Inquisitor 1322: Any Other Name by Nutmeg

19 comments on “Inquisitor 1322: Any Other Name by Nutmeg”

1. Nice puzzle.

   Thanks H. I got Orson Welles and was happy, thinking that it satisfied the preamble well enough re 6a. Completely missed Baden-Powell – although he’s the one who satisfies the name change criterion.

2. A marvellous piece of misdirection! It had me floundering for some time before I reluctantly concluded I had to look for some other “citizen” than Orson Welles. A Google search on “1914”, “name change” and “brownie” finally yielded the correct person. It would have helped, of course, if Nutmeg had told us that resolution of the clashes would lead to proper words – but that would have made it too easy!

   Many thanks to Nutmeg for such an entertaining puzzle and to Hihoba for the blog.

3. Well, I did better than the previous week, but I got stuck in the top left corner.

   I got ROSEBUD and CITIZEN. Citizen Kane is one of my favourite films, but I totally failed to spot WELLES. Furthermore, as I knew that ROSEBUD in the film was a reference by Welles and Mankiewicz to Hearst’s pet name for a certain part of his mistress’s anatomy, that led to all sorts of speculation as to what 40ac might be.

4. What a great puzzle. I guessed ROSE from the title and then when I solved 25d it was “obvious” that we were talking about KANE and ROSEBUD until I went searching only to find that Orson Welles wasn’t born until in 1915. 25d was a very easy solve which, presumably, was deliberate to fuel the misdirection.

   By now, remembering that I’ve been “Nutmegged” a few times before, I wondered if we needed to make GEORGE ORWELL since Orson’s first name was George. Did his mother have an older child called George or something or did George Orwell have anything to do with ROSEBUD.

   Got there in the end though; as I say, GREAT puzzle. Thanks to Nutmeg and to HiHoBa for a great blog.

5. Hmmm. I don’t want to sound churlish, and I do realise that in this day and age using Google is a given, but the only reason I didn’t complete this is because my googling of “rosebud” didn’t come up with anything other than Orson Welles references.

   I’m not sure I like being defeated by a puzzle simply because I don’t have several hours to trawl through Google’s results page…

6. Bingybong@5, I DID have several hours to trawl through internet searches, and not one of them gave the Brownie/Rosebud link. I only made the final connection when, after days of pondering/searching I (despising myself) looked at a hint on a crossword site which gave enough away for me to see it. I think my fatal error was confidently filling in the central square with ‘N’ too early, thus preventing my seeing the other name.

   It was an excellently constructed red-herring, but I do feel a bit let down by Google!

   But fair’s fair…bravo Nutmeg, you Nutmegged me good and proper! A superb crossword which would have been sublime if I could have made the final step unassisted. Thanks and well done HiHoba…I will satisfy my pride by assuming that your personal knowledge of Nutmeg gave you the edge…

7. Lovely piece of misdirection from one of my favourite cluesmiths.

   I don’t quite understand why some feel that searching for ROSEBUD should bring up the theme. That is just part of the information provided by the puzzle. Couple it with the names in the clash and/or a reasonable stab at BROWNIE and it would probably appear on the first page of any search. I think that solvers are getting used to searching on snippets and being successful instead of gathering all the information that the puzzle has to offer. Here it was fairly clear that the dates wouldn’t work for ORSON and it was falling into place just a bit too easy.

8. Bingyboing and Dan at 4 & 5: I do admit that Google required more than a quick lookup, but I googled “Rosebud 1914” and came up with two articles – “Reluctant Rosebuds” and “Rosebud Promise Badge” on the fourth page – having quickly passed over all the horsey references. I don’t think that it was too hard to find – after all the first page or so of Google results are often irrelevant to what you want to know!

9. I think the main reason I was not misdirected down the OW/CK route was because I stared with the across clues first and filled in the D, N and P of B-P, so didn’t see the ORSON appear. I did think for a moment that the Citizen was a reference to just WELLES but,like you, Hihoba, I googled “Rosebud 1914” and got the B-P, Brownie reference.

   Like Nick @7 it would all have appeared uncommonly straightforward if it had OW/CK, and knowing Nutmeg’s trademark sleights of hand, I would have been very suspicious. Wonder what a first-time IQ solver would have made of it ?

   Good fun, so thanks to Nutmeg and Hihoba

10. I googled every combination of all the words that I could think of over a period of several days, however, I used 1915, not 1914…it seems this was the difference.

    My reference to being let down was tongue in cheek…humour doesn’t translate well into text.

11. The wonder of this puzzle for me was how many of us got sucked into putting OW in the diagonal without even checking the alternative because it was the name we expected to see. A bit of a confidence trick and a very good one. After getting stuck with BROWNIE it dawned on me how illogical that was. Clashes almost always produce a plausible alternative and I hadn’t even checked what it was. Also, how daft would it be to just have clashes with no plausible alternative in just part of a person’s name? None of it made sense yet I went with it for a while. Good stuff.

12. Nick, I completely agree. It was a brilliant puzzle. I knew it didn’t add up, and I knew the clashes must have some meaning, but I just wasn’t smart enough to work it out!

13. Dib Dib Do’h!

14. @Nick

    That is not what I said

15. I have only praise for this puzzle. Designed to mislead, it performed perfectly – she was playing with us all, and I was delighted. (How perceptive to see the overlaps of ROSEBUD and BADEN-POWELL/ORSON WELLES.)

    Sure, I Googled ROSEBUD & 1914, but quickly dismissed the Kentucky Derby winner. And, yes, I pencilled in ORSON WELLES. But examining the clashes, I could see that one resolution led to real words & the other didn’t – so BADEN-POWELL it was, and then Googling that & ROSEBUD leads to BROWNIE as the first hit.

    Best of the year so far, so keep ’em coming Nutmeg, and thanks for the blog to Hihoba.

16. We loved this one! The misdirection was superb.

    We were stuck in the NW corner for ages and when we saw the possibility of ORSON we realised that you ended up with non-words. Bert started looking at the different possibilities with the clashing letters and Joyce searched on the internet. We both sorted out the theme at the same time!

    Many thanks to Nutmeg – a brilliant construction. Thanks also to Hihoba.

17. What a brilliant con. Despite the warning “a century ago” I found myself checking the trivia section of IMDB to see if there had been a change of name to the sled. I finally decided that the most likely words that could be names to fit 40ac were TROILUS and BROWNIE. A Google entry of those two names + 1914/1915 + Rosebud got me there. I’m slightly annoyed with myself for not seeing BADEN-POWELL until that point.
    A devious, but very fair puzzle, beautifully constructed.

18. I’ve always been a great fan of Nutmeg and this is right up there with her best. It was after failing with Rosebud 1914 that, like Dan at 10, I googled Rosebud 1915 and that did give a Brownie link. Also like Bert at 16 playing with the options for 40A led to BRO as one of four starter options and with E a likely finisher you are left with BRO—E and BROWNIE soon emerges. There are, fortunately, often other ways to skin a cat than starting at its left ear.

19. At last a prize! So, ahem, my puzzle of the last 3 years will be this one.

    Not bad looking champagne either.

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