Comments on: Inquisitor 1219: Location by Kruger

By: Kruger

Kruger — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 15:17:22 +0000

My thanks to Kenmac for his excellent blog.

Not too difficult a puzzle, I think, but perhaps some welcome relief to solvers after a few pretty tough ones lately.

I actually thought of this theme while touring Australia in October 2010. This was after their wettest winter for over a generation and the vegetation of the “Red Centre” which had lain dormant for years had suddenly burst into life turning the whole place green! Not good for tourists, but great for the locals.

By: regalize

regalize — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:03:27 +0000

Thanks kenmac for the blog and Kruger for a very satisfying puzzle in an increasingly addictive Inquisitor series. Like HolyGhost, I could see more than one possibility with SA as that location is geographically almost parallel with NSW and both being north of VIC and I do believe I plumped for the wrong one! Never mind, all good fun (as crosswords generally are supposed to be).

By: HolyGhost

HolyGhost — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:14:05 +0000

Similar for me too. Having got DOWN UNDER, I quickly decided that this referred to New Zealand, the central cell being All Black; this diverted me for some time, until I reverted to Australia, confirmed by spotting NSW and VIC in appropriate positions. Those, plus QLD, WA and TAS were unambiguous (and I shaded the central cell in red, because of Uluru, not being aware of the Red Centre); but there were two possibilities for NT (also at Ken's b2) and SA (also at f8). MARSUPIAL ruled out the latter possibility for SA, as that would mean the S was doing double duty … and I plumped for the consensual location of NT (at g10) as more geographically accurate. Stretching John H's easy-to-hard ranking from 1-3 (see his comment on Ifor's recent puzzle) to a less coarse 1-5, I'd grade this a 3, owing to the endgame.

By: Hi of hihoba

Hi of hihoba — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:17:27 +0000

Thanks to Kruger and to kenmac for the blog. Our experience almost exactly mirrors yours kenmac. We too found ACT and decided to ignore it on positional grounds – it is geographically misplaced in the diagram. I filled in the middle square with red on reading that Ayers Rock (Uluru) takes its colour from the red sand blown on to it from the Red Desert. I wondered for a while whether there was any significance in the letters AYE surrounding the central square, but couldn’t find any.