Comments on: Inquisitor 1132: Secret Excitement by Hypnos

By: Hypnos

Hypnos — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 10:32:16 +0000

Thanks to Holy Ghost for his blog and all for comments which are much appreciated.

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:19:56 +0000

Thanks HolyGhost.
This was a bit tough for me,got about half way without spotting any theme and gave up after 12 across.I couldn’t work out where the extra letter could come from as the clue worked perfectly well with “sri” reversed around “K”.
I can see now,thanks to your blog,that it was a very cleverly worked puzzle.

By: HolyGhost

HolyGhost — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:20:20 +0000

Re 19a: Chambers has BULL’S-EYE as “the centre of a target”, and INNER as “that part of a target next to the bull’s-eye”, which is why ‘place near’ in the clue seemed fairly redundant to me.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:05:00 +0000

Yes, this was very good, everything v well integrated, in what must have been a hard grid to construct. Very tough, only saw what was going on when all the letters of THE WINDHOVER appeared, had not heard of the poem, everything resolved itself fairly quickly after that. Re 19A, I think INNER is “place near sportsman’s target” – the target would be the BULL’S EYE, I think.

By: Quixote

Quixote — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 06:49:54 +0000

I thought this was a very clever idea, beautifully executed. I suspect it would have made it to The Listener, had it been submitted there. Well done, Hypnos!

By: Mike Laws

Mike Laws — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:10:43 +0000

HolyGhost – my solving process was very similar to yours. Back-solving some clues in this type of puzzle is more or less inevitable, but I confess to having tried to justify CANARY (with only four of the letters certain) in a “grid-cage” at first, before I twigged

Having started it in the pub, I enjoyed finding out, before closing time, exactly what to look up (in a book) when I reached home.