Comments on: Inquisitor 86 – Unfinished Business by Loda

By: HolyGhost

HolyGhost — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:41:08 +0000

I agree with Geoff – unsatisfactory and not especially enjoyable.
Many more like this and I’m off to the Listener for good.
(Tempting to write “Loda rubbish”.)

By: Colin Blackburn

Colin Blackburn — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:23:47 +0000

Doh! I was just about to post something to the effect that the clues must give the positions of the extra letters—it’s the only one-to-one correspondence. However, I was thinking that the position might be given by the added letters relationship with surrounding letter.

Dave’s hunch on ‘finally’ was right.

Thanks for freeing up my afternoon Geoff. I’m only glad this wasn’t a Listener.

By: Geoff Moss

Geoff Moss — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:12:40 +0000

I am not going to take any credit for this (other than finding the information) but this has been posted elsewhere:

“The key to the dénouement is the last sentence of the preamble, in particular the word “Finally”. The final letters of the special clues are: TBBCCRCTTCRCLLRLB (12 should end “throb”, not “throbs”). T,B,L,R denote top, bottom, left and right, while C stands for corner and centre.”

By: Geoff Moss

Geoff Moss — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:00:24 +0000

Colin

I too wondered about the title but came to the conclusion that it simply referred to the grid being incomplete and that it required bars adding to finish it.

It will be interesting to see the solution when it is published.

By: Geoff Moss

Geoff Moss — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:55:33 +0000

My solution was identical to Duncan’s and I also thought that the ‘uniqueness’ of it would be down to being able to remove one letter from each unclued entry and still leave a real word.

I justified DRILL-HARROW on the basis that each half of the word could have a letter removed (ie giving RILL and ARROW).

I also found a reliable source that indicated the ability to conjugate LESS as a verb (even though it is not listed as one in any of standard references). This verbal usage was confirmed via a Google search which revealed several American documents where LESS and LESSED were used with the meaning ‘dock’ or ‘docked’ (as in cut). I therefore decided that BLESSED could become LESSED.

This left DEPOSE and in a moment of dyslexia I had EPODE which was confirmed in Chambers. After a few minutes it became obvious that this was wrong, so it was back to the beginning with regard to determining surplus letters and where they would fit but the end result remained the same.

This was my first attempt at an Inquisitor. I thought it would make a change from the Listener and EV but I cannot say I enjoyed it very much due to the unsatisfactory ending.

By: Colin Blackburn

Colin Blackburn — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:37:33 +0000

Final comment, definitely—maybe. I did wonder what the title of the puzzle alluded to. And, DRILL-HARROW is the most distinctive (and it is certainly the only possible solution) of the unclued entries and so must be key in solving this one.

By: Colin Blackburn

Colin Blackburn — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:16:21 +0000

Sorry my mistake, I do appear to an extra N from OEDEMA and I have a question mark next to COME and no letter. I agree the N from the first can’t be justified, I guess I was uneasy about “means mostly” -> MEA rather than MEAN but it’s reasonable given that it could only be 3 or 4 letters. So, I’m pretty certain my 17 letters are wrong by one but I am also pretty certain that I don’t know the answer, or why.

By: Colin Blackburn

Colin Blackburn — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:57:27 +0000

I am in exactly the same position. I solved all the clues, and like Duncan, had variable numbers of extra letters for a while. My list of extra letters agres with Duncan’s final list. And, that’s where I pretty much gave up. I filled in some of the perimeter words and DRILL-HARROW but really couldn’t see how they were confirmed. With 11 entries to add and 17 special clues I couldn’t see a correspondence. I did wonder if the clues from which the extra letters arose somehow defined the extra words. However, I remain baffled.

By: Duncan Shiell

Duncan Shiell — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:38:16 +0000

I thought about an extra letter in 5 down for a time, but couldn’t find a word that used OEDEMA and N. I think the longer word was always a real word, with the extra letter fitting within the same order of letters as the shorter word.

I also thought about SIDEREAL and SIDERAL for a while before I finally went for it as the two words seem to mean almost the same thing.

By: Dave Hennings

Dave Hennings — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:49:59 +0000

I, too, found this a tough last step. I didn’t come up with any way that the ‘special’ clues helped confirm the solution, although that word “finally” had me trying last letters and the like.

However, I had 17A as a normal clue (SIDERAL, no extra E) and 5D as a special clue for OED plus anag MEAN (most of MEANS) with a superfluous N. I therefore had BRAN instead of BRAE in the top row.

Dave.