It’s Monday, so it must be Rufus. His puzzles are generally very easy (8 minutes to solve today’s), and this is mainly because his clues are not always terribly cryptic, and his definitions not very well hidden most of the time.
ACROSS
9 CARD TABLE – very well worded clue – furniture that dealers would know well
14 (CO-D)-RIVERS – fish courses – nice!
16 AS FAR AS ONE CAN GO – easy enough to get, but is this really cryptic?
22 BARBARA – again, not very cryptic. I can see that he is trying to use “major” in two ways, but it just doesn’t fool you enough.
23 C-ON DOLE
24 R-ELI-C
DOWN
3 STARVE – (vaster)* – vaster distribution of what? Food, yes, people, definitely not.
5 MERRY DANCE – hmmm…
6 AMNESIAC – A-(name is)*-C – I must have seen variations on this more often than almost any other clue.
8 FINN – clever enough, but very easy to get.
14 CASTIGATES – (stage act is)*
15 STONEHENGE – my favourite clue in this puzzle.
17 RESEARCH – R(reaches)*
18 NARCOTIC – (on Arctic)* – don’t think I’ve come across “voyage” as an anagrind before.
21 VANDAL – The Vandals were a Germanic tribe that overran Spain and Gaul and sacked Rome in the 5th century.
22A: i agree… almost a straight def… there’s no real cryptic reading to this.
On the other hand, I thought that NOOSE for “End of the line for an old criminal?” was quite clever.