I must agree with Sil here in that I am more likely to finish a Paul or Araucaria than a Rufus. I failed today on SCALE which should have been obvious and LION which I found very cryptic. I rarely finish RUFUS but find him very entertaining which is the purpose of all this solving.

Sil, I’ve often wondered, too, why you find Rufus so tricky, compared with some of the other more ‘difficult’ setters.. it must be the number of cryptic definitions, which I suppose are bound to cause more problems for a person whose first language is not English – although I have said before there are many native English-speakers who don’t have your command of the language!

Re ‘also-ran’: the cryptic aspect is ‘out of place’, since an also-ran is an athlete, or racehorse, who was ‘unplaced’ [not 1st 2nd or 3rd.]

I said that PAEANS was ‘not very cryptic’ – an understatement! [I did know the word, though.]

I thought someone might challenge EMERITI as &lit, and I had some second thoughts myself. However, the Latin word means ‘having earned by service’ and is the word used for a soldier who has served his time, although it does, of course, give us our word ‘merit’. I take your and Gareth’s point about the construction.

Grumpy Andrew, thanks for your further comment. It looks as if you can perhaps hang on to your place for a while longer, Derek!

Ximenes described this type of clue — brief definition plus wordplay but where the whole clue can be read as an extended definition — as an “offshoot” of the &lit “to which I apply, for convenience, the same name” (Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword).

Don Manley calls it a “semi &lit” to distinguish it from a “true &lit” (Chambers Crossword Manual).

We have a problem.
Why can’t we hardly finish a Rufus, while usually Paul or Araucaria can’t beat us?

Today we rushed through the bottom half of the grid in what must be a World Record (true, a bit exaggerated), but it went wrong in the NW part. HEN RUN we didn’t get,
but indeed, a nice cd. Never thought of that. Easy when you know, isn’t it?
We had never heard of ALSO-RAN (but I am always thankful when I’ve learned some new words after solving a crossword) and if this is a cd, which it surely is, I don’t really get it (even if I know (now) what an ‘also-ran’ is).
And PAEANS stumped us. Again, haven’t heard of it, and not really a good clue.
Like cholecyst (#4) I think EMMA must be banned unless someone clues it more inventively (like, as you said, Eileen, indeed happened recently).
We didn’t like 6ac mainly because both Emmas here are female names – hardly a dd.
Eileen, in your blog you call 6d an &Lit. I don’t agree with that.
The definition is ‘Professors discharged’ and this is not part of the construction.
And though I like the surface of the clue, there is the fact that ‘merit’ is the English version of the Latin ‘meritus’, which is part of the word ‘emeritus’, so the ‘merit’ here is not completely cryptic. So-so, I would say.

But apart from these minor critical notes, a fine crossword – easy at places, unsolvable at other places (that is, for us ….).

But the most important News of the Day is, of course, that Grumpy Andrew is not always Grumpy anymore !!