The official bored-at-work cryptic crossword pass it on thread.

Yeah, GIS gave me one image that was napa cabbage, another that was baby bok choy,

xxxp lol good clue

Guardian Cryptic crossword No 26,766, 24 Down: Plan polkaing periodically (4)

Whoops

yeah I was wondering about that clue.

Did anyone have luck with the Graun Xmas monster jigsaw one?

so the setter posted on fifteensquared:

Arachne says:
December 29th, 2015 at 12:21 pm
Many thanks to Eileen for the blog, and to everyone for taking the trouble to comment not just on this, but on all puzzles through the year. Thanks, too, to the indefatigable Gaufrid for all his hard work.

24dn – aargh. This was submitted as “Propose polkaing periodically”.

Warmest wishes for 2016 to all of you, my friends.

Love and hugs,

Arachne

xp Didn't see that, those never show up on the app. Might print it out & take a look.

Latest prize was a bastard, got down to 4 clues & gave up

my GF (much better than me at crosswords) nearly finished it bar a couple. Once you get the theme it is possible to at least answer a large number of clues.

Parents and I finished the big Xmas one. We had a lot of answers but were stuck putting them into the grid, just had to sit down and be painstakingly analytical about it, sudoku style.

Yesterday's was the easiest prize I can recall - had to get a lot of checking letters before I cracked the theme but most of the non themed clues were v straightforward. I had to cheat minorly to get the final clue though :(

Hello to Spooner's straight guy (4,6,4,3)

I know you just *love* these tortured and unguessable spoonerisms.

Pompous hello to Spooner's very straight man (4,6,4,3)

I think I have the answer, but I can't parse the surface at all?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/het

Okay, if that works the way I think it does,it relies on a synonym for "very" that we Yanks don't use.

And also, ouch.

i thought it was well wicked.

lol

Scrambling on crag's rim - here? (10)

Oh sure, there, says the befuddled American...

I have scrambled there, maybe not quite on a crag's rim.

relatively straightforward I would think? at least in the UK a well-known mountain range

have i mentioned before how much i love arachne? from the other day alone

Czech barman and I entranced by Stan Wawrinka's bottom (7)

Iron Lady contrarily embracing little in the women's movement (8)

Those prophesying doom of Corbyn back off, beginning to admire his alternative (9)

today's Graun is a Maskarade, who usually only appears at Bank Holidays to confound with those jigsaw puzzles. Here's a clue I liked:

Rival of S. Ovett? Get away! (5)

General knowledge rather than cryptic but this was still a bit o_O in the guardian today:

Dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury (10, 3)

The middle of the 3 was the end of this clue:

Political movement founded by Yanis Varoufakis (6)

(The one below that was BREXIT)

My brain hurts trying to fit my first-choice answers for those two together and as yet I haven't found any more plausibly intersecting answers, but I'm going to assume I'm just being very stupid.

Does the Graun have a GK crossword on Saturdays, or indeed ever? I did not know this!

(I never buy it on Saturdays - too expensive and I feel overwhelmed and wasteful when a heap of supplements flops out onto the floor never to be read - but I do enjoy occasionally stealing the jumbo GK crossword from the local pub's Telegraph at the weekends.)

the GK one is in the magazine.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/yanis-varoufakis-launches-pan-european-leftwing-movement-diem25

So I've had enough boy = RON or lad = TED clues to see them coming and anticipate a name going in there. Is the idea behind this that Ron and Ted are youthful names, and adults would be Ronald and Theodore? They're usually short or nicknames. Or are boy and lad just signifying male? Just curious about the convention.

i think you could well be right about the short form signifying youthfulness, but i also feel like that connotation has almost disappeared from conscious thinking maybe and become simply conventional

I'd like to introduce the setters to Ron Mael. And Teddy Kennedy. But yeah, I just kind of roll with it now.

like a lot of conventions it's of a more formal era tho. and British, obviously.

This was good from yesterday's Graun:

The old racer racing around Italy? (10)

nice bit of misdirection here

Work by Joyce Grenfell initially in broadcast wins a keen fan (9,4)

yeah I was happy to get that one!

Had a tossy, turny sleep last night and came up with this one while my brain was whirling:

Tom Cruise in top bad films (6, 8)

Man I forgot about this thread

Xp nice, I often come up with clues while trying to sleep too, this from last night:

Gina G remix is a joke (3)

I never did solve that last one.

btw, isn't Rufus in the Guardian generally considered easy? (Despite his predilection for purely cryptic clues, which I often struggle with.) Because no way was I getting Sassenach or exeants.

Well that's just a vocab thing, if you're familiar with the terms both of those clues are easy. I hadn't come across exeants before but the term sassenach is fairly well-known in the uk and that clue is practically straight

Gina G remix is a joke (3)

Gag (anag of agg ('g' in 'a g'))

Gaganagofaggginag

Clue fort in part of London (4,3)
EAST END
easT end is a possible clue for T

Hadn't seen this type of clue before, you have to separate the "for" and the "t"?

And again:

Cart inspection (5)
AUDIT
Similarly, we need to separate the letters of the first word of the clue: AUDI + T

ximenes is spinning in his grave. hmmm that sounds a bit like a clue. his sex in me, deep...

Jesus fucking Christ, rufus

Guardian Cryptic crossword No 26,975, 4 Across: Unaltered, it's as I designed (2,2,2)

very poor

Serves me right, I read the first six paragraphs or so of the special instructions for the prize this morning & was like fuck this I'll take a look at the Monday

Even for rufus this one is insulting but it almost works as a joke

LOL I solved the Rufus one so quickly as STASIS (which I thought was a poor def for unaltered) and then saw the 2,2,2.

Never mind, that doesn't make stasis. I should be concentrating on work.

RACES

May be a bits-and-pieces indicator indicating the letters TT.

Why is this??

The TT Races = an annual motorbike race on the Isle of Man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man_TT

(tbf I'm not sure I've ever seen this in a crossword and while I could get to "race" from TT could probably not get to "TT" from "races", but I am p out of practice at the whole cryptic crossword thing)

Thanks. The clue was in yesterday's Rufus: He races in circles (4)

The crossers were _T_O, so I figured it had to be OTTO, but is there some famous Otto this alludes to, or does "he" just = "man's name?"