Comments on: Inquisitor 1212: Dicta by Phi

By: Hi of hihoba

Hi of hihoba — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:08:43 +0000

My flat Midland vowels make no distinction!

By: HolyGhost

HolyGhost — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:01:09 +0000

I agree with Hihoba that I would have difficulty distinguishing them aurally without other contextual clues, but I definitely pronounce them with a slight difference, as I do with the preposition “for” and the number “four”. Maybe it’s my Lancastrian upbringing.

By: Hi of hihoba

Hi of hihoba — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:48:42 +0000

I agree with your interpretation, but I must say that I would be hard pressed to distinguish by ear between caught and court or indeed between fort and fought. Indeed in the appendix Chambers says ör can be pronounced the same as ö. So true homophones after all?

By: HolyGhost

HolyGhost — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:27:53 +0000

Homophones: As I wrote in my blog on 1142 (Jeffrey by Loda, where thematic entries were homophones of the definition-only answers), Chambers respells CAUGHT as köt, but COURT as kört; and FORT as fört, but FOUGHT as föt. I suppose these might be considered as examples of "near homophones".

By: Hi of hihoba

Hi of hihoba — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:59:21 +0000

I thoroughly enjoyed the crossword, but must have another word about “near homophones”. I think words are either homophones or are not. So horse and hoarse are homophones, but horse, norse, morse and force are not! It’s like being a little bit pregnant, or very unique; there aren’t degrees of “homophoneness”. (Nor is there such a word!)

By: RatkojaRiku

RatkojaRiku — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:03:54 +0000

I would wholeheartedly agree with Jake on this one: for me, this was the perfect level of difficulty, offering the challenge and extra stimulation of a barred puzzle with a twist, but without all the laborious trawling through dictionaries out of desperation for “something that fits”. As such, a big thank-you to Phi (and Nimrod) for this one.

As it happens, I did use Google to confirm the thematic elements, since Sondheim’s Company and Dr House were not really on my cultural radar, but most of the actual entries I was able to figure out for myself thnaks to the tight wordplay and then simply double-check in Chambers.

My gateway clues were 35 and 31. I realised that the wordplay to 35 gave PRESS ON, which seemed to mean the opposite of the definition “stop”. This got me thinking about antonyms, but having the solver make some corrections that were factual in nature (e.g. East for West in 1A and Saturn for Neptune in 33)rather than purely linguistic seemed to me to be an original idea, and definitely a welcome break from misprints and extra words. I hope other setters will be inspired to follow suit.

Having then solved the clue at 31, I saw that the only way of getting 35 and 31 to intersect was to invert 31, and having solved a few more clues, I could see that all down entries would have to be entered in this way. In fact, for some clues, where inversion was part of the wordplay as well as the method of entry, this was rather tricky, e.g. at 24D and 26.

@ Hi of hihoba: I see your point about rhyme rather than homophone in the preamble, although in all fairness to Phi, I suppose it does say “near-homophone”.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:42:48 +0000

This puzzle was rather fine- A OK! Proving a point here, that this (level) was an enjoyment to solve without having to purposely be so difficult that there becomes a point where the fun rapidly disappears, or trudging through dictionaries hoping for a weird word find, just to move on to the next trudging blah, blah, blah…

Thanks for the blog Holy Ghost and to Phi. This was one style of puzzle I shall not forget soon!

Great stuff.

By: Hi of hihoba

Hi of hihoba — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:47:52 +0000

I, too, finished it relatively quickly, though I found the reversed down entries first via ASTROTOURISTS and AUGER before I realised the across “lies”. My only gripe is that my understanding of “homophone” does not agree with the rubric’s. Homophones sound the same but are spelled differently. This was a rhyme and not even close to a homophone – unless you are “Chirese” as Benny Hill used to say.