Guardian 26,550 / Rufus

32 comments on “Guardian 26,550 / Rufus”

1. Thanks Rufus and Eileen

   Most enjoyable Rufus that I can remember. I liked 14a, 18a, 21a, 4d and 7d in particular.

   I did get GIMBAL (second in after GREAT APE), but I had only come across it in the plural (Swallows and Amazons, I think), so was surprised to find that Chambers only gives the singular form.

2. I also got GIMBAL but only once I had all the crossers, no idea where I remembered it from (may also be Swallows and Amazons). Favourite today 21a, “may transfer the ashes” got a genuine LOL in the middle of the office.

   Thanks to Eileen an Rufus.

3. Thanks Rufus and Eileen, do hope your wrist is not giving too much trouble now.

   Like muffin, I really enjoyed this puzzle. TEST MATCH and TASK FORCE were good and I also liked the GREAT APE, the backward idiot and the delivery man.

   1d had me foxed for a while, gyroscope came to mind, then GIMBAL surfaced, probably from one of Joseph Conrad’s books.

4. AndyK should have set features at work or he will be in trouble.

5. I thought this was Rufus in sparkling form – so many lovely, succinct and effortless ideas.

   “Recks not his own rede” is marvellous – can’t wait to drop that into a conversation sometime soon!

   Great to see you fully back in the saddle, Eileen. I’m still hoping to be among the ‘friends you might meet’ on Saturday, and very much looking forward to that.

6. I agree with Eileen that GIMBAL could have been clued a little more helpfully. I had a vague idea of what the answer was going to be but wasn’t sure if it was spelled “gymbal” so had to check. Other than that I found this to be a typical Rufus puzzle.

7. I forgot to add that I really liked the clue for CONTEMPTUOUS.

8. Thanks Rufus, very enjoyable.

   Thanks Eileen, hope you are on the mend now. No doubt you had no problem with AGORA (unlike me.) I also did not know PRIMROSE PATH and GIMBAL – thought it was some sort of gyro derivative.

   I ticked TASK FORCE, REHEARSAL and THOROUGHFARE.

9. One of the more enjoyable Rufuses I’ve encountered, with some very smooth surfaces, GREAT APE, REHEARSAL, THRILLER, and MORAL being my favourites. However, I’m in agreement that the clue for GIMBAL was of no help at all to anyone who has never heard of the term. At least with some wordplay, one would have a chance to get it, but without it just came down to entering letters at random and using the Check button until I got it right. Not much fun to be had there. The problem with cryptic definitions, I find, is that when a setter overuses them (as Rufus tends to do), they go from being clever to stale, or, as mentioned above in the case of GIMBAL, not very cryptic at all. All such clues left a bad taste in my mouth today, but the rest of the puzzle had some clues that were so well-written that the wordplay was barely noticeable. More of that please! 🙂

10. Glad to see that it wasn’t just me with GIMBAL – like others, I needed all the crossers, dragged up a likely solution from some dark recess, and was pleased when I saw that Google gave me something nautical.

    No great struggles otherwise. Though I’m not always one of Rufus’s greatest admirers, I’m in awe of how he can keep on coming up with cds and dds for words, like BOWLER and EDITOR, that he must have clued often.

11. Thanks Rufus and Eileen

    Took quite a while to even get the first clue today – eventually SAUCE presented. It still took a while to really get going … but after that the answers started flowing at the normal rate.

    Finished in the NW corner with TASK FORCE and the tricky GIMBAL the last couple in. Could vaguely remember gimbal from somewhere, but had to look it up to check the definition.

    Agree that this was Rufus in top form.

12. As some who tackled Applied Maths A-level in the 70s, I recall questions involving pendulums swinging from frictionless gimbals with horror.

13. This, for me, was much harder than the usual Rufus. I do these puzzles on the train on the way to work (from Chicago to the Indiana suburbs). Usually, I can finish a Rufus before the train even leaves the city proper. Today, it lasted me all the way to Gary (where I get off and transfer to a bus).

    GIMBAL made me extremely grumpy, for the reasons Eileen outlined (it’s not a common word, so we need a little help here). I also cheated on VERSED, embarrassingly.

    I wanted to mention the &littish aspect to the LOUISIANA clue–the state is a major producer of oil, mostly via offshore drilling. The Deepwater Horizon disaster (did that make the news in the UK?) was off Louisiana waters (with most of the oil washing ashore there and Mississippi).

14. I’ve read Swallows and Amazons and Joseph Conrad many years ago but I don’t remember GIMBAL which I had to look up. Otherwise this was very enjoyable despite being a little harder than usual for Rufus. Favourites have all been noted by others. LOI BOWLER.
    Thanks Rufus

15. I should also mention that I hadn’t heard of the River Test, either. But since I have indeed heard of the Ashes, it went in just fine. I’d bet some of my fellow Americans might struggle with that one, though. (Cricket is completely alien to us, remember.) (FYI, Americans: the Ashes is the cricket competition between Australia and England. It’s test cricket (the full-length, five-day form of the game) so a test match might transfer the Ashes.)

    As for the other cricket clue here: my thought process on BOWLER went something like this: “Delivery man? OK, the question mark means we’re not talking about the milk truck here. What other kinds of delivery are there? Obstetrician–what do they call that in Britain? Probably obstetrician. Orator? Won’t fit with the crosser. Hmm. Delivery….oh, duh. Cricket.”

    Here in baseball land, crosswords get a lot of mileage out of the fact that a pitcher can both throw a baseball and hold water. Plus, pitchers pitch–and so do boats.

16. All pretty straightforward apart from GIMBAL – I didn’t know that but it did ring a very vague bell (possibly from Swallows and Amazons, but that was a very long time ago) – it was the first choice word to look up, but I agree with those who say that it is too obscure a word not to have any wordplay element in the clue. A typical pleasant start to the week.

    Thanks to Eileen and Rufus

17. [mrpenney@13 – yes in great detail, some of our satire programmes enjoyed the idea of blasting the hole with golf balls to try and stop the leak]

    [beer magnet @12 – along with the light inextensible strings no doubt]

18. Thanks, Eileen.

    I thought this too was a little harder, and possibly more enjoyable therefore.

    I am a little surprised that GIMBAL is not so well know – is that the case? I certainly came across it in O level English 55 years ago in Conrad’s Typhoon: ‘The lamp wriggled in the gimbals, the loosened books toppled from side to side on the shelf, the long barometer swung in jerky circles, the table altered its slant every moment. In the midst of all this stir and movement Captain MacWhirr, holding on, showed his eyes above the upper edge, and asked, “What’s the matter?” ‘

    I don’t remember it in Swallows and Amazons, but that’s probably just my memory ( nor could I find a reference with a quick google search); nor in A-level Applied maths (nothing in Tranter, nor in Key Facts for A-levels) – beermagnet@12 are you sure you are not thinking of pulleys which were certainly in frictional abundance?

    In recent years I came across it again in teaching graphics for computer games in the phrase “gimbal lock” ; this gave some problems on Apollo 11

19. Thanks to Rufus and Eileen. I knew GIMBAL but, like others, was unsure of the spelling (I vs. Y). I got TEST MATCH but only after a delay because my reflex is to see “river” and T from a crosser and put in TEE. MORAL was the obvious answer from the crossers, but I needed Eileen’s parsing because I missed the MAL. I liked TASK FORCE. NEEDLE was easy from the clues, but I associate the term with a verb rather than a noun (hostility). All in all, great fun.

20. We liked this! GIMBAL wasn’t a problem cos I’m a bit of a space nut & there are always gimbals on a spacecraft…indeed, in the movie Apollo 13, Lovell (Hanks) says at one point, ‘I’m well aware of the god damn gimbals’… S’posed it doesn’t matter where your knowledge comes from!!!!

21. {Dave @18
    I think it was in one of the later “Swallows and Amazons” books – “We didn’t mean to go to sea” – rather than the eponymous first one in the series.]

22. Neither Nelkon and Parker nor Noakes, remember those for A-level physics, mention GIMBALS.

23. Thanks Eileen and Rufus
    I too got stuck on Gimbal – there seem to be more than one acceptable spelling in fact. I also stumbled on ‘editor’ and thought it was Edison who invented so many different parts of one sort of set or another.

24. Thanks, Eileen

    Minority report from me today: I found this easier than the average Rufus, perhaps because it had fewer dd/cd clues (although I had done the Times puzzle earlier, so the brain was properly warmed up for once!).

    However, I did find it most enjoyable. GREAT APE went in straight away, followed by GIMBAL (familiar word, though I have only come across it as ‘gimbals’ and I thought it was plurale tantum).

    Some splendid anagrams.

25. And today, April 20th, is the 5th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster referred to earlier.

26. Thanks for the blog, Eileen – I hope your wrist continues to improve. See you on Saturday!

    Like Dave Ellison, I’m surprised that so many people were unfamiliar with GIMBAL: it’s not to be confused with its homophone in Jabberwocky: “‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe”, explained by Humpty Dumpty as meaning “to make holes like a gimlet.” I see gimbal derives from Latin gemellus, meaning a twin (cf Gemini).

27. I too found this a very straightforward puzzle, even GIMBAL. I did originally enter it incorrectly, though. I was so focused on not automatically spelling it “gimble”, as in Jabberwocky, that I just reversed that to “gimbel”, and didn’t notice until I was trying to solve 12a.

    Is it just me, or is it easier to miss typos and misspellings in Down answers? Also, when trying to solve a recalcitrant anagram in a Down clue, I find it easier to see the pattern of the crossers if I use the Anagram button to display it horizontally, or to write it out horizontally if I’m solving on paper. I suppose that’s just because that is how we are used to seeing words.

    Thanks, Rufus and Eileen!

28. jennyk @27

    I agree, it’s easier to spot a word if the letters are written horizontally – and a lot easier if you have the initial letter.

    Enthusiasts have different strategies for setting out the anagram fodder to make it easier to solve. My aunt, who taught me the rudiments of cryptic crosswords (a long time ago!), used to write the letters out in a circle, but I prefer to put them into a tight rectangle – like the game Boggle, if you’re familiar with that.

29. Gervase @28

    I use the circle method on paper, interleaving the letters of the fodder so as to break up the structure of the original words. 🙂

30. Thanks all
    Certainly much more difficult than the usual Monday offering, and all the better for that.
    Unlike the blogger I knew 1down quite quickly, unfortunately I spelled it ” Gimbel” which held up the NW corner.

31. I got gimbal because the word stuck after watching the film Apollo 13 many years ago.

32. I was a little surprised by “the ashes” (21A) in lowercase. A few weeks ago, I had claimed to someone that, although one can uppercase a normally lowercase word or expression, one shouldn’t do the reverse.

    However, as usual with Rufus, a nice confidence booster at the start of the week.

    @jennyk: I do the same with anagrams, except that I put the consonants inside the circle and the vowels and “Y” around the outside.

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