Inquisitor 1135 – Six further on, by Quixote
Posted by petebiddlecombe on 29th July 2010
This was pretty much the opposite experience of the Raich puzzle with the World Cup theme. The thematic content was a ‘anagram and one letter change’ 7-letter word chain, the first and last words of which came from extra letters in across clue wordplay, and the rest from unclued answers. The chain turned out to be: STEPHEN, PESANTE, PEASANT, NAMASTE, AMENTAL, MATINAL, MATILDA. Apart from Stephen and Matilda being names, this sequence didn’t suggest much. Google searches after completing the grid revealed that England’s only King Stephen came to the throne in 1135 (the puzzle number). He was married to one Matilda, and replaced another Matilda as monarch – my guess is that the Matilda of this puzzle is his wife, as the natural word ladder treatment of the other seems to be a change from MATILDA to STEPHEN rather than the other way. The note from Mike Laws below tells me that with more careful research I’d have discovered that the Empress Matilda from whom he took the throne replaced him (at least briefly) in 1141 (1135 plus 6), so the puzzle’s title is about more than the word chain, and the order of the word chain DOES relate to the theme. Over the next 17 years or so, I guess we can expect to see more puzzles based on this kind of theme, though I’d expect the thematic treatment in some to be more closely related to the theme – here, the only link I can see is the match in length of the names STEPHEN and MATILDA. I finished up a bit unhappy with the puzzle because (with my incomplete research) there was no real penny-drop moment, though I can see that for people with better historical knowledge, there could have been one.
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