allegedly put the telescope to his blind eye to avoid following the orders signal.

17. Thanks Rufus and manehi

    Actually found this to be a little harder than the normal Rufus with the NE holding on grimly at the end. Finished with WEAK LINK and DRIVING TESTS as the last couple in.

    Was going to grizzle about AUTOGIRO (with autogyro fitting as well and the I / Y light blocked) – I didn’t pick up on the GIRO payment and all was forgiven …

    Didn’t realise that there was a Battle of Copenhagen … and that was where Nelson allegedly put the telescope to his blind eye to avoid following the orders signal.

18. [Gervase @15
    Thanks for introducing me to a new word – I had to look it up, of course, and I think I agree.]

19. [……………..or should I say “introducing a new word to me”?]

20. 5ac I had WEAR LINE – the line of wear in material which can lead to fracture or tear = PARTING. Nothing in the clue excludes this. I prefer tightly defined clues which allow only one correct solution.

21. Crossbencher @ 20 – “I prefer tightly defined clues which allow only one correct solution.” I think you’re always going to have problems with Rufus, then!

22. Not too many problems apart from the NE, where my certainty that 4d started with DR took a long time to disappear.

23. It’s not often that Charleston WV pops up in a crossword puzzle—on either side of the Atlantic. Wonder if that added to the difficulty for others. (I’ve been to both Charlestons; the SC one is a place worth visiting, the WV one is not.)

    I agree with others that the “weak link” clue was indeed such, and that without knowing the banking reference there was no way to know not to put “autogyro,” my last one in. The rest was all good.

24. C@20 I similarly had WEAK LINE… and also misled by putting in OVERDRAWN at 15d. Nice start to the week Thanks rufus.

25. I had “Weak Spot” instead of “Weak Link”, and that led me to put “Stuck” for “Fast? Perhaps not!” (because you can’t be going fast if you are “stuck fast”) which all seemed reasonable until I got “Driving Tests”…

    Apart from that hiccup the only thing I couldn’t get was why “Beat” was “Start the game”, and couldn’t decide if it was that or “Best”. Thanks for the explanations!

26. All pretty straightforward, though it did take a while to get LOOSE and WEAK LINK. Liked DRIVING TESTS.

    Thanks to Rufus and manehi

27. Crossbencher @20 – so did I, but it didn’t entirely convince me so I used Check, which ruled it out. I would prefer a version of the Check button that wipes out all of the unchecked letters in a wrong solution, which would feel less like cheating since anything is guessable by Checking one letter at a time!

28. Crossbencher@20 – I think the thing that excludes “wear line” is that it doesn’t appear to exist. A search of OneLook doesn’t find it in any of the online dictionaries, and it isn’t in my Chambers.

29. Andy @29 – you are right (of course), but I wouldn’t normally expect to need a dictionary to finish a Rufus!

30. I was rattling through this and then got stuck on WEAK LINK,LOOSE and most annoyingly BEAT which, despite being rather well clued, I couldn’t see and settled on BEST which I didn’t like. Apart from that I found this most enjoyable.
    Thanks Rufus

31. HH@14 Your comments re 24a are a prime example of why the rest of us, who don’t analyse clues to the nth degree, will always have much more fun solving cryptic crosswords than you appear to.

    We look at 24a and think ‘nice surface reading’ … that’s “I (from the clue) and an anagram (revise) of AT TIMES” and go no further. Simples.

32. Gargoyle v Buttress?

    Hesitated momentarily here but was swayed by “medieval” in the clue

33. [Crypticsue @31, perhaps Hoggy gets double the pleasure, first the pleasure of doing the crossword, then the pleasure of picking it over.]

34. At times, I revised copies (8)

    It is not that different Sue, but it avoids the grammar problem. Would you not say this is better?

35. Shouldn’t we just accept that Rufus is what he is and won’t change his style now…

36. HH, as I hope I’ve suggested before, I usually appreciate your incisive grammatical comments. I have winced sometimes in the past when one may have seemed a bit acerbic (and then it all kicks off), but it is easy for tone to be misread in a blog post/e-mail/text message. For what it’s worth, I think I have sensed you being more overtly diplomatic lately, so I hope the ad hominems will subside soon.

37. Thanks to Rufus, my favourite setter. I struggle with the cryptic crossword on other days, so some of us look forward to Mondays

38. I was on Rufus’ wavelength today too, so finished pretty quickly. Liked it, so thank you to setter and blogger.

39. hedgehoggy @34 That is a nice example of how your mind works. You feel that by cleaning things up you have improved the clue; but in fact, though you may have cured a ‘problem’ that most people aren’t too concerned about, you have in the process stripped the life out of the clue and ended up with something anodyne and unappealing.

    Your version (“At times, I revised copies”) is just

        FODDER->ANAGRIND->DEFINITION.
        At times, I     revised     copies

    It is immediately transparently obvious what is required to solve the clue, so it is not interesting.

    Rufus’s version (“Copies I need to revise at times”) is harder (so more fun) to parse because

    The fodder doesn’t come in one easily-letter-countable block.
    It is slightly more than the straight anagram you offer, because he has the mini-charade of putting the ‘I’ in first before appending the anagram.
    He also has 7 letters on each side of the anagrind…so both “Copies I” and “at times” have an equal chance of being the fodder…but they are both one letter short…hmmm, what’s going on here? etc etc

    It may be more messy than yours, but consequently it is more obfuscating, alive and interesting to solve.

     

    I do agree that his clue is playing slightly fast and loose with strict grammar rules, but I find I can live with that (in the same way that, say, newspaper headlines have their own version of grammar too).

40. Limeni @ 39 – Very nice analysis. I agree wholeheartedly. The additional uncertainty and interest in the clue is worth the price of a little inexactitude.

41. But my experience of the clue, with “copies” as the first word and isolated by the strange grammar, made it a clue solvable most easily by definition spotting, with the cryptic element then being wholly redundant and therefore not of any interest/fun.

42. Thanks Rufus.

43. I am afraid that, strictly speaking, hedgehoggy is right about the use of ‘need’ in 24ac.
    Years ago I was part of a discussion on this issue [at this site and via email] in which both Anax and Paul B [sorry guys!] supported what hedgehoggy tried to tell us today.
    I + (AT TIMES)* should be clued as I “needs” (AT TIMES)*.
    Of course, within the surface this is not possible.
    However, the “I” is not the I as used in the surface [so, not me] but just an ‘element’ after breaking down the clue in pieces. It should be treated as ” A needs B”.

    That said, a lot of setters do these things and no-one can be bothered.
    Actually, I couldn’t be bothered too much either as ‘I know what Rufus means’ – even if, perhaps, I don’t like my own attitude in this very much. I think, I accept it from others but, ideally, I would not do it myself.

    Hedgehoggy clearly dislikes nounal anagram indicators used without an ‘apostrophe s’. I think it’s all right. It’s a bit like ‘Labour leader’ for L. Purists say it’s wrong but I have become not that much of a purist through the years.

    Padding is something that should be avoided wherever possible. But if the surface is still OK, it is acceptable.
    Therefore, hedgehoggy, one should not call ‘padding’ an error (as you do!).
    In 18ac I cannot see how Rufus could have left out ‘to’.
    Also, ‘chestnut’ and ‘obscure word’ are on your list of errors.
    Errors?
    If you want us to be more precise, please use the word ‘error’ more carefully yourself!
    And don’t cover yourself all the time with these bright smileys.
    It’s annoying.

    Back to this Rufus’ puzzle.
    We failed on 5ac (WEAK LINK), the kind of clue I do not like. But soit (as the French say [without the ‘But’, of course]).
    Did I like this crossword?
    Not really but that’s how it is.
    Some liked 11ac (DRIVING TESTS) very much, I thought it was weak – see, there you are.
    On the other hand, 20ac, 5d, 7d and 22d were quite good.

    Thanks, manehi, for the blog.
    If I may say so, you underline the definitions and specify them too thereafter – that’s a bit double.
    You can make your life a bit easier, I think.

44. Thanks all.

    @Sil: underlining is relatively recent to my blogs, after a few commenters asked for it. The newline =”…” is too deeply ingrained into muscle memory at this point, dating back to the olden days of typing into a html template [olden days, indeed.] I hope that it doesn’t get in the way too much – and it often acts as a spur for me to give a little extra context to the definition inline, for clues where just underlining or quoting might not be clear enough for some readers (13ac, 2dn and 22dn today.)

45. Limeni @39 well-worked and well-reasoned. Thank you for putting into words what I was unable so to do.

46. I liked this more than the average Rufus. Autogiro/Trough were LOIs (and had to wait until after work); we don’t have Giros in the US, though I vaguely remembered them from before I crossed the Pond.

47. cc11@37 me too

48. Just out of interest, could 24a have been clued ‘Copies one needs to revise at times’ … not that it bothers me, I found the crossword most enjoyable.

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