Comments on: Inquisitor 130 – CINEMA CLASH by Lato

By: Lato

Lato — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:18:06 +0000

Many thanks for the blog and comments.

By: HolyGhost

HolyGhost — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:45:29 +0000

PS http://fifteensquared.net/2007/03/23/inquisitor-11-a-novel-approach-by-lato/ is probably a better, and more direct, link to the earlier Lato puzzle.

By: HolyGhost

HolyGhost — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:39:29 +0000

I have some sympathy with Simon H., but one way in would be to google A PLAY WITHIN A PLAY (or even A PLAY IN A PLAY), which leads to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (and a couple of other Shakespeare plays, notably Hamlet), via say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_within_a_story#Play_within_a_play.

An earlier Lato puzzle, based on Animal Farm, had a similar theme but was even harder – see http://fifteensquared.net/category/inquisitor/page/25/.

By: Simon Harris

Simon Harris — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:58:19 +0000

Oh well, clearly an excellent puzzle, but a bit of a frustrating one for me, this. The grid filled itself out fairly promptly, but for anyone unfamiliar with the play there was no chance of finishing it off. Nothing could be googled, the title was misleading and neither PYRAMUS nor THISBE were likely to jump out of the grid unless you knew them.

By: HolyGhost

HolyGhost — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:33:08 +0000

I too guessed WINEGLASS quite early, but was having a problem with the NW corner where there were three contiguous unclued entries. About the time I was considering FRUIT, I had 6 or 7 of the extra single letters – suddenly A PLAY within A PLAY leapt out. Having played FLUTE playing THISBE when I was a student, I could see that WINEGLASS was clearly FLUTE and FRUIT was QUINCE. The other unclued entries came quite quickly – I did dally with NOSE for SNOUT, but finding PYRAMUS put me straight on that.

And I thought the disposition of PYRAMUS AND THISBE in the grid being as symmetrical as word-lengths would allow was a nice touch.

By: qadzbork

qadzbork — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:37:34 +0000

The first of the unclued lights I had was -INE-LASS, which I thought had to be WINEGLASS. The only immediate alternative that came to mind was FLUTE, but I thought “That’s a play, not cinema…!” and the equally obvious CIGARETTE didn’t ring any bells. Finally completed the puzzle on 30 June, six days after Midsummer Day.

By: Hypnos

Hypnos — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:56:03 +0000

Quite tough and highly enjoyable to solve. Liked how detecting Pyramus and Thisbe helped to determine some of the unclued entries.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:02:43 +0000

I thought this was one of the finest puzzles that has appeared in the Inquisitor series. Like you, I found it hard, but it was a joy to unravel it piece by piece – especially from someone whose knowledge of the play is extemely limited. My route to the theme was quite different to yours, in that the first thematic item that I saw was PYRAMUS AND THISBE and I worked on from there. The clues were quite tough, but completely fair and very good. RISERS I particularly liked. BTW, the puzzle appeared on the Saturday before Midsummer’s Day.