Times 26965 – Swimming the Lucinda River with Joie de Vivre

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A very Mondayesque puzzle indeed, which I romped through in 21 minutes, so we may expect the speedsters to be comfortably sub-5. Sometimes a puzzle is like a London bus – you know what I mean: you wait ages for a word to come along and then it just can’t stop coming. SPOILER ALERT!

That word today is the girl’s name (Inés in Spanish, Inês in Portuguese, Inez in Murcan), which I had never heard of until it popped up recently, generating, as these things so often do, as much discussion about its spelling (if it’s not spelling, it’s pronunciation) as about its intrinsic value. And what a nice intrinsic value it possesses, being derived from the Greek word hagnē (meaning chaste), which gives us Agnes. Agnes of God, indeed.

For me, the third bus trundled along last week, when I watched a truly magnificent film, which was made in 1966 and released in 1968, called The Swimmer. Parable, fairy-tale, dream, nightmare, reflection on the male menopause, who can tell?, but this adaptation of a short story published in The New Yorker deserves its cult status, and contains quite possibly, as Roger Ebert contends, the best work Burt Lancaster ever did.

¡Manos a la obra!

ACROSS

1 Cleric — a Roman Catholic — bound to admit mistake (10)
ARCHBISHOP – BISH in A RC HOP
6 Daughter is wanting hot food (4)
DISH – D IS H
9 Wild river crossed by this writer’s companion (10)
IMMODERATE – ODER in I’M MATE
10 Object of worship in Delhi or Lahore principally (4)
IDOL – initial letters of those middle words
12 Tampers with some marks on exam paper? Nonsense (12)
FIDDLESTICKS -FIDDLES TICKS
15 Writer knocked back drink after drink, going round Australia (5,4)
EMILE ZOLA – ALE and LIME around OZ, all reversed; I have to confess I’ve never read a word of this chap’s output, but he acquitted himself well in the Dreyfuss business, writing the pamphlet ‘J’Accuse’.
17 Affected Florentine painter I ignored (3,2)
GOT TO – G[i]OTTO
18 Pan for cook (5)
ROAST – Double definition (DD)
19 Sailing vessel‘s crew stole through empty street (9)
STEAMBOAT – TEAM BOA in S[tree]T; it’s a bit counter-intuitive to describe a steamboat as a sailing vessel, but it is , in the sense that it ‘moves over the sea’ (or ‘sails’).
20 Resourceful burglar with crowbar might? (12)
ENTERPRISING – (a burglar) ENTERS PRISING (the door open)
24 Band‘s big hit (not the second) (4)
SASH – S[m]ASH
25 Noting a royal figure with duke visiting urban area (6,4)
TAKING DOWN – A KING D (duke) in TOWN
26 American entering Malayan kingdom (4)
YANK – hidden
27 Form of SATs bandied about in these? (10)
STAFFROOMS – anagram * of FORM OF SATS and an all-in-one

DOWN

1 Line of cabs, first one leaving (4)
AXIS – [t]AXIS
2 Holiday site with parking close to river (4)
CAMP – CAM (piffling ‘river’ at the other place) P
3 Base politician stifling newspaper account of late (7,5)
BEDTIME STORY – TIMES in BED (base) TORY (politician)
4 Divided among several people, except for a small amount (5)
SHRED – SH[a]RED
5 Like Nana, perhaps, he got name changed (2,3,4)
ON THE GAME – HE GOT NAME*; Nana, the eponymous heroine of one of Zola’s best known books, was a lady of the night.
7 In a manner of speaking, concealing a piece of evidence (10)
INDICATION – A in IN (in) DICTION (a manner of speaking)
8 Presents lectures (5,5)
HOLDS FORTH – DD
11 Male celebrity upset by a German worker behind the scenes (5,7)
STAGE MANAGER – STAG (male) EMAN (NAME reversed – ‘upset’) A GER
13 Boldly rush around like Van Gogh? (10)
FEARLESSLY – EARLESS in FLY; as a matter of fact, Van Gogh was only partially earless.
14 Brexit extremists clashing with Parisian supporting both sides (10)
BIPARTISAN – BT (B[rexi]T) PARISIAN*
16 Attentive valet supports old bachelor (9)
OBSERVANT – SERVANT after O B
21 Pursuing last of scullers, row hard (5)
STIFF – TIFF after [sculler]S
22 Leading Motown duo on revolutionary sort of recording (4)
MONO – MO[town] ON reversed
23 Spanish woman tucks in, skipping starter (4)
INES – [d]INES

55 comments on “Times 26965 – Swimming the Lucinda River with Joie de Vivre”

  1. My reading of Zola bears comparison with U’s, but I did know that he wrote ‘Nana’. This did me no good, however, as I could only think of the Darlings’ dog, not to mention not knowing what ON THE GAME meant. But with the anagrist and the enumeration, it seemed inevitable.
  2. … and virtually all parsed, so not too hard. I didn’t get the Nana reference, but assumed it was a character I didn’t know – the link to Zola makes sense. I wondered if I was missing something in 8d, but it seems not.

    Thanks, U, for the blog – erudite as always. Did you mean NAME upset in 11d?

    Thanks also to the setter for a nice Monday workout.

  3. Van Gogh merely chopped off a big piece of one earLOBE.
    Nice to see both Zola and his Nana here.
  4. 27 minutes for this one. Like others, I had no idea about Nana’s relevance to ON THE GAME. I thought INES had come up very recently and was thankful for that or I wouldn’t have known her, but on checking, it was INEZ who came up on February 3rd. But on 4 May 2016 we had “Spanish woman tucks in, skipping starter (4)” cf today’s clue!

    Edited at 2018-02-19 05:33 am (UTC)

  5. I’m also glad INES came up recently, as it was my LOI and eventually I tried it and worked backward to confirm, coming in in 23 minutes, a personal best (hurrah!)

    I too missed the Zola reference while parsing, but not much else, I think. FOI 1a ARCHBISHOP, enjoyed 20a ENTERPRISING.

    Not seen The Swimmer, but read the story on a novel-writing course a couple of years ago. Good stuff.

    Edited at 2018-02-19 07:16 am (UTC)

  6. 35 mins with yoghurt, granola and nana.
    I liked this gentle start to the week – with its ‘arty’ bits.
    LOI was the Spanish lass – which I guessed had to be (d)ines, but didn’t know the name. I ruled out Gnus.
    Mostly I liked: Fiddlesticks, Zola, Earless and Enterprising (COD).
    Thanks erudite setter and Ulaca.
    1. STAG (male), NAME (celebrity) reversed [upset], A, GER (German). The blogger has acknowledged the typo in the blog and said he will correct it when he has the necessary access.

  8. Very quick for me today, starting with a biffed ‘archdeacon’ (which clearly held things up a little in the NW), and ending with IMMODERATE. Despite a French degree, and the inclusion of EMILE ZOLA, I still went down the route of ‘Nana who?’ and got 5d from the anagrist wondering what on earth the Darling’s dog was doing there…

  9. Very easy indeed.
    I had a period in my youth when I went through a good proportion of Zola and Balzac .. I found the former, and especially Germinal, hard going, but enjoyed Balzac, especially his “Scenes of Parisian Life” series
  10. 8:20, but with a spectacularly stupid error. My first thought for 3dn was BEDSIDE MANNER. That obviously didn’t work so I discarded it quickly but still managed to type BEDSIDE STORY when I’d worked out what the answer was supposed to be.
    Like Jerry I read a lot of Zola and Balzac in my youth but I have forgotten almost all of it and didn’t remember who Nana was. Like vinyl1 though I reckon I might have remembered if I had solved the Zola clue first.

    Edited at 2018-02-19 09:15 am (UTC)

    1. Well I put in BADTIME STORY – well why not?! Otherwise, all correct and it felt quite fast. Thanks for puzzle and blog. Richard
  11. Stroll in the park. Never read Zola but meet him regularly in crosswords, rather like INES who is in danger of becoming the new Tiepolo
  12. I took 28 minutes on this, so it wasn’t too Mondayish for me. COD jointly to ENTERPRISING and EMILE ZOLA, the love child of Leicester and Chelsea footballers. I liked BEDTIME STORY and FEARLESSLY too. LOI STIFF. I wouldn’t have got INES if it wasn’t for the recent INEZ discussions. Giotto’s Campanile is pretty impressive as wellas his paintings. Those guys were multi-disciplinary, and I guess us latter-day crossword solvers should be too.
  13. 11.39, so a sort Quick Cryptic with pretensions. My short list of Nanas includes the dog, my paternal Grandmother and that Greek singer with the glasses, and it seemed unlikely that the setter knew my Grandmother’s obsession with the games Scrabble and Rummy, or private details of the seamy private lives of the other two, so it went in with a shrug and an assumption of ignorance (mine).
    I stumbled a bit over STEAMBOAT: eventually I reasoned that, even if the setter had spelt it wrong, there was no way you could get crew to mean PEED, so settled for the true answer, idly remembering that SS Great Eastern had sails, so that was ok.
    The clues to FIDDLESTICKS and STAFFROOMS had a hint that our setter has it in for out hard-pressed teaching professions, so to protect Mrs Z’s teacher’s pension, I’m sure no teacher has ever fiddled exam marks or played gamesmanship with SATS results.
    I liked ENTERPRISING, though I’m sure it’s been used before, possibly in a Christmas cracker.
    Thanks U, especially for extending my list of Nanas with Zola’s output. J’admire.
  14. A steady-as-she-goes 16.29, no major hold ups but a few clues required careful reading. When it comes to Zolas I am much more familiar with Gianfranco than Emile but Nana’s occupation couldn’t have been anything else.
  15. Fifteen minutes for me, for what did indeed feel like a very Mondayish puzzle, even though it was completed on Sunday night (well, technically Monday morning, I suppose). My only NHO was NANA, and I wondered if it was a slight on the reputation of Ms. Mouskouri.

    I’ve only just twigged to the DD at 8d, and had been wondering how a clue from the Concise had ended up in the Cryptic.

  16. Like everyone else, it seems, I was distracted by the Newfoundland, and was wondering what a dog could be ON apart from the lead, maybe. However, I think Radio 4 (or more likely 4 Extra) broadcast an adaptation of the other Nana recently*, and that sprang to mind next, so I didn’t get delayed for very long. Pleasant Monday fare, anyway.

    *I have reached the age where I regularly describe something as having happened “recently”, and discover that actually means seven or eight years ago.

  17. 27m which felt slow after a flying start but I ground to a halt in the south east, having BIFD an unparsed DEMO and struggling to get the boat and the Spanish girl. LOI was ON THE GAME however, as like others here, I didn’t know the relevant reference, which made for some unsavoury musings. Enjoyable puzzle and blog today so thank you, setter and U.
  18. so not quite as quick as last week, but was basically a matter of typing in the answers. As Z8 I was wondering about a STEAMSHIP having sails. Held up by assuming that 21d ended in H, and also trying to fit in GOBBLEDEGOOK at 12a. FIDDLESTICKS!
  19. Like Z I toyed with “speedboat” and wasn’t going to mention it, but since he did…. I’d have been a bit quicker off the mark but I’d convinced myself that the recording was a “demo” and that didn’t work either. Glad you mentioned The Swimmer Ulaca. It’s one of the longer John Cheever short stories which are all atmospheric. My favourite is Goodbye My Brother which ends with a wonderful image of the narrator’s female relatives emerging from the sea.

    I remember the STAFFROOM from my boarding school with some wryness because it was always a fog of cigarette smoke – and of course we were strictly forbidden. 14.56

  20. Having biffed BEDSIDE at 3dn, was so happy to be under 15 min, didn’t go back to parse it before submitting 🙁
  21. 11.33 for me, which is about as quick as they come. Like one or two others I read Zola and Balzac long ago, when I first moved to Paris and felt I had to try and understand their culture, as well as their language. Never managed to understand the French, really, but I enjoyed the literature – especially Balzac. Zola was notable for planning his walks around the city in such a way as to avoid any glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, which he abominated, or so it is said.COD enterprising.
  22. 15 mins. For some reason I struggled to get on the setter’s wavelength. I missed the recent discussion about INEZ but I still had no problem with INES even though I couldn’t name one. My time would probably have been considerably quicker if I’d seen ARCHBISHOP as quickly as I should have done. SHRED was my LOI after IMMODERATE.
  24. 8:53. Like others I had to make assumptions about a Nana I didn’t know but otherwise this was very straightforward.
  25. I also raised an eyebrow at the implied slur on grannies, but entered the obviously correct answer regardless. Nice to know there was a literary explanation. Otherwise an enjoyable romp starting with DISH and finishing with MONO in 20:48. Liked EARLESS and ENTERPRISING. Thanks setter and U.
  27. Around 15 minutes ending with BEDTIME STORY. I was looking for something akin to an obituary notice. Knew neither the character nor the meaning of the phrase in the Nana clue – got it from the fairly simple anagram. Gentle Monday puzzle. Regards.
  28. I was another one who was in the middle of typing BEDSIDE MANNER before realizing it was STORY, but not going back to fix up BEDSIDE to BEDTIME. So a technical DNF, but otherwise a gentle start to the week on what is a holiday in the US (except I’m in China where it’s also sort of a holiday due to New Year on Friday).

  29. I spent many a happy hour of my youth battling my way through Zola, Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal and the rest of the guys in the band, so 5 and 15 were write-ins for me. If the setting team could be encouraged to concentrate more on literature and less on Botany and Zoology, I’m convinced that my otherwise mediocre times would experience a radical uplift.

    No pressure, of course ……

    Time: 25 minutes.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

    Dave.

  30. A Monday puzzle accessible to the experienced QC fraternity. The GK was maybe a bit harder but it was largely familiar.
    Like others I read Balzac and Zola in my youth. The French novelist I remember most fondly is Stendhal.
    MY LOI was SASH after 13d and 26a.
    It helped that I met Inez recently another minor bird it seems.
    Finished in an hour or so; I must think about timing these solves. David
  31. 5.5 Monday minutes, didn’t know Nana despite having tangled with Zola (Germinal, possibly) during French A-levels. Ines also, in Sartre’s “Huis Clos”.

    The Swimmer is indeed a magnificent film, I was haunted by it when I first saw it as a teen and was delighted to find it still held up when I watched it again during this millennium. Love how it starts of very jolly and then gets darker and darker as it goes on, much like my own evenings really.

  32. As a newcomer to this blog, could someone kindly spare the time to explain the meanings of “biff” and “parse” – at least with relation to crosswords?
    1. Parse means to break the answer down into the parts indicated by the wordplay – it’s basically what the bloggers are doing when they explain the answers.

      Biff is short for bung in from definition, ie write the answer in without parsing/checking the wordplay. This can speed things up but can result in incorrect answers.

  33. I must have been grumpy with NicktheNovice over the week-end or given the wrong password more than once!

    Anyway today was nice’an Monday.

    FOI 10ac IDOL
    LOI 22dn INES

    COD None
    WOD FIDDLESTICKS!

    18ac ROAST was a piss-poor clue IMHO

    The dishonourable Member for Shanghai West

  35. I liked the enterprising burglar and the i-less Giotto, and I wasted time at 20ac on the crew, who were biffable-clearly the center part of fr-eight-er. I’m not really familiar with Zola, I am familiar with Cheever, and I definitely believe Burt Lancaster’s best role was The Leopard. Thanks, Ulaca. Pleasant go, setter.

    Edited at 2018-02-19 07:50 pm (UTC)

    1. I remember being rather disappointed with The Leopard when I saw it a few years back. But then I generally find myself out of sympathy with Italian films generally, as opposed to, say, French and Japanese ones.
        1. What I liked about the film is the frictionless juxtaposition of the turbulence and emotional upheaval of the ancillary events – revolution, sex, dynasty – with the stately and civilized way that the story proceeds. This is the same reason I like baseball and cricket: too much going on at any one time for one person to focus on or comprehend, but still contained inside the framework of a game which proceeds at its own pace.

          I also like that the film:
          a) bought out all the roses in Naples for three weeks running, and flew them over to Sicily every day, nearly bankrupting the production in the process; and
          b) hired descendants of the kind of aristocratic Sicilian families portrayed in the film to appear as extras, with roles as the servants who emptied all the piss-pots during the Ball.

  36. 26:35 nice and Mondayish. Zola did not appear on my French A-level syllabus and like others, the only Nana I could think of was the dog in Peter Pan. I had my doubts about her having fallen on such seriously hard times and put the otherwise obvious answer in knowing that enlightenment would follow on reading the blog. FOI 1ac. LOI 7dn. COD 20ac.

  37. I’m a QC-er who gives it a shot on Mondays. Like last week just a couple short after a 90 min cut off.

    I have read Zola (Therese Raquin) but did not get at as was stuck with COLA and SODA for my drinks.

    I also had B[r]ASS for 24 a, which I thought fitted OK.

    I await my first 15×15 solve in 90.

  38. I’m so late coming here that it’s tomorrow. Nothing new to say except that this was fun with some witty clues eg 20a. 16 minutes – which is a good time for me. Ann
  39. Fast steamboat today, in about 12 minutes – one of my speediest solves ever.
    “Mecs and nanas” are sort of generic casual French for “guys and girls” but the origin of “mec” is from “macquereau” meaning pimp, with “nanas” being prostitutes. Maybe Zola played a part in the origin or popularization of the term, I don’t know.
    Most of the clues I really liked: COD being BEDTIME STORY.
    A couple seemed a little tired. There’s a defect I have termed in my own mind “parallax” where the two indications are not sufficiently distinct. For example pan & ROAST both use the same metaphor of cooking. Similarly, OB+SERVANT is the obvious way to split the word into prefix+main part. There is no surprise or interest. It’s better if the two indications are as orthogonal as possible.
    Thanks to setter, blogger and commenters.

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