Inquisitor 1419: Fierce Pro by Lato

23 comments on “Inquisitor 1419: Fierce Pro by Lato”

1. Well done for persevering with this one; I’m afraid I gave up with only one thematic answer resolved and only two thirds of the grid complete. I can however help with the wordplay on a couple of the clues. ESSAYER is a charade of ESS (the letter S) and (A.J.) AYER, the philosopher. And ERSE is (P)ER SE.

2. I really enjoyed this. I think the way the thematic clues are really smooth, despite the definitions being swapped around, is superb; most of these read like straight clues. As always with Lato (Tyrus/Vlad) the clueing is spot on. The title is an anagram of Recipe For (Disaster: the anagram indicator).

   Super blog and another very entertaining IQ.

3. Yes, it was a shame that most of the thematic clues were wasted in terms of filling the grid, although not entirely. The AREA OF HOUNSLOW gave up HESTON early doors and like kenmac, SMITH and the cooks theme soon followed. I guessed NIGELLA in the SE corner and cottoned on to the three COOKs via CAPTAIN and the RECIPE FOR anagram title.

   I did eventually manage to parse all the thematic clues and definitions but only after some mixing up of these: thus I was convinced that the “International back catches out” related to CAP (awarded to international players) TAIN…..but couldn’t make it work of course and that “gone- honest” was an anagram of HESTON. Don’t know whether Lato included these to cause confusion but they certainly did in my case !

   9A APE is a US word for a clumsy person. Met one or two of those over there….

   Despite the issue with the thematics, I did also really enjoy this puzzle, so many thanks to Lato, and to kenmac for the excellent blog.

4. Thanks for the blog. On reading it realised I’d forgotten to parse the title, but a minute’s thought showed what Jambazi said above. Good puzzle but 16d? I solved it, but the clue surely leads to Someatas, Afewatas, Ahandfulofatas, Oneortwoatas, not Manyatas.

5. After some very tough end-of-year puzzles, from both IQ and Listener, it was a relief to have a more accessible one … after the penny had dropped, that is !

   I was grateful for the “nominally” hint in the preamble … and reflected that we had recently had another “Captain Cook”, i.e Alastair Cook … in the Dec. 25 birthday puzzle.

   Interesting choice of chefs … I am old enough to have seen Fanny in action (poor Johnny !), and spent some time looking for Keith Floyd. I’m afraid that I shudder and have to leave the room every time N is on the box, but realise that this is another Marmite situation. Some worship her.

   I too dabbled with LEEK, but realised en clair would have been wrong, and so was relieved to discover KALE.

   Thanks, Lato.

6. Oh dear! The thematic clues defeated me, and although I managed to see PROVERBIALLY my best guess from the unfinished grid was “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” — since the unclueds in the middle row looked as though they could be THROW and STEIN (stone), with something like CAPTURE or CAPTIVE (relating to GLASSHOUSE) above, and isn’t that a STONE in what could be HESTON? Go on, have a laugh, I don’t mind.

   No complaints – one can’t always be on the right wavelength!

7. Be it true or be it an urban myth, I’m sure we’ve all sniggered at this some time in our lives:
   http://keepcalmandfannyon.blogspot.com/2013/11/don-mock-will-my-doughnuts-turn-out.html

8. I’m something of a completest, so I persevered to the end with the thematics.

   I don’t really understand Jambazi‘s remark @2 about “smooth” clues: why is it harder to write clues where the definition & wordplay lead to different answers rather than the same word?

   I think kenmac‘s explanation of the wordplay for STEIN is fine, and (p)ER SE was the last answer I justified. Tho’ I had a nose wrinkle at 16d MANYATAS – I don’t think I’ve come across “hang” & “sit” being used synonymously.

   This had all the hallmarks of a Lato puzzle – thanks, & to kenmac for the blog. And a bonus point to the setter for an appropriate use of “plethora” in the preamble – it seems that it’s misused more often than not these days.

9. Well, I certainly enjoyed this. I had a great PDM when I worked out what these names had in common, and then another when I realised that CAPTAIN could be a cook, and hence what sort of cooks those obscure Peter and Robin were. Always worth taking the time to actually parse the preamble properly, I suppose.

   As with last week’s, I just treated the piecing together of the thematic clues as a welcome extra challenge – there is no reason to solve these puzzles other than pride anyway. Talking of which, I’m kicking myself for having failed to decide between LEEK or LEAK – I don’t know how I managed to read the entry for kale and miss the reference to broth!

   And is there anyone who wasn’t thinking of Fanny’s doughnut?

10. I found the thematic clues difficult to sort out, but in the end the only thing I couldn’t solve was the title. Thanks to Jambazi et al for the explanation. I hope I’m not the only one who thought that WHITE was a cryptic reference to Raymond Blanc.

11. Yes, also meant to say thanks to Jambazi for explaining the title.

12. A fun puzzle, thanks Lato. Unfortunately I ran out of time and by yesterday afternoon had only managed to fill ~80%, despite cracking the theme. Good to see here what I missed / failed to understand.

13. HG@8

    When you write a clue you look for wordplay elements which can be strung together with a suitable definition to form a mental image. It is harder to do that when the definition has to be for another word (from a contrained list).

    For example:

    “Top player initially missing easy goal” is lovely wordplay for CAPTAIN but the trick is to pick a definition from the (remaining) thematic words that can complete the picture: “mug” does it perfectly. In my opinion, Lato’s done a great job on the twelve thematic clues. To see how tricky it is, try to write twelve alternative clues using different pairings.

14. Thanks kenmac for the blog. We persevered until the end and enjoyed the challenge. We did wonder about LEEK at one point but couldn’t work out the relevance until near the end.

    Thanks Jambazi for sorting out the title – that completely defeated us. It was interesting to read your comments on the jumbled clues.

    Thanks Lato – another Saturday well spent with an IQ!

15. I enjoyed this a lot. It took three sessions to sort out all the details, but it was well worth persevering. I agree with Jambazi about the quality of the thematic clues. Thanks to Lato and kenmac for the blog.

16. Completely agree with Jambazi. I know how difficult this type of clue is to write and they were brilliant here.

    Funnily enough, guessing that the title was an anagram, and then getting it, was actually what led me to the theme rather than the other way around.

    The puzzle as a whole was really enjoyable and witty I thought.

17. After two weeks of completed puzzles, I was back to my usual handful of completed clues and a lot of head-scratching with this one. No matter, I enjoyed the challenge!

18. Very nice puzzle: tricky but more or less solveable. I must admit I have to thank google for disclosing the theme (thanks to Slater and Smith, I was looking for a cricketer called Heston). Even with the answers, the parsing of a couple of the thematic clues eluded me.

    Thank you kenmac for the blog, and Lato for the challenge.

19. Thanks to Lato for a very enjoyable start to the year. It took us a long time to get going on this one as we were confined to the NE corner for ages, where SMITH (surname) and HESTON (forename) weren’t enough to convince us there was a culinary theme. Then a text from young Kippax of this parish gave us a start in the SE corner and suggested that the title was an anagram of “recipe for” and it was all downhill from there. STEIN and NIGELLA quickly appeared and confirmed the theme and the mix of sur-and forenames, and although PETER, ROBIN and CAPTAIN seemed to make no sense the grid was soon filled, apart from the three short unclueds, as the chefs were all well known as long as one is old enough to remember Fanny! Then a belated check on the extra letters made it all fall into place. We are in the “life’s too short and there is also the Listener to do” camp when it comes to checking every element of the puzzle after we think we’ve essentially cracked it, so just as we didn’t grapple with the cubes in the last one on the assumption (correct, as it turned out) that the obvious word was the one to write under the grid, we solved fewer than half of the thematic clues here as we simply didn’t need to. I share kenmac’s view that this is a shortcoming, but it was still a lot of fun.

20. Thanks to kenmac for the blog and to others for their comments.

21. Thanks Lato for a great start to 2016 with a cracking puzzle. I really enjoyed this one. A delightful PDM with the Cooks and cooks. The end game took FAR loner than it should, a result of initially making some silly mistakes with the extra/missing letters. I did a thorough recheck of all the clues which showed up my errors and bingo. Lovely.

    I solved only about half of the themed clues. Some toughies in there so thanks for clearing them all up kenmac.

22. I enjoyed this one – even moreso when I discovered I had won a bottle of Prosecco! First time out the hat for the Inquisitor!

23. I enjoyed this despite failing to get all the way to the end. I mistakenly had KWAI (Chinese monetary unit) for 33 across instead of LWEI which messed things up. This led me to guess THOMAS instead of RHODES for the cook.

    I managed to parse most of the themed clues but not all of them.

    No complaints at all about this puzzle. The “end game” may have taken a long time but it was still recognisable as a crossword all the way to the end. I sympathise with kenmac about puzzles where having filled the grid the crossword element ends and the rest of the puzzle is an exercise in permutations, a sort of alphabetic sudoku. This was not the case here at all.

    Thanks kenmac and Lato.

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