Times 25659 – Nice ‘n’ Easy Does it

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A gentle start to the week, even if there are one or two I have yet to parse. 28 minutes.

Across

1 FELLOW-TRAVELLER – term originally used by Trotsky to describe a clandestine supporter of the revolutionary cause. An early RLS book was called ‘Travels with a Donkey in Cévennes’.
9 EXONERATE – ‘clear’; the wordplay is EX + ON + E (last letter of ‘false’) + RATE (‘charge’).
10 GOODS – ‘commodities’; O (first letter of ‘ordered’) in GODS (‘gallery’).
11 SLYEST – not actually that cunning: S+L(YES)T.
12 STANDARD – I rather liked this: a song by Cole Porter or the Gershwins, say; I always felt for the poor sod who had to carry a flag rather than a rifle into battle.
13 WAITER – the allusive reference is to the two fellows who were waiting for Godot.
15 PRESTIGE – anagram* of last letter of [sette]E + GP TRIES.
18 RIPARIAN – ‘living by the river’; the Scotchman is almost always Ian, since not many words have Iain in them; it seems that some people, Americans, amongst them, pronounce the first two syllables of ‘riparian’ as ‘repair’, which accounts for the ‘go, say’ part of the clue, as in ‘I will repair to the bar’. Me, I don’t think I’ve ever said the word…
19 BODEGA – reversal of AGE + DOB. In Crosswordland, plonk is seldom sold from an off-license or ASDA.
21 BROWBEAT – ‘bully’; ROW (‘set-to’) in B [and] B (‘overnight accommodation’) + TEA*. My last in.
23 ESTATE ‘condition in the past’ (ie an archaic usage, think ‘the holy estate of matrimony’); our old friend ‘French art’ = [you] are = es makes an appearance alongside our old friend the TATE gallery.
26 UPPER – ‘superior’; I have just learnt that ‘upping’ is the coralling of swans on the Thames for ID purposes; cygnets are matched with their mum and dad and their beaks nicked with a sharp knife wielded by the ‘upper’.
27 OUTRIGGER – O(U)TRIGGER.
28 DOUBLE-BARRELLED – a somewhat convoluted clue referencing a character in Wodehouse I’d never heard of; the literal is ‘like Fink-Nottle’, with the wordplay breaking down as 7 = lookalike = DOUBLE + BARRELLED (the sort of thing a Wodehouse character might have done, I suppose, in their Bentley). Being of the double-barrelled persuasion myself, I was recently sent a list of cuttings from a Canadian paper’s wedding announcement page; my favourite (some are unsuitable for a family blog like this) celebrated the union of AIKIN-JOHNSON.

Down

1 FRETSAW – FRETS (think one of McT’s instruments) + A[djusted] + W[ith].
2 LOOPY – O in PLOY*.
3 OVERSTEER – the last letter of delinquenT in OVERSEER.
4 TRAP – a horse-drawn conveyance I have heard of…
5 APERTURE – APE + RR (‘Right Reverend’) around TU (‘Trades Unions’) + E (‘note’).
6 ELGIN – EL + GIN; I was going to say you have to have all your marbles to get this one, but on reflection I don’t think I will.
7 LOOKALIKE – a charade of LOOK + AL (Capone) + IKE (Mr President).
8 RESIDUE – RE (Royal Engineers) + SID(U)E. 3-0 away to Villa is a step in the right direction.
14 IMPROMPTU – ‘off the cuff’; ‘I’m prompt!’ + another U. Worth a groan or three.
16 SCOTS PINE – anagram of T[hriving] + IN COPSES.
17 CATACOMB – CAT (clued by ‘queen’, as so often recently) + A[nne] + COMB.
18 REBOUND – double definition, one (doubly) figurative.
20 AVERRED – ‘maintained’; A + REV reversed + RED.
22 BERYL – RY in BEL, which is ten decibels, apparently. If you’re going to name a unit after a bloke, surely you don’t cut him off in his prime. Hertz was lucky, but the same thing happened to Volta. Oh well, win some, lose some.
24 ANGEL – N[ew] in AGE + L for the kindly theatrical philanthropist who now exists only in Crosswordland.
25 STAR – I’m not sure how ‘rats’ equates to nonsense, but I am sure that elucidation is not far away. Thanks to Nonnie in the comment on p. 2 for citing the OED, which has ‘rats’ as an exclamation meaning nonsense.

57 comments on “Times 25659 – Nice ‘n’ Easy Does it”

  1. I thought for a while I might pull off an under 10′ solve, but 27ac slowed me down; the I_G lured me into thinking ‘sling’ might be involved somehow. STAR was my LOI; wouldn’t have got it without the checkers and ‘Polaris’. I remembered F-N, which only meant that I wasted some time trying to remember his characteristics, but luckily the enumeration triggered the right response. I expect tomorrow’s puzzle will be a stinker.
  2. Darn! Scribbled in AGENT at 24dn. Perhaps from the “rep” ending? Perhaps because it crossed with ESTATE? So … a good name for a house-selling company: Estate Angels? (Well, they lie about everything else.)

    That one mistake stuffed up 27ac and 28ac — the latter being essential for a completion. I remembered the Wodehouse character had a “face like a fish” so I was looking for something fishy. (Shootin’ fish in a double barrel?)

    Loved the ref to swan upping at 26ac. Not yer actual scouser practice. The Mersey swans died out long ago from choking on the goldfish. But the Stanley Spencer fan in me came out for a moment. Cookham is the Pool of the south I reckon. Always felt welcome there for some peculiar reason.

    BEL: my bit of DNK-GK today. The “deci-” version being the usual form.

    OK, Ulaca … now you have to tell us your surname. Colmondeley-Smythe?

    Edited at 2013-12-16 02:07 am (UTC)

    1. I can’t resist throwing in a favourite passage from Bill Bryson’s lovely homage to the English of its homeland, The Mother Tongue:

      “The English, it has always seemed to me, have a certain genius for names. A glance through the British edition of Who’s Who throws up a roll call that sounds disarmingly like the characters in a P. G. Wodehouse novel: Lord Fraser of Tullybelton, Captain Allwyne Arthur Compton Farquaharson of Invercauld, Professor Valentine Mayneord, Sir Helenus Milmo, Lord Keith of Kinkel. Many British appellations are of truly heroic proportions, like that of the World War I admiral named Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfulry Plunkett-Ernel-Erle-Drax.

      The best ones go in for a kind of gloriously silly redundancy toward the end, as with Sir Humphrey Dodington Benedict Sherston Sherston-Baker and the truly unbeatable Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraduati Tollemache-Tollemache-de Orellana-Plantagenet-Tollemache-Tollemache, a British army major who died in World War I ….

      In the realms of nomenclature clearly we are dealing here with giants.”

  3. 25 minutes parsing everything as I went. BEL was unknown. I can’t find RATS = nonsense anywhere. I know it as an expression of disdain or disgust used when something is going wrong. 18ac requires an unusual, possibly transatlantic, pronunciation to work so I think it should have started “Go, some say” or preferably should have been clued without a homophone.

    Edited at 2013-12-16 02:26 am (UTC)

    1. It’s good throughout S. Hemisphere English where the schwa prevails for the first vowel in both cases. It’s something I’ve adopted and don’t think much about it now.

      Still … the Oxfords have: |rʌɪˈpɛːrɪən| vs |rɪˈpɛː|

      Edited at 2013-12-16 02:32 am (UTC)

  4. A nice start to the week. I came across RIPARIAN last week in the name of a building in Brisbane, and wondered briefly whether, had it been on the bank of a lake rather than a river whether it would ever have been named Lacustrine Plaza. (That’s how doing crosswords messes with your brain.) I don’t think I have ever had to say it aloud but assumed that it would be “rye-parian”.

    At 28 I had a vague idea that Fink-Nottle’s name was Gussie so I was looking to work that in until I twigged to the reference to 7dn.

  5. Surprisingly had never heard of RIPARIAN. Surprising because now that I know the word I can claim to have had an extremely riparian upbringing.

    I grew up on a river island. Every couple of years, for a week or so, most of the island would disappear and we would actually live on the river.

    1. You obviously never watched ‘Keeping up appearances’ wherein Mrs Hyacinth Bucket was regularly recruiting reluctant diners for a ‘riparian feast’.
  6. 20.32. Straightforward enough. Ripar[ian] as repair is the pronunciation I’d expect as nearer the Latin ripa (bank) but the long i is exactly the sort of change that’s occurring all over the place in broadcasts etc. so I guess as of now either’s correct. I don’t seem to be able to find the blog with the details for the coming Saturday’s centenary meet-up – can anyone give me the name and street in London? Many thanks.
      1. Thanks Sue. I like your gentle five minutes solve – like a gentle 250 mph F1 lap. How you and your ilk straighten out the corners before you hit them is something else. Sat. should be a great gathering.
  7. 10 minutes (probably just over – I was on analogue) with quite a few entered rather cavalierly, so probably also a bit lucky. CATACOMB puzzled me for a while, not because there was anything else it could be, but because once again I forgot that cats may not just look at queens, they are one (is one?).
    Fink-Nottle was the newt fancier – though I don’t think his smallest one was called Tiny.
    I took the soundalike RIPARIAN with a sniff – I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it pronounced on the BBC so it might just as well be that. The use of my first name to answer to Scotsman sort of niggles. I’m not one, and maintain the true Scottish version has the extra I.
    UPPER was a pretty whimsical clue, my favourite of the day. LOOK, AL, IKE! a close second.
    Those of us that do the TLS have discovered that Stevenson’s donkey was called Celestine (TLS 1000). Even he didn’t know that.

    Edited at 2013-12-16 09:40 am (UTC)

    1. You beat me to it on the donkey Z (it still rankles). Celestine Modestine, Ryparian Ripparian – as they say in the old standard, let’s call the whole thing off.
  8. Easy today. I would pronounce it ripparian, so pretty much homophonic with repair, but wouldn’t presume to say what is correct. With pronunciation anything goes anyway these days
  9. Rats In Saki’s short story “Tobermory” (available on line and well worth reading) following Cornelius Appin’s announcement that he has taught a cat to speak,

    “No one said “Rats,” though Clovis’s lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked those rodents of disbelief.”

    Riparian One of those words used regularly used by land-drainage experts but mystifying to the rest of us. When I first heard it from such an expert he pronounced the first syllable “rye”.

    Was looking for something to do with newts at 28.

    Very enjoyable start to the week and at under 20 minutes a rapid solve for me.

  10. No particular hold-ups, just slow typing on an iPad. Angels still exist. This from the webpage of the century-old Society of London Theatre
    “The Angels List, which is administered by Society of London Theatre, puts private individuals who have expressed an interest in investing in London Theatre in touch with Producers who are seeking investors for new productions.

    The Angels List Service is only available to Producers who are members of Society of London Theatre, and potential investors are appraised of the considerable risks that go with investing in commercial theatre before they are accepted for inclusion on the List. For further details please contact Emily McDonald.”

    I recently heard a BBC site where if you type in a word, it will say the BBC-accepted pronounciation of it. I will see whether I can find it. I am backing rye

    1. Oxford backs rye-, howjsay backs ree-, Cambridge says “check your spelling” dictionarydotcom’s American accent backs something that sounds awfully like repair-ian with the accent on the second syllable. It would be great if you could get the casting vote form the BBC!
      1. Cannot trace it Z – it could have been a Radio 4 spoof. However, Chambers is certainly in the rye camp.
  11. Rather old fashioned pedestrian offering that provided little challenge if you’re au fait with Trotsky, Becket and Wodehouse. Interesting trio.
        1. True, but in both those clues you do need to know the references to understand them fully. However at 28 the clue could just have easily have used Colmondeley-Smythe instead of Fink-Nottle.
          1. In fact knowledge of Wodehouse was positively counter-productive in this clue. Like others I wasted some time trying to remember things about Gussie Fink-Nottle.

            1. Well, shame on me, I was familiar with NONE of the references, and got DOUBLE-BARRELLED thinking F-N was some made up name, FELLOW-TRAVELLER as it fit the crossers (didn’t know the Sevenson ref, either), and had ‘writer’ for WAITER as I was thinking of Lolita!
  12. 17m. Pretty gentle start to the week, although for me the bottom half was much tougher than the top.
    I’ve no idea how to pronounce RIPARIAN, but it appeared very recently in Azed so it came to mind easily.
    I had no clue about Stevenson’s donkey, and only the vaguest memory that FELLOW TRAVELLER had some sort of left-wing connotation, but nothing else was going to fit those checkers. I also didn’t know anything about ELGIN beyond the Earl and his marbles.
  13. 10 mins and a top-to-bottom solve that would have been quicker but, like vinyl1, I hesitated a few times before entering a particular answer because it seemed too easy. Like a few of you STAR was my LOI from the definition alone.
  14. 15m. I knew of Fink-Nottle, but didn’t remember anything about him, so got 28a with help of checkers & enumeration, thinking he might have wield such a no. 7 shotgun.
    ‘rats’ didn’t give me pause as I’d come across the interjection used in that sense before.
    BERYL: although Bell was cut short, Ampere wasn’t – though he is informally. Farad(ay) gets it both ways: is he the only person to have had two different units named for him?
  15. 7:17, without full understanding – at the risk of simply echoing everything above, I am in the RYEPARIAN camp, and found RATS=nonsense a little puzzling. I actually knew too much about Gussie Fink-Nottle, as I was looking for some reference to newts which never appeared.
  16. twenty minute stroll, nothing difficult or unknown here, see above for comment on famous usage of RIPARIAN.
  17. One missing today (Estate) – must remember the ‘art = you’ trick – and several question marks (Fellow-Traveller, Riparian, Waiter and Rebound). Thanks ulaca for clearing all those up.
    I’m sure Riparian has cropped up in a Times puzzle before (and I didn’t get it then) so when I read ‘living by the river’ and saw the Ian bit I put it straight in.

  18. … as I put in writer at 13ac. Lots went in without fu, so many thanks for shedding light on APERTURE (didn’t know RR), FELLOW-TRAVELLAR (not familiar with the lit ref), ESTATE and others.
  19. 12:23 .. and another one who spent a couple of minutes on LOI STAR, which is just the sort of clue that often trips me up.

    COD RIPARIAN

  20. 15 mins which is definitely barrelling for me. My degree was in Latin so I too favour rip rather than ripe.
  21. The first twelve took about 20 minutes on my town commute, and the remainder about 5 coming back! The subconscious was clearly working hard throughout the day … A nice start to the week with nods to Wodehouse, Becket and RLS. Like others, at 28ac I was going through variations on Gussie, Augustus, newts, and wondering what car he drove, when the penny dropped.

    A somewhat LOOPY crossword, maybe not of the SLYEST. Nice surfaces for the French art gallery and the U-boat interceptor, though. Never heard the word RIPARIAN spoken by anyone of any class, region or educational background – perhaps it’s a secret shibboleth for a coterie of post-Mitford true believers …

  22. I enjoyed the discussion on riparian and was reminded of the Irish schoolboy who asked the master whether “either” was pronounced “eye-ther” or “ee-ther”. The reply was ” Ay( as in say)-ther will do.”

    jfr

  23. 30m but actually fully completed and all correct. So must have been easy, right? Thanks for blog as some where bunged in here without full understanding.
  24. Sorry to be late,. Easyish puzzle, and I liked OUTRIGGER. We (or at least I) say ‘rye-parian’, so that one left me a bit confused, but no real problem. Regards.
  25. A clean sweep in 6:12 for me, slowed at the start by trying to fit FRETTED into 1dn (and briefly by RIPARIAN, which I pronounce the way given in all the English English dictionaries I have to hand). A nice straightforward start to the week.
  26. Is there any easy way of recognising you, crypticsue? (I didn’t see anyone at the Championship who looked like a basket to flowers.)
    1. I’ll make sure I introduce myself to you on Saturday and explain the ‘bunch of flowers’ too.
  27. About 40min, but the last 10 were spent trying to parse “ESTATE” and failing to make it click.

    As I’m in a grumpy mood, I’ll also quibble about “STAR” – “rats” doesn’t mean “nonsense”, however you slice it, so this one was written in despite, rather than because of the clue. On the plus side, there was a refreshing lack of obscure words, apart from 6d (the Scots have an administrative centre? Who knew?).

    Still, the advantage of being grumpy is that you get to take it out on the customers (sorry, patients. No – wait – they’re stakeholders this week). To be fair, today’s lot mostly brought it on themselves. Not one interesting, challenging or even amusing injury between the lot of them. People just don’t make the bloody effort these days.

    And since the subject of English names came up (and since, as I may have mentioned, I am in a very, very grumpy mood), why don’t we have a law in this country regarding permissible names for children? I believe they have such a law in France (although it inexplicably allows “Kevin”). Today, I had a Jade, a Jadenné (no, seriously) and a Chantelle. Chantelle is all well and good as a name, but not when it’s bracketed by “Oi!” and “come back ‘ere now or else.” Or else what? Once you’ve named a Norfolk girl “Chantelle”, what threats are left?

    I do sometimes wonder whether A&E oughtn’t to be giving natural selection a helping hand.

    1. The OED and GB Shaw disagree.

      Expressing frustration, disappointment, or annoyance; ‘drat’, ‘blast’; (also) expressing incredulity or disagreement; ‘rubbish’, ‘nonsense’.

      1914 G. B. Shaw Misalliance 23 Mrs. Tarleton. Dont boast, John. Dont tempt Providence. Tarleton. Rats! You dont understand Providence. Providence likes to be tempted.

      2003 C. Birch Turn again Home ix. 122 ‘I don’t feel like going out,’ Nell said. ‘It’s ruined everything.’ ‘Rats,’ said Kitty briskly. ‘Do you good to get out.’

    2. People just don’t make the “bloody” effort these days.
      Intentional double-entendre?

      For some interesting names watch American football (gridiron):
      Knowshon Moreno
      Marshawn Lynch
      Lesean (L’ Irish Sean) McCoy and his team-mate
      Desean (D’ Irish Sean) Jackson
      LeGarrette Blount
      Jacquizz Rogers
      BenJarvus Green-Ellis
      Arian Foster
      Jermichael Finley
      Joique Bell
      Marcedes Lewis
      Le’Veon Bell
      Tashard choice
      Knile Davis ad infinitum

  28. I’m fairly sure I first encountered it 50-ish years ago when watching children’s TV, and “Rag, Tag and Bobtail” was “a riparian tale”.

    I failed to parse it, but having decided “go” was Rest In Peace”, and the name was Ian, simply said “ooh” to the “ar”.

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