Times 26,057: Slowly Walking Down The Hall

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Perhaps it’s just that the existential dread that fills any parent on the first day of the holidays is getting to me, but I’m not sure I have *too much* to say about this very serviceable Friday crossword. Moderate deviousness to most of the cluing, a little bit of mild geography and zoology required on the general knowledge front, not a tremendous amount of poetry or punnery to the surfaces, for the most part ordinary vocabulary (though I do sometimes wonder if floatels and boatels actually needed to exist or were invented as the sort of word that is irresistible to crossword puzzlers).

Which all makes it sound like I didn’t like it but it was absolutely fine, the sort of stout, reliable puzzle that made our Empire great. I ended up with a suitably middling time of neither 10 minutes, nor 15 minutes, but the point exactly in between the two, starting off strong by filling in the NW corner in no time at all by noticing that 1A almost certainly began with CAB, and so that was my FOI. LOI and the one I spent way too long staring blankly at the end was 22D, as I fixated on RE being “Shakespeare’s last two pieces”, and the actual intent of the word “pieces” in the clue became invisible to me accordingly.

On the nice clue front, 11D was quite pleasing but suffered from the fact that, once you had a few of the crossing letters, HILAIRE BELLOC becomes a bit of a freebie to bung in without parsing. So I think my clue of the day may go to the sanctified simplicity of the likes of 20A: never underestimate the power of a simple clue with a lovely limpid surface. Many thanks setter! And now, those of us whose children are off school for the next three weeks must gird up our loins for even greater battles ahead…

Across
1 CABALLEROS – American riders: ALL [completely] + SORE [annoyed “having to return”] by CAB [taxi]
6 AVER – state: VA [Virginia “handed over”] by E.R. [sovereign]
9 FLOATEL – accommodation: “empty apartment”, i.e. FLAT with O in it, “near” EL [centre of {Heid}EL{berg}]
10 EXHIBIT – show: I BIT [one | metal mouthpiece] “put on” EX H [old | horse]
12 CANNONBALL – big shot: homophone of CANON BAWL [clergyman (has) to raise voice “audibly”]
13 AIL – bother: L [learner] “on” A1 [trunk road]
15 ON TIME – punctually: (MENTION minus N*) [“casually” / {trai}N “finally” “leaves”]
16 DELIVERS – supplies: DELI [shop] + VERS{e} [lines “to be slightly reduced”]
18 POP GROUP – PUP [youngster] “absorbs” OP [musical work] “by” GRO{w} [“largely” mature]
20 PENCIL – drawer, i.e. something that draws: PEN [pound] + C{o}I{n} [coin “oddly”] + L [left]
23 RIO – port: “quantity of” {supe}RIO{r}
24 CHARTREUSE – green: recyclers of maps might aim for CHART RE-USE
26 EXPANSE – stretch: EXE [river] in which PANS [vessels] are “moored”
27 GALLING – irksome: ILL [“back” trouble] “among” GANG [team]
28 DORM – somewhere to sleep: DO [gathering] “in front of” RM [room]
29 REFRACTORY – stubborn: REFRY [cook again] “to hold on to” ACTOR [ham]

Down
1 CUFF – strike: CU [copper] “leads” F F [force | following]
2 BUOYANT – very busy: homophone (“we’re told”) of BOY ANT [young male | worker]
3 LATIN AMERICAN – maybe Spanish-speaking: (MAN IN A RECITAL*) [“performing”]
4 EALING – part of London: ‘ospital is ‘opefully ‘ealing sick people
5 OVERAWED – intimidated: VERA [girl] got WED [married] “going after” O [love]
7 VIBRATE – shake: BRAT [naughty child] “involved in” VIE [struggle]
8 RUTHLESSLY – without compassion: (HUSTLER*) [“acting”] + SLY [like a fox]
11 HILAIRE BELLOC – writer: HILLOC{k} [rise “shortly”] after “recruiting” A1 REBEL [top | insurgent]
14 COPPERHEAD – venomous creature: COPPED [caught] “eating” RHEA [ostrich-like bird]
17 SUDANESE – African: DANE [Scandinavian] “involved in” USE [exploit] “led by” S [South]
19 PROSPER – succeed: PROPER [fitting], with S [first of S{helves}] inside
21 CASSINO – Italian town: CAS{e}S [luggage “European lost” (i.e. minus E)] + IN O [in | old]
22 STAGER – old actor: “send-up” of RE GATS [{Shakespea}RE’s “last two” | pieces]
25 EGGY – “like part of breakfast”: {p}EGGY [Margaret “hasn’t started”]

32 comments on “Times 26,057: Slowly Walking Down The Hall”

  1. My thoughts exactly, except that mine were much less well put.
    Parents of children of a certain age will have been reminded by 18ac of the apparently devastating news that Zayn has left One Direction. No, me neither.
    15m.
    1. Zayn was “the hot one” apparently. There were a lot of women in their mid-to-late thirties (!) getting quite unseemly over his departure yesterday. I had to look him up, but will concede that in his younger days he did strongly resemble some kind of adorable fawn.
      1. I must confess to having been there – on some illegal download my daughter had found – when One Direction were born, nay created by the Cowell from failed vocalists. Not quite the same thing as saying I was there when Brian Lara beat the first-class batting record, but sadly that won’t mean half as much to half so many.
  2. A pleasant enough 25 minutes or so, with some nice cluing. COD to 24ac.

    Good to see Belloc getting an outing. As he said “When I am dead, I hope it may be said: ‘His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.’

    Thanks blogger

  3. Excellent serviceable puzzle that delayed me exactly 30 minutes, which is rather as I like them. My only partially unknown was REFRACTORY as “stubborn” which I surely have met before, but anyway the wordplay was clear.

    On Belloc, I am rather partial to his two liner “On Mundane Acquaintances” which consoled me through many a working day on arrival at the office.

    1. If you want to practise sustained directed invective, Belloc’s ‘Lines to a Don’ takes some beating.
  4. 15 mins. I enjoyed the solve but I agree with Verlaine that some of the answers, in my case 11dn, 14dn and 18ac, were biffable once a few checkers were in place, although I went back and parsed them post-solve. DORM was my LOI. I liked the clue for CHARTREUSE.
  5. 34.35 with a careless floatal though I saw floatel. Would be grateful for a fuller explanation of stager. On edit: Oh, got it, gats = guns.

    Edited at 2015-03-27 11:25 am (UTC)

  7. I thought this was going to be a very quick solve since I paused very little while filling in the top half, but the lower half was harder, so it was 30 minutes before I finished with 29. An enjoyable half hour.

    I’ve never considered ‘buoyant’ as meaning busy even when applied to economic matters. It’s not supported in Chambers, even in the thesaurus section. Is this one of those strange Collins definitions?

    1. Yep, I scratched my head a little bit over “buoyant”, but it seemed close enough to sensical that I didn’t let myself lose any sleep over it…
    2. Yes, I was going to mention that. There’s absolutely nothing in the usual sources to support it.
      1. I suppose it must be the “involving or engaged in much successful trade or activity” buoyant market sense of the word, but it does seem a stretch…
  9. 34:28. I clearly found this harder than some of you and consequently enjoyed it all the more. More answers than average went in today from the cryptic such as SUDANESE, CASSINO and BUOYANT. I’ll give my COD to CHARTREUSE though as I’m a sucker for a good/bad pun..

    Nice Oasis reference in the blog title. I’m off work painting for 2 days so getting my fill of top tunes from BBC 6 Music.

    1. POP GROUP plus CANNONBALL leads inexorably to CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVA in this brain. (Well, en route to THE BREEDERS…)

      I can’t remember the last time my DAB radio’s dial was tuned to anything other than BBC 6 Music!

      1. As a music loving software developer your talk of such delights as FKA Twigs concerts and PHP conferences are not lost on me!
  11. Just the right degree of difficulty for me. Not so quick & easy that the ink steams as the nib of my Mont Blanc approaches mach 1, and not so hard that I end up jumping up and down on the newspaper, fumbling for a box of matches and a can of paraffin..
  13. 23 minutes but it felt longer as I thought it reasonably tricky. LOI was DELIVERS.
  14. Pleasant 17.40, slap in the middle of the road puzzle. CHARTREUSE: liked the clue far, far more than the product. never could get past the smell.
  15. Pleasant enough walk in the park, about 15 minutes, LOI FLOATEL. Some nice clues, my favorite being SUDANESE. Regards.
  16. 18:27 for me, going through a (very) bad patch at the moment, and taking an age to get STAGER, GALLING and HILAIRE BELLOC – the latter being particularly alarming (not to mention GALLING!) as I just couldn’t see HILAIRE (and couldn’t think of an author called HELOISE).

    This wasn’t my favourite puzzle. I’m still not entirely convinced by BUOYANT = “very busy”; and some of the words used to indicate anagrams (“casually”, “acting”, …) were a bit too far-fetched for my taste.

    At least EALING went straight in.

  17. Count me another one who found it pleasingly tricky, and unconvincing regarding buoyant. V nice blog, v

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