Sorry for the late post, but I have to admit that I really struggled with this one, and I haven’t quite finished it, as one of the answers still has me beat.
Once I had completed about two-thirds of the puzzle and identified eight of the theme words, I didn’t know how to treat the words in order to enter them into the grid, so I called on Peter Biddlecombe’s assistance.
Given the lateness of the plea for help, Peter worked wonders for me and came through with almost all of waht I was missing, includeing how to enter treated answers into the grid. Thanks, Peter!
So, what did we have to do to solve the puzzle. The title and preamble indicates something requires to be changed before entry, but I couldn’t see it.
I had come across eight words which could be loosely defined as “rubbish” or “nonsense” or “disorder”, and I knew that five other slurked somewhere.
After consulting with Peter, we eventually came up with 12 of the 13 words.
ACROSS
11 DEB-RIS(E)
12 RED-D (the author of the puzzle being Dimitry)
16 TRIP-(Swaledal)E
18 BIL(G)E
32 RIFF-RAFF (Jospeh Joachim Raff, a Swiss composer)
36 STUFF
42 we couldn’t get this one, could it be SHIT?
43 (g)LITTER
DOWN
5 C-RAP
8 T-RUCK
29 (<=SNIB-BUG)
37 GAS-H
38 DIR(ec)T
Peter suggested that the tidying which was required was to change one letter in each word to N, thus creating new words, so the grid entries became
ACROSS
11 NEBRIS
12 REND
16 TRINE
18 BINGE
32 NIFF-NAFF (the one that required extra attention)
36 SNUFF
42 SHIN?
43 LITTEN
DOWN
5 CRAN
8 TRUNK
29 NUBBINS
37 NASH
38 DINT
I think it has to be SHIT
Sample, less ample (large enough), leads to S
and
lucky chance leads to HIT
One of the definitions of SHIT in Chambers is rubbish. Indeed I think all thirteen had rubbish as a definition in Chambers.
This was another splendid Inquisitor after Vital Plan the previous week where I fell at the final hurdle by having six letters left and trying to apply four of them to the wrong two words (Key and Wheeze) rather than solving Denis and Dons. I was compeletely fixated on key and wheeze being part of the thirteen requiring association with two characters and just didn’t step back and look at the bigger picture (Vital Plan and Kiwis). Not surprisingly I couldn’t get DEN_S and DO_S to link into New Zealand either!
At the moment I find Inquisitors generally more satisfying than some some Listeners, but I suspect that is partly down to my lack of enough experience with Listeners.
Duncan Shiell
I remember we had to clean up the theme words with the letter n (for new) i.e. a ‘new’ broom