Comments on: Inquisitor 1218: REHOUSED by Lato

By: Neil Hunter

Neil Hunter — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 14:00:12 +0000

Hmm… I think I would have been more likely to solve this had I not decided, rather hastily in retrospect, that the Italian writer was an Italian waiter. This deprived me of the A which would have given me Barbara – the only thing in the puzzle which might have steered me to Windsor. As it is I answered all the clues, but still the penny remained undropped. Thanks for the blog.

By: regalize

regalize — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 19:17:34 +0000

A bit late to the thread but just to say thanks to HihoBa for the blog and Lato for the puzzle. I must admit that even knowing by the finish who the person must be, the preamble asked for the full name of the person. Now, ‘ George the fifth’ is (was) the title of that person and not the name.
However, once again a great Inquisitor.

By: Hypnos

Hypnos — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:08:13 +0000

I thought this was an excellent puzzle with just the right amount of penny-dropping moments. My key to solving after deducing some of the unclued entries was seeing the BARBARA and KNOT connection to Windsor. Thought the misprints were very cunningly concealed and made the overall solving all the more enjoyable.

By: HolyGhost

HolyGhost — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:26:11 +0000

A kind of OK puzzle, with some of Lato’s hallmarks – the preamble, the thematic associations. Well worked, but I can’t say I’m a fan of all those homophones (5?) and proper nouns (REM, Hesse, Basie, Mae, Lee).

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:45:37 +0000

Yes, this was a most enjoyable puzzle, which took me quite a while to work through even though I thought of the theme (with no certainty whatsoever of course) on reading the preamble and esp from the title. BTW, I think in SOH ‘loud’ may indicate a homophone of ‘so’. Thanks Lato and Hihoba.

By: kenmac

kenmac — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:25:00 +0000

Thanks Hi. After the couple of dozen comments on last week, I'd like to say that it's interesting how different people approach the challenge. I found PLEAD really early and had TO TESTIFY (maybe a letter or two missing) so it didn't take long to find REFUSE. Then I had SINGER but miscounted and thought I needed an extra letter (probably between G and E then when I regrouped and realised I had SINGER I found BOY fairly easily. What held me up was the elemental treatment of SAXE-COBURG GOTHA. It took me a long time to realise what it actually meant, of course by then I had INSTRUMENT and it kinda fell into place.

By: John Lowe

John Lowe — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 07:18:06 +0000

Thanks to Hi and Ba for an excellent blog, and to Lato for an puzzling crossword.

Usually, when they are provided, the unchecked letters in unclued entries turn out not to be very useful – except to check that there aren’t any mistakes in what you’ve guessed. But here, I too had to perform the”laborious crosscheck” to end up with BOY and PLEAD. I was less quick than Ba to jump to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha – probably because I was trying to fit Dante in as an Italian Author. The moment was of revelation was worth it!

At 18 down, to explain the ‘s’, the second definition of char 2 in Chambers is “(in pl) household work;”.