Guardian 23916/Rufus
Posted by ilancaron on 6th November 2006
Solving time: 29’
Rufus puzzles are always fair, fairly straightforward with sensible surface readings and rarely does he use obscure vocabulary. He’s considered at the easy end of the Guardian scale. In this puzzle I only had to use Chambers once to learn a new meaning (19A), check wikepedia once (20A) and I encountered an unfamiliar Dickens character (13D).
Across
| 9 | COMPOSES – Double meaning with very different meanings: “to score” a composition. |
| 17 | ARK – cryptic definition: they went two by two so they each a mate. |
| 19 | TED – In Chambers discovered that “to ted” is to dry hay in the sun. Our friend Ted shows up in 11D as well. |
| 20 | WINE CELLAR – Graves is a wine producing region in Bordeaux: see this |
| 26 | INTERN – homophone(“in turn” = “one after another”). |
| 29 | SHE+A+THE – One of the more popular cryptic novels is “She” by H. Rider Haggard (who by the way I only know of due to a Goons sketch). |
Down
| 1 | EACH – contained in tEACHers – surprising use of “a head” as the definition.. |
| 11 | O(DET)TE – rev(“ted”) inside of anag(“toe”). Ted is a frequent cryptic nickname. I actually knew this since when I was about 5, I saw Margot Fonteyn as Odette. |
| 13 | CUTTLE+FISH – Had to trawl wikipedia to work out Captain Cuttle (“Dombey and Son”): a lesser known character in my opinion. |
| 14 | V+INDICATED – Roman numerals are fair game as numbers: I, V, X, D, L, C and M are the most common. |
| 23 | GUESS – I guess this is an Americanism still. |
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