The hard part is his penchant for CDs and DDs, neither of which offer the satisfaction of “proving” to oneself that one has the correct answer. Hence my NE, while all filled in, is mostly still in pencil.

On to the issue of the day, KIOSK. I thought the clue was perfect – this kind of CD is so charming. The clue is so open-ended that it could be parsed into almost anything, depending on how one chops it up, and I spent most of each visit to it trying to come up with port cities. Then – when it was the last clue to finish – I thought “what about other meanings of ‘place of call’”, instantly thought “telephone booth”, translated it into my schoolboy British, and that vintage appliance paid off like a Las Vegas one-armed bandit in pennies. Every word is perfect. “Possibly”, because, as someone pointed out, there are other kinds of kiosk – here in the states tourist destinations very often feature “information kiosks”, for instance – and “restricted” because there are many unrestricted places to call from, especially in the modern era. And “place of call”, of course, is a very fair definition.

I get chuffed at Rufus’ heavy use of CDs and DDs, but then I remind myself that his “true” cryptics lead to many checked letters (even with the cruel grids he seems to favor), and that keeping the CD and DD alive is part of his mission, and that I should expect them and deal with it in a cheerful fashion.

There were a lot of clues I really liked today – too many to list, partly because I don’t have a habit of checking them off as I go – but I might generalize and say my CODs for this one were “every non CD or DD” plus the marvelous 16.

So thank you Rufus, for the fun and frustration, and Manehi and the rest of the regular rabble for the always interesting and informative blog.

I have a query regarding 11a. Isn’t this two words and thus should be clued (5,5)? I did make the link between ‘board’ and board games, but none of the chess or chequer pieces were 10-letter words, so I gave up that idea, leaving it blank.

This was a very hard nut to crack – perhaps an excess of cryptic definitions for a Monday puzzle? I like them, but surely this is more mid-week fare?

Yours, etc.

Thropplenoggin

Did find this Rufus much easier though – same slow down in NE – but after having help to find the KIOSK word , I had no problems with the definition even though the term has not been used for a telephone booth/box down here – even the old red ones

I found this one a stinker – in the first return of A since his annoucement the previous week. Found myself thinking that there was something wrong with the puzzle after entering MANX at 10, DOUBLE BOW at 14, ROUGHLY SPEAKING at 25 and still trying to fit GOLDEN ROD into 14d. A number of hours over several sittings to fix that mess …

… and then 13d with the -B- / I-L-Y-R which took further days going through Latin prayers, Islamic IBN church leaders, etc – until in a quiet moment the anagram fodder presented itself – still wasn’t straightfoward to find the BBC IPLAYER which I did not know of.

Very satisfying to finally finish after a torrid battle!

I particularly liked 27a but loathed 5a.

5a for me sums up a lot that I don’t like about Rufus’s style. If you’ve never heard of TIDE RIP then you’ll NEVER deduce the answer!!!

This type of clue belongs in the “Cryptic Crossword Clue Museum”. IMHO of course

On the whole not much fun

Very late to the party today so most things have been said. Just wanted to express my appreciation of some really good stuff from Rufus today: a good mix of style and difficulty. For what it’s worth I didn’t have any problem with the cryptic parts of 5 (could have meant “up to date” or something to do with electricity) or 7 (could have been about a military column). I was less convinced by 16.

Speaking of surfaces, that for MEDITERRANEAN was smooth as silk, and DARN was particularly neat.