Times 26317 – Peaceful Easy Feeling

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I did the crossword online and am writing this up wearing gloves, which may lead to more typos than usual. Sadly, I cannot blame the temperature in my office (not much above 12 degrees, I would guess) for my two errors, which are likely to be 9 down and 13 across, but we shall see. 37 minutes, when the clock stopped.

ACROSS

1. DICKENSIAN – anagram* of IDEA NICK N.
6. STOP – POTS (as in snooker) reversed.
10. PASTEUR – ER around U after PAST.
11. SCALPEL – S[urgeon] + PE in CALL.
12. EYESTRAIN – E + YES + TRAIN.
13. CARDI – I preceded by CARD (‘comb and clean wool etc with a sharp-toothed instrument in order to disentangle the fibres before spinning’ – vaguely remembered post-solve, but not during, when I bunged in ‘torsi’); a cardy or a cardie (or, indeed, very occasionally, I would imagine) a cardi is short for a cardigan. I’m not beating myself up about this one – there’ll be no heartache tonight.
14. PROMO – PROM + O.
15. MALADROIT – LAD in MAR + O + IT.
17. PLENITUDE – INEPT DUEL*.
20. ENEMY – MEN in YE reversed. One for the new kid in town?
21. REALM – AL[l] in REM.
23. EN PASSANT – N in PEASANTS*.
25. VERDICT – VERDI + C[ontralto] and T[enor]. One of these nights I’ll look for the literal at the right end of the clue.
26. OVATION – [inn]OVATION. Nice.
27. ROLL – [t]ROLL. JS Mill would have called him an eccentric with individual spontaneity who provided needful difference of opinion, and, you know, I’m inclined to agree with him.
28. INSTALMENT – ‘chapter’, as in ‘Stay tuned for the next instalment of The Girl from Yesterday’; I + N + S + M in TALENT.

DOWNS

1. DUPLE – ‘in two’ (‘based on two main beats to the bar’); L in DUPE.
2. CASSEROLE – ASS in CE + ROLE.
3. ELECTRONIC MAIL – CINEMATIC ROLE + L*.
4. SARCASM – CAS[h] in MARS*.
5. ARSENAL – S in ARENA + L; I never thought it could happen, but after watching the hapless display of my team at Old Trafford on Saturday evening, I saw an equally hapless display from my daughter’s team last night. Well, maybe not the team as much as the elderly chap with the frown on the sidelines who suffers from an acute case of lyin’ eyes.
7. TAPIR – TAP + IR.
8. PALMISTRY – PAL + MISTY about R[ough].
9. FANCY DRESS BALL – um, I put ‘party dress ball’. Just did. Amazing what one can do when the heat is on.
14. PAPER OVER – if you put ‘through’ with ‘the Times’, you might get ‘paper over’. I’m not sure this is a brilliant clue, but I’m going to take it easy because a) others may like it and b) I may be missing something and close to making a fool of myself – again. Oh, and c), after watching United, Arsenal and Liverpool over the weekend, I’d have to say this clue is a lot better than any of that overpaid lot.
16. OPERATIVE – EVITA reversed after OPER[a].
18. UNEATEN – UNBEATEN (what a South African batsman is after an Englishman drops him again) with the B[owled] taken out.
19. EXPLOIT – EX PILOT with the ‘I’ shoved back.
22. APRIL – AIL around P + R.
24. TENET – E in TENT. Worthy of a tequila sunrise.

The best of my love to you all.

39 comments on “Times 26317 – Peaceful Easy Feeling”

  1. I’m reliably informed that the human brain works best at 8˚C.

    Still a bit of a cakewalk in the park this morning — even though it was at least 27˚C by the time I started.
    Wondered who Nick N could be (1ac) — any offers?
    And if PALMISTRY is a “methodology”, I’m the Vicar of Dibley. Might, at the limit, be a method.
    Quite liked the &lit flavour of SCALPEL but.

  2. i assumed nick n was nicholas nickelby cmever seen cardi spelled like that but it was obvious
  3. Thought this was tougher than the average Monday, though my time was ok by my standards. Held up for a while by CARDI, not knowing the wool reference. In the end it seemed more likely than CORGI.

    Thanks setter and blogger (party dress ball, lol).

    Edited at 2016-01-25 11:26 am (UTC)

  4. On the easier side but none the less enjoyable for that and I thought 1ac in particular,working in a reference to one of Dickens’ titles, was superb. I have also never met ‘cardigan’ abbreviated to CARDI but it’s in Chambers and SOED,though not in Collins or COED as the more usual Oxford source.
  5. 15 minutes to get all but 5: TAPIR, CARDI, FANCY DRESS BALL, UNEATEN, and INSTALMENT.

    No progress on those 5 clues after another half hour, and I’m not sure if I could have got them either.

  6. 11:51 … agree with jackkt about DICKENSIAN — nice way to kick off the week. Thanks for the blog, ulaca. Shivering in your glacial office you must be dreaming of a tequila sunrise.
    1. More of a stout man myself (it’s the lack of exercise), but I will definitely have something when I get the snowmobile home.
  7. A fast 20 minutes for me and a lingering Dickensian image of Ulaca in gloves and cardi.
  8. Held up for a bit at the end by ENEMY, but still well under 30mins. Only one unparsed was OVATION, so thanks for working that one out. Oh, and DUPLE (unknown), which I had as ‘dople’ = something to do with doppelgänger…??? Oops.
  9. 25 minutes, so quite pleased.
    As the owner of at least 3 cardis, (it’s something to do with my age) 13a was no problem.
    My interpretation for 14d is “I’m through with the Times!”, i.e. “As far as I’m concerned, the paper’s over”, so from my point of view a better clue that you maybe thought, Ulaca. However I do sympathise with your frigid digits.
    1. I thought of that interpretation, but it doesn’t make much sense to me. If someone in a language class threw the Times down and said “the paper is over”, I’d commend them on their taste no doubt but tell them they meant they were through with the paper.
      1. I read the definition as “pretend there’s no real problem with” with wordplay PAPER (Times)and OVER (through) so the second part of the clue doesn’t have to stand up to forensic scrutiny. I can’t see a problem with the clue.

        Edited at 2016-01-25 11:52 am (UTC)

  10. 16.18, which looks like my current regular time. Until I solved it, I thought 1ac a poor clue, an obvious enough anagram but a lazy Nick N to fill in the missing letters. Couldn’t remember the surname of that nice Nick, who played errand boy for the PM in the last Government, and was relieved and, yes, a bit impressed to find it was nothing to do with politics. I look forward now to Ollie T, Ebby S and Barney R.
    5d is factually incorrect. Not second. Third. And falling (teehee).
  11. It must be just me then as I didn’t really like this very much; some of the clues seemed rather clumsy. Perhaps the setter….was having an off day?
  12. A pleasant Monday offering. A lot of good surfaces and a couple of unusual words, DUPLE, CARDI. I agree PAPER OVER doesn’t make perfect sense but it’s close enough. Nine clues with a question mark, a record?
    4dn aimed at 5dn by one of the 20ac is of no consequence but I share ulaca’s despair at some of the big names, so Forza Leicester!
  13. Just over 16 minutes for a standard Monday with no particular groans or wow moments. I don’t think that I have ever seen CARDI written down before and it looks strange but so does CARDY.
  14. 28:53. I liked the level of this puzzle which led to several head scratching minutes followed up by satisfaction when the penny dropped.

    I think there’s another angle to the ARSENAL clue as yet unmentioned – the ‘second team’ of course referring to the second team in North London. Where’s Pip when you need him…

    1. Here I am. Senor Vodafone promised me 4G here, it’s more like 2G like an old dial up, but they tell me I’ve already crawled through a Gigabyte and need more. 20 euros for 2 Gigs is not funny.
      The Sky box is working fine however, well enough to see ARS have an off day and that West London shower look more like the 2015 chamions than they have for a while. Nevertheless I am open to wagers on the relative end of season positions of ARS and TH.
      You knew I’d not be able to keep quiet.
  15. Twenty-six minutes, which is fast for me. I am developing a theory that there is an optimum level of sobriety (less than 100%) for solving Times puzzles. At some level of blood-alcohol, many answers just bubble up to the surface without conscious intervention, and can be biffed in and parsed retrospectively. Below that level, there is too much overthinking; too far above that level, and I waste time deciding which of the two grids to write the answer in.

    My only NHO was DUPLE, and I spent a short while wondering if “dople” was a word, but fortunately decided it wasn’t.

    1. My problem is not which of the two grids to fill in but rather getting them to stop still long enough on the way round.

      DUPLE may apply to you and I as we are clearly “the two (no-one) beats to the bar”?

      1. Glad to hear someone else has not taken the government’s latest alcohol advice too much to heart!
    2. In my student youth I became *really* good at darts, but only after I had had about three pints .. but before I had had four. My team mates put a lot of effort into regulating my alcohol intake, with mixed results.

      Nowadays, that much alcohol only makes me *think* I’m good at darts..

    3. A few years ago I wrote a blog entry on the subject of solving under the influence, in case you’re interested (and if today’s blogger is prepared to unblock it).
      1. Thanks for that, Tony. I find that alcohol (only in immoderation) makes it much easier to see answers purely from definition. Stone cold, I tend to dive into the parsing and (to mix metaphors) fail to see the wood for the trees.
  16. Not too much Wasted Time for me today: 7m27s with no particular struggles. Expecting more of a Long Run tomorrow.
  17. 14:06, not a lot to say really.

    I caused myself a bit of trouble at 23 by reading the last word of the clue as MOVIE rather than MOVE and I didn’t like the use of “first one” to indicate the T in TROLL as that had me looking for a word from which I cold remove the first of two letter Is.

    Nice Eagles tribute Ulaca.

  18. 7 minutes and a few seconds. In fact exactly one second behind Jason, so my quest to locate the gulf that separates the great solvers from the merely good may finally have reached an end!

    I thought this was quite enjoyable, especially for a Monday, though a bit too biffable for my liking – I hadn’t parsed 26ac, 14dn, for two…

  19. 24m pleasant solve with no real hold ups and a fair number biffed without much sense of the parsing. Thanks for the blog! Thought the weak reference to Nick Nick was only marginally better than last weeks Florentine Count. Didn’t see a problem with 14d and agreed with Jack’s parsing of that one.
  20. 17 mins. CARDI was my LOI after the TAPIR/STOP crossers. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen “cardi” written down before but I was familiar enough with it, and the wool sorting element of the clue rang a bell. Chambers reckons there are three acceptable spellings, with cardy and cardie being the others.
  21. 20 minutes, also ending with the never before seen CARDI. Weird. No much else to say, except regards.
  22. 8:29. I’ve been living life in the fast lane today, so didn’t get to this until very late and I expect everyone’s already gone by now. Anyway, I was tired, and glad of a relatively gentle one. I like a challenging puzzle as much as the next person but you can’t take it to the limit every day.
  23. Well, most of it was easy. However, I put in CORGI (even though I was solving wearing what I suppose might be a CARDI) because although I did know that you card wool, I mistakenly decided it was more likely that CORG was a different way to sort wool than that CARDI would actually be a word. Live and learn.
  24. A slightly disappointing 9:06 for me: I thought I’d been quicker, but, looking back, I did start rather slowly – as so often.

    I’m almost certain I’ve come across CARDI in a crossword before, but I’ve no record of it in a Times cryptic in the last 10+ years.

    A pleasant, straightforward start to the week.

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