With apologies to Kea, I have to say that I didn’t really enjoy this puzzle 🙁 but I’ll try not to let it influence my blog too much.
The preamble tells us that we’re looking for titles that might appeal to the ___________ Film Club, this and 13 other blanks have to be filled with unclued answers from the grid. With only 26 clues and 14 unclued answers, this means that more than one third of the grid is unclued. This make the grid fill slightly difficult though, fortunately, the clues (with a couple of exceptions) aren’t that tricky.
The first clue to crumble was 14 then much of the SE corner gave in pretty quickly. SW fell next, followed by NW but NE took a while. The unclued down answer starting at j6 looked a good candidate for an electronic dictionary search and the only candidate was EELFARE, thus I wondered if somehow we were looking to change E(ast) to W(est) to make WELFARE. Another search revealed STEEPLEJACK as a possible candidate for k1(down) but I could see no possible connection. Then FISHMONGERS popped up in b2(down) coupled with EELFARE and STICKLEBACK I began to realise that something fishy was going on and I spotted that STICKLEBACK MOUNTAIN might be a favourite of the FISHMONGERS‘ FILM CLUB.
So there we have it, we’re looking for (incredibly awful) fish puns for genuine film titles. Unchecked letters (forming KEIRA KNIGHTLEY’LL BE GOOF-UP) are shown in blue.
| Starting cells and direction |
Title | Original Title |
| b2 down | FISHMONGERS‘ Film Club | N/A |
| g1 down | A PLAICE in the Sun |
A Place in the Sun |
| a1 across | The Seventh SEA OWL | The Seventh Seal |
| i10 across | A Hard DACE Night |
A Hard Day’s Night |
| h6 down | TIDDLER on the Roof |
Fiddler on the Roof |
| b11 across | ROUGHIE the Vampire Slayer |
Buffy the Vampire Slayer |
| e1 down | WHITING to Exhale |
Waiting to Exhale |
| e2 across | HALIBUT My Mother |
All About My Mother |
| k1 down | STICKLEBACK Mountain | Brokeback Mountain |
| j6 down, e10 across, i10 down, f3 across, i3 across |
Bring Me the Head of EELFARE, RAY, DOG, GAR, SEIR |
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia |
| Across | |||
| No. | Entry | Definition | Wordplay |
| 4 | CAUSE | agency | CA (accountant)+USE (employment) |
| 7 | BIER | (late) platform | BI[tt]ER (no T(ime) at all) |
| 8 | ASSOT | (old) fool | A+TOSS (rev: retiring) |
| 9 | LICENCE | liberty | LICE (parasites)+N[i]CE (removing I (one)) |
| 11 | INCANT | singsong (I couldn’t find it in Chambers but here’s a link) |
Incan (early American)+T(enor) |
| 13 | IMMUNE | exempt | MINE (anag: sadly) containing MU (letter from continent) |
| 14 | TELE | box | LET (rev: over)+E (base of log(arithm)s) |
| 15 | TOED | hit with the foot | T[he] (front of)+OED ((Oxford English) Dictionary) |
| 17 | AILEEN | Celtic girl | AIL (trouble)+E’EN (even, poetically) |
| 18 | HALOID | of metal and chlorine, say | HALO (headlight: stretching the definition a bit, I think)+I’D |
| 20 | AGGRATE | show gratitude to (forgotten) | GR (King George) inside AGATE (marble) |
| 21 | DEFAT | trim | I (a) inside DEFT (nimble-fingered) |
| 22 | FENI | Goan coconut drink | FINE (anag: brewed) |
| 23 | YSAME | together for old poet (Spenser) | [l]AY’S AME[nded] (hidden: trimmed) |
| 24 | URGENT | with no time to lose | GET RUN (anag: out) |
| Down | |||
| No. | Entry | Definition | Wordplay |
| 1 | SYBARITE | I’ll be for indulgence | BESTIARY (anag: alternative) |
| 2 | AWESOME | impressive | SEW (rev: up)+O(ver) inside ÂME (soul) |
| 3 | OUR | my group | [h]OUR (time) (homophone: to be heard) |
| 4 | CIRCA | around | A+CRIC[k] (neck spasm) (almost) (rev: around) |
| 5 | ABSENTLY | without concentrating | ABS (muscles)+[g]ENTLY (gradually) (dropping head) |
| 6 | EYRE | (double definition): (Jane) Eyre |
(double definition) |
| 10 | SUDARIUM | holy veil | SUD (south in French)+I (one) inside ARUM (lily) |
| 12 | PENITENT | I’m sorry | PEN (to write)+TEN (cardinal (number)) inside IT (that thing) |
| 16 | LOTAHS | metal pots | HAT (work alone (Australian)) inside SOL (sun) (all rev: turning) |
| 19 | LARGE | fugitives may be at this: at large |
LARGE (giant) |
| 20 | AFFY | (ancient) trust | [d]AFFY (eccentric) (leader leaves) |
As a fan of “I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue”, I have to say that, in contrast to Kenmac, I enjoyed this hugely. Relatively simple clues and the fishy theme (it came to me via DACE) made for a fun few hours. I thought the Alfredo Garcia reference in five fish was inspired!
The INCANT problem was a bit worrying, and I think a health warning should have been issued about it. Other than that, thanks Kea!
I’ve never heard “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”, so maybe the subtlety of the fishy puns went over my head, I thought that five fish for Alfredo Garcia was stretching it a bit but if the majority are comfortable with it then that’s fine by me.
I actually like puns so maybe I should start listening to ISIHAC, I’ll tuna to Radio 4 maybe I’ll have a whale of a time and I’ll be able to stop crabbing and not be so shellfish. Thinking of these puns is giving me a haddock so since I’m floundering I’ll stop now.
I got FISHMONGERS pretty early on and, being familiar with most of the titles, realised that it had to be the missing film club link. After that, the rest of it fell quicker than any other Inquisitor I’ve done. All very enjoyable though, and there’s nowt wrong with an easy one every now and then.
Given some of Kea’s frankly astounding grids in the past, I’d put money on the Keira Knightley anagram in the unchecked letters being intentional!
Response via the email address given under the puzzle was excusively approving. I like puns too, the groan-worthier the better!
Re 11 across: Inquisitor doesn’t recommend a particular dictionary, taking it as read that all solvers of barred thematics know, or quickly become aware, that Chambers is the mainstay, so I regarded it as unnecessary to specify that INCANT is in the Concise Oxford. Had it only been in the complete OED, that would have been different. The word is hardly non-deducible, anyway!
Good fun, and I agree wholeheartedly with Mike – awful puns are very welcome.
My only moan was that Kea rather gazumped me on the choice of theme, as my follow up to my own ISIHAC Inquisitor from 2009 (Common Knowledge) was cunningly titled Publicans’ Film Club, and was ready to clue. Oh well.
I have to say that I tend towards Ken’s view, though I can’t say that it wasn’t a mildly enjoyable solve. (But I was expecting more from Kea.)
The puzzle was reminiscent of Lato’s 1110, with a hotchpotch of “A fez of the heart”, “Eyeful tower”, etc. – at least this one had a theme. Also, echoes of Samuel’s 143 Primary Reference with its nod to ISIHAC, the theme being the Uxbridge English Dictionary. So, Kea’s offering sat somewhere between the two, but cleared the bar.
Got in via FISHMONGERS, STICKLEBACK and SEA OWL. And, yes, I did find the pun (?) for Alfredo Garcia a bit of a stretch (but was amused by HALIBUT).
PS Comment written before Samuel’s comment above, but posted later – he gets the reference to two of his puzzles confused: Common Knowledge is his recent puzzle (1163).
Being a big fan of ISIHAC I enjoyed this a lot and knew what was going on straight away. I also guessed the “Bring me the head of…” had to be the multi-fish pun. For non-fans this film title is a running joke with any film club rounds, though even Graeme Garden’s puns are not this bad!
Colin
Thanks kenmac,for your blog and your own ‘fishy’ puns @2.
There has been a thread of these on the Guardian letters page over the last few months,some very funny.
I love awful puns,so I enjoyed this a lot.
The puzzle turned out easier than I thought after seeing so many unclued entries,but once the penny dropped the ‘end game’ was pretty easy,which would be my only criricism of this puzzle.
ALFREDO GARCIA took a bit of working out though.
As far as I am concerned ‘easy inquisitor’ is an oxymoron
eelfare etc needs to be pronounced in the original Spanglish to make it really work. A fun puzzle and agree with Gordon about ‘easy inquisitor’, although the last 3 (including this Saturday’s) seem to have been quicker to do than usual. It won’t last.