Times 28,199: 4m50s From Paddington

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
After a really tough and interesting puzzle in the middle of the week, I thought to myself or may even have said out loud, “well that’s that then, Friday’s is going to be no great shakes now.” And so it proves: you could barely get more straightforward than the below number.

Bonus points for rekindling fond memories of the 1987 BBC adaptation alluded to in the blog title; COD goes to the chucklesome 17d (at that price, I’ll take two!) with the vegan-friendly surface of 18ac earning runner-up status. Thank you to the setter for a gentle close to the working week!

Definitions underlined in italics, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, {} deletions and [] other indicators.

Across
1 Efficient assistant in office gets message sent round (7)
CAPABLE – P.A. in CABLE
5 Someone in boat heard birds (5)
COCKS – homophone of COX
9 An occupant of Oxford maybe on the way (5)
AFOOT – A FOOT occupies a shoe, which could be an Oxford
10 Acolyte of a Swiss hero kept in place (9)
SATELLITE – A TELL in SITE
11 Italian boss and minister holding on (7)
PADRONE – ON in PADRE
12 Gangster and policeman work together — and drink (7)
ALCOPOP – AL (Capone) + COP + OP
13 Unacceptable behaviour through educational institution — three leaders sacked (10)
PERVERSITY – PER {uni}VERSITY
15 Nonsense, and vulgar, mostly (4)
CRUD – CRUD{e}
18 This biryani is sent back — bones in it! (4)
RIBS – hidden reversed in {thi}S BIR{yani}
20 Those hoping for job open a paper with ads for teachers (10)
CANDIDATES – CANDID + A T.E.S. (Times Educational Supplement)
23 Poor actor to make fun of Drake’s resting place? (7)
HAMMOCK – HAM to MOCK, making a sailing man’s bed
24 One to map out place right for queen to inhabit (7)
PLANNER – ANNE in PL R
25 Being a yes man presumably to get advancement (9)
PROMOTION – if you voted yes you were probably PRO the MOTION
26 One’s thrown out material, time and time again discarded (5)
EXILE – {t}EX{t}ILE
27 Little person to jerk, dropping whiskey (5)
TITCH – T{w}ITCH
28 Sound boisterous in exclamation of surprise — one may have got an award (7)
GRANTEE – RANT in GEE!
Down
1 Food the German provided — a possible first course? (7)
CHOWDER – CHOW + DER to make a soup course
2 Help root out someone who may be stuck underground after accident? (8)
POTHOLER – (HELP ROOT*)
3 Strike animal — its energy will decline (5)
BASTE – BEAST with its E sinking to the bottom. Not the commonest meaning of baste, these days
4 Old religious piece journalist hacked out? (9)
EXTRACTED – EX + TRACT + ED
5 Revolutionary resin — one firm makes this material (6)
CALICO – reversed LAC + I + CO.
6 Vessel that is used by barber (7)
CLIPPER – double def
7 Having a great inclination to get soaked (5)
STEEP – double def
8 Music-maker to chirp aboard barge travelling around (8)
BAGPIPER – PIP in (BARGE*)
14 Securing looped cloth around cut (9)
SHACKLING – HACK in SLING
16 Gave an account of missing bishop being caught sight of (8)
DESCRIED – DESCRI{b}ED
17 Next-door shop’s offer for extremely cheap formal attire (8)
ADJACENT – Bargain formalwear! A DJ – A CENT!
19 Make homeless crowd turn up ahead of fight (4,3)
BOMB OUT – reversed MOB + BOUT
21 Character collecting money for subscription scheme (7)
TONTINE – TIN in TONE. “An annuity shared by subscribers to a loan or common fund, the shares increasing as subscribers die until the last survivor enjoys the whole income”, so apparently designed with Agatha Christie novel plots firmly in mind
22 Pagan divinity of moon manifest round end of April (6)
MOLOCH – MOOCH around {apri}L
23 House in position that may cause subsidence? Don’t hang around! (3,2)
HOP IT – HO. on top of PIT
24 Criticise American lawyer for being a beast (5)
PANDA – PAN D.A.

69 comments on “Times 28,199: 4m50s From Paddington”

  1. I agree that some of this might have escaped from QC-land but I had problems in the SE as well as the NHO MOLOCH.
    David
  2. This took me two goes, but I got there in the end. Didn’t know lac as a resin or the material itself, so CALICO was a hit-and-hope. Another NHO for me, TONTINE, went in based solely on wordplay, and I couldn’t have told you what DESCRIED means.

    FOI Ribs
    LOI Tontine
    COD Adjacent

  3. I thought this was much easier than Wednesday and Thursday. There is a Nina consisting of several synonyms for some of the answers. Have had a lovely week combining the Australian Open with the crossword.
  4. An expat friend of mine owned and ran a bar in NYC called Drake’s Drum (2nd Ave and 83rd, now long gone) which had the relevant poem on the wall behind the bar, so with years of proper study behind me I didn’t have any fuss with Drake being in a hammock.

    Otherwise I liked it, finding the cluing just tricksy enough and the not quite known senses of words just close enough to what I did know to work.

  5. Yes I knew Moloch, Hammoch and Alcopop from the OT Book of Daniel. COD 20ac Candidates. WOD Descried. TGIF!
  6. 50 minutes with a very slow start (RIBS was my FOI), but it all gradually came together. LOI was the never heard of before TONTINE, which I only managed via the wordplay. But despite some obscure meanings of well-known words, nothing else seemed unmanageable. This has been a week of very strange puzzles, though.
  7. Got SATELLITE — my smile was wide
    But PERVERSITY was then DESCRIED
    Because COCKS was a dud,
    Just some more birdy CRUD
    And the setter is thus vilified
  8. After a string of tricky travails this week, finally got one over the line in 32.01. LOI baste which I would never have considered another meaning of strike, any basting I’ve done has generally been pretty gentle over a nice piece of meat.

    Satellite proved troublesome but only because I thought of stoop as the crosser before realising my mistake.

    Enjoyed it so thanks setter.

  9. DNF, Gave up after about 45 mins with Moloch still to get. Had already spent some considerable time on it. I thought of Moloch but wasn’t confident enough with the definition to put it in and was baffled by the moon / mooch equivalence. Perhaps if I’d turned it over in my mind a little more I might have seen it, then again, perhaps not. As with others I found the top half went in with no problems but the bottom half was much harder.
  10. As far as I know Agatha Christie never employed the tontine for one of her plots. J J Connington did though, with the added novelty of one of the sleuths being a subscriber to one where the other subscribers are being killed off.
    1. The only tontine I’m familiar with is the famous Sherlock Holmes story. I’ve never read an Agatha Christie with one in either.
    2. Are you telling me I *hallucinated* the scene in 4.50 From Paddington where the lawyer clues Miss Marple in to a tontine by talking about tocsins? Oh man!
  11. Not too difficult for my ancient brain — and entertaining. Some puzzles are tediously convoluted in their search for new ways to fox the smartest solvers.
    1. This is a very fair appraisal. I still reckon Friday/Saturday makes for best end of the week to have the hard puzzles at — that way if you get stuck you have the weekend to keep plugging at it!

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