Inquisitor 1780: Entity by Phi

14 comments on “Inquisitor 1780: Entity by Phi”

1. Couldn’t quite nurse this one over the line, as both 42A & 7D proved too stubborn. I dislike it when faced by clues such as 42A, because if you can’t solve the clue ‘as is’ then all hope is lost – no real help from checking letters as five sixths of the answer were to be changed – six letters beginning with S, but an archiac word as an answer – feel a little unfair. So yet another DNF recorded here – progress once again hampered by my time being more restricted than usual.

2. I was frustrated by 42A too, but technically I finished the crossword (with DIRAM) without solving SPRONG. Does this count? I feel vaguely cheated, given that all I had to go on was S—–.

3. Thanks as usual to Phi and HolyGhost. This seemed heavier going than I usually expected from Phi, although it was nice to have a literal PDM at 23d immediately after guessing what the diagonal was going to say. My downfall was 5D, where I wrongly assumed it would be a toothy word (eight examples seemed somehow more “right” than seven), with something I wasn’t getting replaced by LIRA.

   Time for a seasonal read of Terry Pratchertt’s Hogfather, which addresses the question of what in fact the Tooth Fairy does with all those teeth….

4. VERY DIPLOMATIC BLOG, HG!

5. Like David Langford@3, it was the obvious rightness of ‘molarity’, with its pesky clashing letters, and the generously positioned tooth fairy, which saw the penny drop. Some endgames are all-or-nothing, some are incremental, like this one. I suppose I was quids in with five coins and three teeth.

   Thanks to Phi and HolyGhost

6. Another very tricky offering and I am pleased to note that I shared problems with fellow solvers – the near-impossible 6a/7d clash (especially as GAM, GAME and GAMER were all separately hard to deduce), the LIRA dead-end in 5d and the tricky S_____ at 42a – which I thought could have been SUPPER instead to make it a little easier! And did anyone else have trouble with the NOSE-NIPPERS / NOSE-GUINEAS?

   I was lucky enough to spot THE TOOTH FAIRY quite early, with most of the time spent finding an unknown number of teeth – I did think an indication of the total number would have made it clearer without giving too much away.

   Initially I thought I was also looking for foreign teeth – DENT, ZAHN and the like but after TUSK and TUSH it became clear that only the money was foreign, not the teeth.

   One minor quibble with the preamble was the use of “for the associated entries” at the end, which I felt superfluous and a little confusing in that for a while I was looking to pair entries with each other, until I realised that was not required.

   Overall a hefty challenge which I am pleased to have completed, but I think the same concept executed in a slightly easier manner (no clashes, easier words to find and an indication of the total number) would have made it more enjoyable.

7. A fairly gentle solve here, with only, yes, 42ac causing any problems. I had a full grid bar the themed entries, spotted the Entity in question, and then found the rest to be plain sailing. I’ve seen this theme used before, but can’t for the life of me remember where.

8. @Jon_S if that was a ‘gentle solve’ and ‘plain sailing’ I doff my hat to you 🙂

9. TonyG@2 : QUOTE : “I was frustrated by 42A too, but technically I finished the crossword (with DIRAM) without solving SPRONG. Does this count?” … Yes, it most definitely counts as a finish, given that if we still had prizes to win AND if you had submitted your completed grid AND if they had recived it in time AND if they had picked your entry out of the hat THEN you would have been declared a winner (lots of provisory caveats there)! I guess that we all regard our efforts with a particular degree of scrutiny. I also completed 42A (using DIRAM), but was unable to solve and parse the clue to my satisfaction, as I was unable to answer the clue. As I also failed on 7D, then I ended up with an empty cell (the fourth cell containing the second E of ECUER). So most definitely a DNF here. That said, if the E had been checked, then as I had ECU (but didn’t know what it replaced as I couldn’t solve the clue), then I personally would still have recorded a DNF for myself. Just depends on how exacting we all are; my own personal standard is to a level such that it would allow me to either set an Inquisitor puzzle or to blog about it on fifteen squared to the assembled masses … but that’s just Me … (_sat_here_at_home)!

10. The comments come in rather rapidly, and got ahead of me being able to give you the link to the setter’s blog. Which is: http://phionline.net.nz/setters-blogs/entity/.

    I’d thought this one would be relatively simple, actually, but there’s always a bit of a danger with replacement puzzles that the initial clue isn’t solved. SPRONG isn’t the commonest word – against that there aren’t very many synonyms for ‘tooth’ to be got through to check what it might be.

11. I agree with Arnold that some indication of the number of answers to be altered would have been helpful. I also have some doubts about old hat being described as 6 letters and not 3,3; similarly with auto-da-fe as 8 letters

12. Gavin @11 – It seems that the Inquisitor rule is to disregard dashes when indicating lengths, so Auto-da-fe is shown as (8) not (4-2-2). On the other hand, multiple words are normally indicated as such, sometimes by (5,5) and sometimes by (10, 2 words).

    I guess an argument could be made for “old hat” being a dashed word (old-hat) but Collins has it without the dash (in contrast to old-age) so in this case it probably should have been (6, 2 words) ?

13. @11 & @12: Chambers, the default reference, has both OLD-HAT and AUTO-DA-FÉ hyphenated, and length indications ignore hyphens.

14. And pace Phi @10, I have every sympathy for those who struggled with SPRONG – I certainly did. (But luckily not for long.)

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