Guardian Cryptic 27,017 by Rufus

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It’s Monday, so it’s Rufus…

A Typical Rufus puzzle.  His supporters will point to the good clues like 25ac, 1dn, 4dn and 15dn, but as I have already declared, I am not a fan.

Many of his cryptic definitions are barely cryptic, and this applies today to 1ac, 9ac, 18ac, and especially to 27ac, where I can’t even see an attempt to make the clue cryptic.

The double definitions at 23ac and 4dn weren’t terribly imaginative either.

Sorry, Rufus, but I just want a bit more wordplay from my crosswords.

Across
1 HOSEPIPE It may be played on the lawn (8)
  Cryptic (?) definition
5 STAFFA Office workers go to a Scottish island (6)
  STAFF + A
9 INSURERS They help those wishing to take cover (8)
  Cryptic definition
10 CEASES Stops some injustice as essentially unfair (6)
  Hidden in “injustiCE AS ESsentially”
12 DRIVE Approach shown by a forceful person (5)
  Double definition: for the first one, think golf.
13 EMANATION Issue half of them before a race (9)
  (th)EM + A NATION
14 CERTAIN DEATH Threaten with acid? It may result in inevitable fatality (7,5)
  *(threaten acid)
18 BATTERINGRAM Gatecrasher? (9,3)
  (not terribly) cryptic definition
21 ESTRANGES Greatness, unfortun­ately, makes enemies (9)
  *(greatness)
23 EQUAL Peer in uniform (5)
  Double definition
24 THESIS Revising his set subject (6)
  *(his set)
25 BASELINE Serving men and women operate from behind it (8)
  Think tennis
26 EASEUP Relax and pause going round about the Orient (4,2)
  *(pause) around E
27 ODYSSEUS Greek hero who had an epic journey to get home (8)
  A general knowledge clue pretending to be cryptic?
Down
1 HAIRDO Top style musical party (6)
  HAIR (“musical”) + DO
2 SISKIN Bird lives in hide (6)
  IS in SKIN
3 PERSEVERE Remain by ascetic (9)
  PER (“by”) + SEVERE (“ascetic”)
4 PURSE STRINGS Financial controller’s holdings (5,7)
  One controlling finances would hold the purse strings.
6 THETA The thanks one gets from a Greek character (5)
  THE + TA
7 FESTIVAL VAT files go astray? Time for celebration! (8)
  *(vat files)
8 ABSINTHE Drink? Ben has it as a cocktail (8)
  *(ben has it)
11 MAKING A STAND Being opposed to building seats for spectators? (6,1,5)
  Double definition
15 DIAMETERS The longest chords in non-musical circles? (9)
  In geometry, the longest chord in any circle is the diameter.
16 ABSENTEE Though he’s not there, he’s proverbially conspicuous! (8)
  As in “conspicuous by his absence”
17 STUTTERS Good people to have around, say, with speech defects (8)
  STS. (saints, therefore “good people”) around UTTER
19 FUTILE It’s useless turning it into a form of fuel (6)
  <+IT in *(fuel)
20 ELDERS Yet they may be quite young trees! (6)
 
22 ADIEU Goodbye for new aide to union leader (5)
  *(aide) + U(nion)

*anagram

30 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,017 by Rufus”

  1. Thanks, Loonapick and Rufus.
    ODYSSEUS was just plain weird – almost like he took a clue from his standard crossword pile by mistake. But, unlike Loonapick, I enjoyed HOSEPIPE for the play on ‘play’. Favourite clue today was BASELINE – a surprise as I generally dont like the cds so much.

  2. Thanks Rufus and loonapick

    Rufus at his most irritating again, with several of the cryptic definitions needing a “Check”, with the thought “Can it really be that?”. HOSEPIPE was just daft – yes, it “may” be played on a lawn, but, speaking as a gardener, that’s where I’m least likely to use it, and anyway I would attach a sprinkler. DRIVE is wrong in the golf context too – golfers use “approach” to refer to their second (hopefully!) shots rather than their first (their “drive”).

    My first thought for ODYSSEUS was ARGONAUT, in fact.

    Nice to see something other than “Sailors in the drink” for ABSINTHE, and the clue for DIAMETERS was great.

  5. Thanks, Loonapick.

    I like the guy – he has a different take on the crossword and that difference is the essence of The Graun offering which others don’t have in quite the same way.

    I understand fully your comment about HOSEPIPE but that was one of the clues I ticked! Also DIAMETERS & BASELINE.

    Agree about ODYSSEUS…rather odd.

    Vive la difference, say I, Rufus deserves a medal.

    Nice week, all.

  6. In 10 Across, what purpose does the word “unfair” serve? Is it some kind of meta-reference to the fact that the inclusion of a redundant word makes the clue itself unfair?

  7. Thanks loonapick and Rufus.

    I agree with muffin and Phil Wood on the first definition of drive. I can assure you that when I play golf my approach shot comes many strokes after my drive from the tee.

  8. Thanks for the comments re DRIVE. I dithered between golf and approach to the house, and fell in favour of golf, although I can see that I chose the wrong option.

  9. Like William @ 5, I’m happy with Rufus’s unusual approach once a week. Favourites were HOSEPIPE, ABSENTEE, BASELINE and HAIRDO. Thanks to Rufus and Loonapick.

  10. Thanks Rufus and loonapick.

    Yes, the cds can be a bit infuriating; I thought of shelters for 9. However, it is a CROSSword and I finished it, so that’s OK.

    I did like HOSEPIPE, which I thought was sufficiently cryptic to be my LOI.

  11. Thank you Rufus and loonapick.

    I was stuck on 1a for quite a while, could not get “croquet” out of my mind, and I do not use a sprinkler. I also liked the clues for INSURERS, ESTRANGES, BASELINE, HAIRDO, PURSE STRINGS, DIAMETERS, ABSENTEE and ELDERS, of which there is one outside the window were I am sitting which shades the study beautifully in summer and lets the sun in in winter.

  13. Thanks to Rufus and loonapick. I too wondered about several of the cds (could BATTERING RAMS be right?), but I remembered that today is Monday so … I did think of DRIVE as an approach to a house. No complaints from me.

  14. Raj @6 — the extra word on the end of the clue for 10ac is a distraction to make the hidden solution a bit harder to spot. ‘Meta-reference’ is an interesting way of describing this.

  16. boblblaw
    A hosepipe can be played both literally and metaphorically; I expect Rufus was thinking of the latter – wafting it around to spread the water out. However if you put a suitable mouthpeice in a length of hosepipe (trombone, for example) and blow it, “musical” notes can be produced.

  17. I thought HOSEPIPE as soon as I opened the paper and,initially, thought it
    couldn’t be but later-not much later-I thought it rather good. I liked
    HAIR DO too.
    I think you either like Rufus or you don’t- a bit like Marmite!
    Thanks Rufus.

  19. I look forward to the Rufus puzzles. At least I can complete them pretty consistently. Thanks Loonapick and Rufus!

  20. Not quite as easy as last Monday – PERSEVERE took me a while to see, mostly because I was thinking of more specific ascetics.

    Thanks to Rufus and loonapick

  21. I’m not a big Rufus fan myself, but I do them so can’t really complain! I think 27a may just have been a failed attempt at vernacular that, to we rarified few, fell flat because we’re all such classically trained smarty pants(s?).

    I jest, of course. But read it like you might imagine a 20 year old university lad saying it, and maybe you’ll see how it could have been cryptic.

  22. In defence of Rufus, for those of us who aren’t as experienced/skilled, we at least feel we have a chance…I sometimes come on here when I have drawn a near blank and a) Read remarks about how fun a crossword was that you’d knocked out before breakfast and b) come to the conclusion with some clues that, even having read the parsing, if the exact same clue came up again, I wouldn’t get it right. I have come to the conclusion that there is such a heavy shorthand/knowledge requirement to do the tougher ones that in my 40s I’ve simply left it too late to acquire all the knowledge needed! Except for Rufus and one or two others on a good day…

  23. 27ac might have been improved by ‘He’ instead of ‘Greek hero who’, but I’m a big fan of Rufus and the way his witty cryptic definitions can open up a grid. DIAMETERS and BASELINE both lovely clues.

  24. Love Rufus actually! I find him very refreshing and witty. I prefer his clean lines and brevity, whereas the convoluted nonsense from Paul for instance, in the recent prize crossword:
    “14 One left to plug author, right away one’s bored (3,4)
    OIL WELL
    I [one] + L [left] in [to plug] [George] O[r]WELL [author] minus r [right away]”
    leaves me absolutely cold and utterly defeated.

  25. Tony @24
    Not a good idea to give answers to other puzzles on a thread – and particularly not a live Prize puzzle!

  26. Sorry – it’s not a live one – that was Picaroon. The principle remains, though. Readers might “accidentally” see answers to puzzles that they haven’t yet attempted.

  27. Usual Rufus fare. (Yawn)

    He has of course invented a new type of clue which could be called a “Cryptic definition complement”. In this he takes a perfectly straightforward non-cryptic definition which unequivocally leads to the correct answer. Solvers expect the clues in a cryptic puzzle to actually be of the cryptic variety so look for cryptic answers.

    The “joke” is that of course there are possible cryptic answers to the clue which would make the clue a CD but all of these are of course incorrect. So in fact the clue is a CD for the set of incorrect answers! It’s a scream as all the oiks actually trying to solve the clue come up with lots of possibilities that Rufus hasn’t even bothered thinking of and they’re all wrong. (Tee hee!!)

    ROFL

  28. I’m usually a fan of Rufus for the reasons given by Tony@24 but unfortunately not this one.
    MAKING A STAND at 11d was new to me. I only know TAKING A STAND in the sense of “being opposed”.

  29. Pino @ 28

    I agree with your misgiving. Further, you can take a stand in favour of something. To my mind, the clue doesn’t really work, despite being readily solvable.

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