Guardian 27,341 – Rufus

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A very Rufus-y Rufus today, with more than half the clues (17 ouf of 28) being double or cryptic defintions, or a kind of combination of the two. Personally I’d prefer a bit more variety, but chacun à son goût. Thanks to Rufus.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. CONSOMMÉ NCO arranged battle course (8)
NCO* + SOMME (WW1 battle)
5. GAMBLE Speculation is in the wind about doctor (6)
MB (doctor) in GALE
9. PROVERBS More than one saw book of the Old Testament (8)
Double definition – well, just about, as the OT book is a collectoin of “saws”
10. STONED Doesn’t fancy being drunk (6)
DOESNT*
12. LEECH A sucker for old-fashioned treatment (5)
Cryptic definition
13. LATE-COMER It’s clear to me, anyway, one will miss a deadline (4-5)
(CLEAR TO ME)*
14. JUMPS ON BOARD What a game knight does when his coach is leaving? (5,2,5)
Definition + hint – a knight “jumps” on the chessboard
18. IN THE LONG RUN Where a marathon runner may eventually succeed? (2,3,4,3)
Cryptic/double definition
21. SQUATTERS Down-at-heel illegal tenants (9)
Hint + definition – someone squatting is literally down on his heels
23. PHASE Spell “shape” incorrectly (5)
SHAPE*
24. OXTAIL End of the beef soup? (6)
Another “just about” double definition (using “beef” to mean an ox)
25. ENGINEER Arrange for a mechanic (8)
Double definition
26. NOD OFF Small number remove clothing and fall asleep (3,3)
NO + DOFF
27. EXOTERIC It’s suitable in public (8)
I don’t think I’ve ever come across this word before: it’s the opposite of “esoteric”. Chambers gives “intelligible to the uninitiated”, so suitable for telling to the public, I suppose
Down
1. CUPOLA Breaking up coal for the furnace (6)
(UP COAL)* – cupola is more commonly used to mean part of a dome, but it can also be “a furnace used in iron foundries”
2. NOOSED Caught — so done for it (6)
(SO DONE)*
3. OPEN HOUSE It offers hospitality to all, but it’s cold in winter (4,5)
Double definition – a house would get cold if left open in winter
4. MOBILE PHONES Communications equipment used in Alabama? (6,6)
Extended definition, referring to the city of Mobile, Alabama
6. ATTIC Greek for “upper room” (5)
Double definition – the Greek one is “relating to Athens”
7. BONE MEAL What a dogs likes with food is fertiliser (4,4)
Double definition, with a typo of “dogs” for “dog”
8. ELDORADO Adore old novel featuring a place of wealth and opportunity (2,6)
(ADORE OLD)*
11. STRONG AS AN OX A powerful comparison (6,2,2,2)
Cryptic definition
15. BLUEPRINT Plan to produce an indecent picture (9)
BLUE (indecent) + PRINT
16. DIES DOWN Dicky disowned, fades away (4,4)
DISOWNED*
17. STRUTTED Took vain steps, having support (8)
Double definition
19. CAREER Rush to find a vocation (6)
Double definition
20. METRIC There’s a point in this system (6)
Cryptic definition – measurements in the Metric system may have a decimal point
22. THIEF What he does is appropriate (5)
Cryptic definition (with “appropriate” as a verb)

42 comments on “Guardian 27,341 – Rufus”

  2. Thanks Rufus and Andrew.

    Good to come back to a Rufus as I am rusty after a month away from all things crossword while travelling in the US.

    I had not heard of 1d CUPOLA used in this sense, but that was all the anagram could be. I had to look up my guess of EXOTERIC at 27a as, like Andrew, I had only heard of esoteric and not this antonym.

    I quite liked 9a PROVERBS and 12a LEECH.

    The use of two oxen in one puzzle at 24a and 11d was probably not intentional on Rufus’ part, methinks?

  3. A good Rufus, I thought – particularly CONSOMME, STONED and NOOSED (which took a while). Thanks to Rufus and Andrew.

  5. A thought: as EXOTERIC is an unfamiliar word, would it have been fairer if there were some wordplay that led to it? As the clue stands, it was “guess a word that fits, then see if it has the right meaning”.

  6. 27 ac EXOTERIC: is this the first time Rufus has included a word which hardly any of the folk who inhabit this site have heard of?

    Thanks Rufus and Andrew.

  7. Thanks, Andrew.

    I, too, liked CONSOMMÉ and PROVERBS – I read it as a cryptic rather than double definition.

    Julie, it’s really good to see you back. Some of us were saying in York on Saturday that we hadn’t heard from you for a while and hoped you were OK.

    Thanks to Rufus for a pleasant puzzle.

  8. Enjoyed this one – EXOTERIC was new to me, THIEF was very neat (though he must have used it before) and CONSOMME was last in. A pleasant start to the week.

    Thanks to Rufus and Andrew

  9. Thank you Andrew.

    Re CUPOLA, I think the original furnace used to have a sort of domed flue outlet and that may be the link to the architectural feature.

    Not sure I was aware of the antonym to ESOTERIC but thanks to Rufus for the nudge in that direction. That’s one of my favourite things about crosswords.

    Nice week, all.

  10. cholecyst @6 – he has certainly caught me out a few times with some of his naval slang. The specific usage of CUPOLA was unfamiliar to me too.

  11. A nice fairly gentle start to the week. CONSOMME was very good. (Some day I’ll have to figure out how to do an acute accent on here.)

    I agree with muffin that some additional wordplay would have been appropriate for EXOTERIC: something like “What’s strange about the Queen” would seem to suggest itself. As it stands the clue doesn’t seem very cryptic.

  14. Didn’t know EXOTERIC either, but my objection is that the clue is barely cryptic, if at all.
    Also 20d is poor. What system of measurement does *not* use the decimal point?

  15. Julie in Australia: in 1 down “copula” is another anagram of “up coal”.
    I agree with the above comments about “exoteric”.
    Otherwise an enjoyable puzzle. Thank you.

  16. poc @14 Lucky fellow, you’re obviously significantly younger than me. All my early education used the old imperial system such as; 6ft 3¾” 10yd 2ft 6¼”, 12 st 10lb 3½oz. Not a dot in sight.

  17. [Thank you, Eileen, for your kind words and for noting my absence.
    Thank you too, Leo Pilkington@15, for that suggestion of another possible anagram for 1d, COPULA, a word that did not occur to me but which then rang a bell when you posted, as something to do with grammar or linguistics?]

  18. Although Rufus is easy, I am always amazed at the cleverness of many of his clues.

    Surprised at the comments regarding EXOTERIC. Perhaps my interest in eastern religions makes it familiar.

  19. Thanks Rufus; the plethora of cryptic descriptions left me a bit stuck in the SE corner for a while.

    Thanks Andrew; another who has never heard of EXOTERIC, more useful than esoteric in Scrabble!

    I liked the game knight who JUMPS ON BOARD.

  22. Delfini @20
    From Chambers:
    vocation – one’s occupation, business, or profession
    career – one’s profession or occupation

  23. Thanks to Rufus and Andrew. Ditto for me on EXOTERIC and CUPOLA – and my spell-checker rejects the former. Enjoyable.

  24. I’m normally not a great fan of cryptic and double definitions and there are a lot of these here (as Andrew pointed out). Notwithstanding that, I enjoyed the puzzle; so thanks to Rufus (and to Andrew for the excellent blog). 4d and 15d raised smiles and, like Robi@19, I enjoyed 14a.

    Two minor quibbles:

    1. I don’t object to the inclusion of unusual words (helps to increase my vocabulary!), particularly if there is a lovely clue that the setter can’t resist. However, the clue for “exoteric” was rather weak (in my opinion) and so the inclusion of that particular word wasn’t justified in that way.

    2. This is another Monday where the Quiptic was (again, in my opinion) significantly harder than the cryptic. Of course, that’s not a major problem, but it would be nice to get a little more consistency in the relative difficulties of the two puzzles (one could argue that the main issue is often with the Quiptic, although the convention of having an easier Cryptic on Mondays compounds the problem).

    Grumbling apart, a fun start to the day!

  25. I suppose that EXOTERIC is the more ESOTERIC of the two words, but after Saturday’s Prize it didn’t take a lot of effort for it to come to mind!

  26. For a puzzle with such a preponderance of cd/dd clues, this went reasonably smoothly for me. Indeed, my LOI – not alone in this it seems – was the deeply conventional, and very clever, CONSOMMÉ.

  27. Rather liked this one. CUPOLA=furnace was new to me, as was EXOTERIC, which I thought the weakest clue. A quick solve but good fun.
    Thanks Rufus.

  28. @14 I agree about metric. It’s true that imperial generally uses fractions rather than a decimal point, but the point is a feature of decimal numbers not the metric system as such. Unlike imperial, you can write pretty much any quantity in a convenient way without a decimal point/fraction e.g. 2.13Km = 2,130m

  29. Thanks both.
    Exoteric came to mind because I once spent several moments painfully transliterating the signs under the two slots on a Greek post box. I think they were ‘exotica’ and ‘esoterica’, or something like that. Mechanics are not engineers in my lexicon.

  30. Am I the only one who didn’t get on with Consomme? That’s not a course. Soup is the course. Consomme is a type of soup. I’m not usually one to nit-pick – but this just seems to invite chaos. “Course” could be used for everything from “broth” to “pie” if categories of food are fine, or getting even more specific, to “prawn cocktail” and “tiramisu”, since once is clearly a starter and the other a dessert.

  31. Enjoyable Monday fare, and about all I can take after York. I got a kick out of OXTAIL. I took too long trying to guess what exactly the game knight does on board (moves, takes, leaps, jumps).

    I also liked NOD OFF. One of those phrases that is just funny if you spend too long looking at it.

    Many thanks Rufus and Andrew.

  32. I found this a bit more difficult than some of Rufus’s more recent puzzles. The word EXOTERIC, my LOI, was (very) vaguely familiar to me, and it fit with the crossers, but like several others above (first muffin @5 I think) I was hoping to see some wordplay in the clue that could have offered stronger confirmation of the answer. I noted two other quibbles with the clueing: first, as noted by Tyngewick @29, I thought ENGINEER was not a very apt synonym for mechanic (but I have not checked the dictionary definitions of these words since completing the puzzle, so I acknowledge that there could be another context, perhaps in military or railroading terms, in which these words are acceptably synonymous); second, IN THE LONG RUN had part of the answer (or at least a form of that word), “runner”, in the clue. “Marathoner” would have been a better choice, I think. On the other hand, I thought there were several nice clues with elegant surfaces, chief among these, for me, being STONED, LATECOMER, and BLUEPRINT. Thanks to Rufus, Andrew and other commenters.

  33. DaveMc @32 (& Tyngewick @29)
    “I thought ENGINEER was not a very apt synonym for mechanic (but I have not checked the dictionary definitions …”

    I have checked the dictionaries, they seem synonymous to me:

    Collins
    mechanic – A person skilled in maintaining or operating machinery, motors, etc
    engineer – A mechanic; person who repairs or services machines

    ODE
    mechanic – A skilled worker who repairs and maintains vehicle engines and other machinery
    engineer – A person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or structures.

    Chambers
    mechanic – A skilled worker, esp one specializing in making and repairing machinery
    engineer – Someone who designs or makes, or puts to practical use, engines or machinery of any type, including electrical

  34. Gaufrid @33
    Thanks for the dictionary references. I am persuaded!! As is often the case, dictionaries memorialize (sometimes prescriptively, sometimes descriptively) definitions that often range beyond — sometimes well beyond — one’s most familiar understandings of the meanings of familiar words. CUPOLA in today’s puzzle was another great example of this. Like many others, I was familiar with the architectural definition of this word, but not at all with the “furnace” meaning.

  35. Thanks Andrew and Rufus

    I agree with poc@14 and Howard@28, pace William@16: manipulating such measurements usually required a ready reckoner. Not so the decimal system.

    Jim@11 Perhaps easier than Eileen’s system is to type “consomme” into Word and then copy and paste the spell check corrected “Consommé”

    I also agree with the various commentators about EXOTERIC being a straight definition (though I had never heard of it)

  36. Indeed, dictionaries notwithstanding, if engineer were synonymous with mechanic the degree discipline of Mechanical Engineering would be tautological.
    Not taken with the metric system having the monopoly of decimal points either – how were inches and thousandths of an inch indicated?

  37. Good to see you back JinA and I hope you enjoyed your US travels and avoided the Donald.
    I rattled through this and ground to a halt in the SE corner until Mrs W said “surely it’s strong as an ox” which it obviously was! The rest went in apart from the previously unknown 27a (thanks for today’s new word Rufus) and finally METRIC by a process of elimination.
    Thanks to Andrew for the blog.

  38. [Thank you, WhiteKing, for your welcome back. Just to say that it was okay to mention “the Donald” in some places, but I was much more wary and avoided politics in Atlanta and Nashville – despite visiting Sweet Auburn to pay homage to Rev Martin Luther King Jnr and his human rights struggles in the former place. Thought it wise not to be controversial in 2017 as I got the strong impression that some folk are not afraid to use their guns in Georgia and Tennessee. I judged it best to stick to enjoying country music in the latter state. I am intending to revisit the cryptics and fora I have missed in the last month, although that may prove too time-consuming and backward-looking in the wash-up, so I’ll have to see how I go. Nevertheless, good to be back!]

  39. Gonzo @36. For example, 5 inches is 5″, 2 feet 5 inches is 2’5″ and measurements below one inch (including thousandths) were commonly written as fractions rather than decimals. Perhaps purists would be happier if the 20ac clue was rephrased as ‘there must be some point to this system’ or something similar.

  40. Thanks to Rufus and Andrew (especially for saving me the small chore of looking up EXOTERIC).

    Is anyone else amused by EXOTERIC being not very exoteric at all? A sort of negative @lit perhaps.

    I enjoyed SQUATTERS.

  41. Forgot to mention that Rufus has just overtaken Araucaria as the setter with most clues in the Guardian archive – he is still 21 puzzles behind but his 21923 clues have just surpassed Araucaria’s 21915 (note that these calculations ignore “See n” references for components of multi-light clues).

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