My third blog here in two days and second today.
Didn’t really enjoy this, I really struggle with Rufus’s cryptic cum double defs at times. Is 13d just incredibly weak or a genius clue?
Oh well, I’m away after today for a couple of weeks to try and forget recent events, so Gaufrid will be standing in for me.
Across
Source of I(spiration) in CHEF
IT inside COMPOSE
MODE (fashion) & RATED (criticised)
Cryptic def ref Aladdin et al
Cryptic cum literal definition
Double cum cryptic def, for non UK folks it’s a bit of the North Sea where one of our Kings supposedly lost his crown jewels, sounds painful.
Headless (p)ARSON
Double def
PUTIN* produced
Double def
ODD strange & BALL dance
VI (6) & VI & D (500)
Another double / cryptic def
Cryptic def ref rivers
Cryptic def, ref cup competitions
Down
SCUM floats on liquids, yet another CDD
Cryptic cum double def
A & R.A.F. reversed
Nice. &littish SCOT (a tax) & LAND (come down). I was really trying to avoid thinking about the election, Grrr
[ITS MAD]* involved
TONGUE (language) & TIED (bound)
VI for 6 again?? VI & ANNE reversed. Maybe SEX = SIX could have saved the clue from that.
Sounds like SEED
L (50, number) in FAIR
SING (voice) & LED OUT
Well, um what can you say about this?? Cryptic def, wish I could see some extra clever stuff to do with various meanings of STAY but I can’t.
BROOK (put up with) & LYN
TOO (also) inside PLANS
[GIVEN A]* wrongly ordered
RAT (deserter, early leaver) & TAN (beat, thrash)
VOTE* blocked not convinced by the anagram indicator unless it’s just “?”
IF (poem) in ST(reet)
Double def, bag as in bag a brace of pheasants
Thanks Rufus and flashling
I think that recent Rufuses have been much improved; however this was back to normal. FLAIR and HOTEL were very poor. Best was my LOI, AFAR, for the misleading “well off”.
Thanks to the indefatigable flashling and Rufus.
Hands up anyone who got FREESIA without the aid of crossers. I too was perplexed by HOTEL
Thanks Rufus and flashling
My favourites were 24d and 14a.
Compared to today’s Quiptic this was quite/more enjoyable.
To be fair to Rufus, I guessed “hotel” straight away – of course, I didn’t enter it without “Checking”, though!
Re 16d: I think that the exclamation mark is there to lead us to thinking that is a command. Otherwise, agree that it’s rather weak.
Thank you, flashling.
And is’n’t 31a ‘final’ a bit pathetic? Had a real struggle with the NW corner, but the rest were in old Rufus mode. Thanks to both.
Thank you, flashling.
I’ve come to have a certain respect for this setter, not least for his prodigious output, but this was a bit of a grind, I’ll admit.
Cholecyst @2 not me. Being a bit dim here but I still don’t get it. I see the flag/iris/freesia reference. Is this the national flower of SA, then?
Had no real problems elsewhere except the “block” anagrind which is a bit strained. I recall one can use “blocking” for the initial setting up of the moves in a stage play etc. Perhaps this was what he had in mind.
Nice week all.
…sorry, forgot to say that I liked the bottled spirit GENIE. Made me smile.
William@7
It’s a bit of a stretch, but Freesias are in the Iris family; some irises are “flag irises”.
Yes, a couple of dodgy clues but otherwise very high-quality Rufus, such as BROOKLYN, CEDE and SIFT. Thanks to him and flashling.
Thank you Rufus, and especially thank you flashling for blogging two days running and twice today.
I enjoyed this after struggling with yesterday’s Everyman (but here, of course, the check button helped).
I was fooled for a while by 13d, parsing ‘number’ as AIR.
The FREESIA is native to South Africa (but not the national flower, that is the king protea).
SIFT, GENIE and THE WASH made me smile.
Thanks all
To be fair to muffin he guessed hotel in a cryptic crossword!!
And why freesia, except it fits?
RCW
See mine @9 and Cookie’s @11 for Freesia
Thanks to Rufus and flashling. FREESIA was new to me (I have at best a nodding acquaintance with the iris family) but, from a US perspective, THE WASH does turn up twice in Shakespeare’s King John where “these Lincoln washes” or “the Washes” devour half of the English army.
Pace muffin et al
In what sense is freesia South African?
It grows there!
The Dietes iridioides is a South African indigenous iris.
Thanks Rufus and flashling
Finished quite quickly, but like others thoughts – felt that it was a lapse in standard from his past few puzzles.
Had no problem with the South African flag = FREESIA as it is a native flower from there. I did have a big problem with HOTEL and hope that there was a better take on it than has been discussed !
I don’t see how the famous Rufus’s Brief differs from what must be any Quiptic setter’s brief. I really applaud the sentiment, but it is already catered for, and we could have a proper cryptic puzzle on a Monday, depending on setter of course! 😀
Another Monday, another Rufus. Can’t find much more than that to say about this one – all pretty pleasnt and straightforward except that FREESIA is a little obscure to be clued without wordplay.
Thanks to flashling and Rufus
Nice start to the week. Thanks Rufus. Some veiled references to the election?. SCOTLAND, AFAR, VETO, TAKE STOCK, CEDE, GAVE IN. (perhaps KILL, ODDBALL…Farage?)
Well,I thought FLAIR and FINAL were pretty good. As were TRIBUTARY and CEDE-my LOI-but I do agree that HOTEL was pretty naff. Easier than Rufus has been of late but quite enjoyable nonetheless.
Thanks Rufus.
A flag iris is not a Freesia and vice-versa. A search on Freesias yields their origins in New Zealand however I’ve just found another site that says they can be found growing in East-Africa from Kenya and all the way down to South Africa. A flag iris is not a Freesia though. It’s like giving a clue for heron where the answer is a sparrow. After all they’re both birds. No wonder I didn’t get it…
I couldn’t get away from REGALIA being a type of uniform, so I was stumped by RATTAN, having an A where I needed a T.
31A is also a weak clue. Still, nearly finished in about 20 minutes so almost…
I can’t see the problem with freesia. Freesias are native to South Africa. They are members of the iris family. “Flags” were the common name for irises where I grew up. Seemed pretty straight forward and logical to me.
I think the fact that VETO is an anagram of ‘vote’ is probably just by-the-by. This being Rufus, I’m sure it is just meant to be read as a (semi-)CrypticDef. A veto is a vote to block something, so might be called a ‘block vote’ to pun with the vote-en-masse meaning.
A lot of this seemed fairly functional, but I did like AFAR = ‘well off’, and the ‘early leaver’.
Well done for getting through the blog flashling – I know how much you love a Monday.
wendybea @ 23
The problem is that not all irises (even more so, not all Iridaceae) are “flags”.
Have I got this right? Some irises are flags, and some irises are freesias, but are flags freesias?
As already said this was Rufus back to his worst.
All done and dusted in 10 minutes!!! If another compilers name had been at the top it might have taken 15 minutes but with Rufus one knows what to expect 😉
I don’t understand Freesiagate we’re having on here.
“flag” = “iris” is a very old crossword chestnut and the SOED has the following for freesia ….
“Any of various plants (freq. hybrids) of the southern African genus Freesia, of the iris family”
So obviously a South African flag!!
Thanks to flashling and Rufus
Brendan (NTO) and others
Freesias are members of the family Iridacae.
Flags are members of the family Iridaceae.
But flags and freesias are quite different plants.
It would be comparable to cluing orangutan as human, as they are both in the family Hominidae.
PeterO @ 28
You have summed up the problem accurately, and your example highlights it.
Thanks to flashing and Rufus for a very Quiptic-ish offering.
When I discoverd that a flag was ‘a plant with long, sword-shaped leaves’, I spent some time on Google Images looking for such a freesia, but to no avail. Just a loose clue.
Liked 27a and 19d even though most Lyns are Lynns
l like Rufus’ easy starts to the week. Some setters can leave me fuming – not what I want on a Monday! Not sure why he attracts so much flak. I sometimes think people bolster their own egos by saying how far beneath them his puzzles are.
PeterO @28
Thank you for your very erudite botanical discourse. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether it is accurate though I’m sure it is.
However I only base my idea that “flag” = “iris” on the following:
a) I have seen flag used to indicate iris countless times in the Guardian cryptic.
b) Large parts of the UK use the word “flag” for the iris.
c) The SOED says
flag flag ? noun1. lME.
1 Any of various plants, esp. irises, with sword-shaped leaves; esp. (more fully water flag, yellow flag) a yellow-flowered Eurasian iris, Iris pseudacorus, common in streams and pools. lME.
I can only assume that all these setters, large swathes of the UK population and the Shorter Oxford are wrong and that you are right. 😉
Freddy @30 – quite a lot of them are Lynnes, and back in the 70s the most famous Lynn was a man (Lynn Davies of Superstars fame)…
Thank you Brendan that was my point entirely. In the area grew up “flag” was the colloquial term used for any kind of iris regardless of botanical precision. It seems the same is true in other parts of the UK.
Brendan (NTO) @ 32
@28, I wrote:
Flags are members of the family Iridaceae.
In this I would seem to be in agreement with “all these setters, large swathes of the UK population and the Shorter Oxford”.
Now perhaps you might go on to read the rest of what I wrote.
“However I only base my idea that “flag” = “iris” on the following:…”
According to your logic {Brendan (not that one)}, “scorpion” = “arachnid” and so “Scorpion” would be a suitable clue for “spider”
It’s not the end of the world but it isn’t a good clue. There’s a logic gap. I have no prejudice about Rufus; good or bad, but it would be good if his clues were possible to do by following logic and not having to take a sideways jump in accepting that an armchair is a sofa or leek is an onion. They ain’t, even if they’re related.
And what is more, I wonder if you would accept the clue “Flag” for Gladiolus or even a Crocus. No? I thought not, but all four plants are within the Iris family. They are not synonymous though are they? No, they’re not.
Thanks Rufus and flashling.
I’m afraid my interest in the iris debate was ‘flagging’ by the time I got to the bottom. Most contributors seem to flutter with the breeze and seem to believe they have a firm standing (pause for groans).
For most visitors to this site, Rufus is underwhelming and some of his clueing is quite poor – hotel being the worst example here.
But that misses the point.
Rufus needs to be thought of as Guardian entry-level (everyone needs to start somewhere).
As we ascend our ivory tower, we expect the puzzles to be harder but with some word play to help us get there.
I might have completed this in the time it takes to eat my sandwich, but I nevertheless appreciate the diversity.