Inquisitor 1429: Title by Bics

19 comments on “Inquisitor 1429: Title by Bics”

1. Got most of this one except for the bottom-left corner, where I was missing four answers, even though I had them right, just couldn’t parse them. But none of that was necessary, really, to get the SIMPSON/WINDSOR connection.

   However, I do think the parsing of 35 is LAB + I + ATE (“taken bite”) around A.

   Thanks Bics and duncanshiell! I do hope the Inquisitors continue, as slowly but surely I’ve been getting better at them, and hate to see them go now.

2. Oh, and the cryptic grammar of 32 is just bizarre and torturous. I figured your parsing is what the setter was getting at, but why not clue it as “Calls to halt absurd fashion if abandoned”? Then “absurd” would work as the anagram indicator for “fashion” with the letters I and F taken out.

3. As for 33, I’m wondering if it’s an anagram of KORE + TXT (with the extra “t” indicated by the preamble), where TXT is the file extension denoting a text file. Just a guess though…

4. Found this tough. Never really got going with the quote – too many clues not fully parsed and some errors in those I had parsed, however lucked upon the Windsor connection with ascot and Lego (my assumption was the other 4 letter included would be land). Knot confirmed the more general connection, rather than just places. Then I sort of reverse engineered it, getting remaining Windsor connections and finding the name, before eventually looking up quotes!

   Thanks

5. I also found this tough, although I was able to deduce the quote and the theme. However I had ACIDITY (which I couldn’t of course parse) for ACETIFY, and couldn’t work out the right answer even when the theme made it clear that the crosser must be ASCOT (and not ASCOD). I also couldn’t parse SHAPE, so thanks for TAPE, which was new to me. Like you, I had trouble with TREK-OX and LABIATAE, although I think that Steve B’s explanation for LABIATAE is probably correct.

   A further source of confusion for me is that LUMPISH (which of course I couldn’t completely parse) is also defined as sullen.

   One thing that puzzles me is why you say in your preamble that 3 down was an obvious hidden clue; did you mean 6 down?

   Thanks to setter and blogger.

6. Steve B @ 1, 2 and 3

   I’m glad I wasn’t the only one struggling with 33 and 35. You’re parsing of 35 makes a lot of sense. Thanks

   I agree that 32 down was tortuous.

7. bridgesong @ 5

   Yes, typo of the day! (well, the only one spotted so far)

   I meant 6 down.

   Thanks

8. My suspicion is that John H is trying to wean us all off the Inquisitor by making them increasingly fiendish in the run up to the vertigo-inducing void which is rushing ever closer.

   Well, it didn’t work. It almost did for a while, mind. I made very slow progress and it took me a good while to spot the final connection even once I had the full set of thematic words. But the pride in having finished it all wiped out the memory of the pain, as it usually does.

   Now just fractionally deflated by the discovery that I too didn’t find that missing T! I had just CHAIN at 31A, having decided ‘series of turns’ was good enough a definition of chain and being unaware of chaine, and got the E instead from 33A, as ‘over half of’ Korean and of text giving the letters K O R E T E X. (Perhaps another way of reading the clue would be ‘half of Korean with text over it, misrepresented’?) It looks like I missed the need for a T entirely in my excitement of working out what the quote was.

   Antepenultimate (?) thanks to all involved.

9. Yes, very knotty; I didn’t manage more than half, and that wasn’t enough to glean the quote which might (or might not) have unwrapped the rest.

10. Same as Neil Hunter @9 for me: despite my best efforts I failed to fill more than half the grid and was nowhere near getting the quote. After a record run of 3 back to back completions earlier this year, the last 4 have represented a return to my usual level 🙁

    I commented a couple of weeks ago suggesting that we’d hear something soon based on some contact I had had with the Indy. Well, I’ve been in touch again this week (about a different matter) and a member of the Editorial team said on Monday: “I’m still chasing the final home of the Inquisitor puzzle. As far as I know it’s going to the i. Let me see what I can find out…”. That’s the last I have but surely there’ll be a decision made one way or another soon.

11. Kippax@10 – as long as the IQ finds a home somewhere! The last we heard from Will Gore this week seemed to indicate that negotiations are still progressing.

    Whilst we admired the construction (as always) the theme just didn’t seem to engage us that much this week – not sure why. We enjoyed Bic’s first puzzle and we hope we have more to enjoy in the future.

    Thanks to S&B.

12. I’m often surprised that OPatrick (@8 this week) & I have strikingly similar experiences – not the pain & the pride, but missing the extra E in CHAINE and finding it in K O R E T E X; which meant I had to dig the extra T out of my (not great) parsing of “The Lavender family …” with IT ATE for “one has taken bite”.

    And I had WINDSOR SOUP until I looked at the “unchecked letters could give …” and changed SOUP to SOAP. But all in all, not much trouble.

    Thanks go to blogger & setter(s) (Ch… & Sh…). I’m anticipating being the first e-blogger with Inquisitor 1432 – so I hope that my expectations won’t founder. (John H must have loads in the pipeline.)

13. Very tough. Didn’t make much progress with this. Great puzzle though.

    My fingers are crossed, and I’m guessing that no-one knows what’s happening with the IQ yet. And that we’re in for an insanely hard, final Indy blow-out puzzle from Nimrod this Saturday which will keep us all plenty busy until such point as we do!

14. “My suspicion is that John H is trying to wean us all off the Inquisitor by making them increasingly fiendish in the run up to the vertigo-inducing void which is rushing ever closer.” Post 8
    On the contrary I have found the last three or four Inquisitors disappointingly easy, and if they were to become any more so then I for one shall not harbour any mortification over my new loyalty to The Listener.

15. Not too tricky this one, with the grid fill not being too taxing. The connections and the quote dropped in nicely. Surprised nobody has mentioned John H’s generous Listener related hint in his editorial as to the connection to this puzzle. Thanks again to setter and blogger and fingers crossed for more IQs…

16. Thanks, as always, to duncanshiell for that super blog. I have been watching those generous comments wondering when someone was going to point out that 130 setters and solvers including JohnH and Bics (Shark and Chalicea) were gathered at Windsor for the Listener Setters’ Annual Dinner when this IQ appeared, thus the Windsor theme.

    We had to add that hint about what the unchecked letters could give when I realized with astonishment that both Windsor brown soap and Windsor brown soup exist (one of us had SOUP and the other SOAP in the grid we were working on and, of course, it was unchecked).

    Yes, 33 was clumsy. Somewhere along the vetting process, KORAN drifted to KOREAN so TEXT had to become TXT and our LABIATAE clue had the I ATE ‘nipping’ A = before – not an easy one to clue, you’ll agree.
    Indeed, fingers are crossed for many more IQs.

17. SIMPSON appeared early for us in the diagonal, but as our extra letters were making no sense at that point we could not find the quote and assumed that once again we had a TV “Simpsons” theme. When we eventually realised that the thematic person was the second most famous Simpson it all fell into place quite quickly, although we hadn’t realised that Runnymede is so near Windsor. We didn’t need the quote to fill the grid and when we eventually got it online we were surprised to find it is not in the three major quotations dictionaries we have at hand. Although we are regular Listener solvers too, we failed to spot Nimrod’s hint.

    Looking forward to a challenging finale in Saturday’s paper and to news of the future home of our favourite puzzle.

18. PS Make that the FIFTH most famous Simpson!

19. Got most of the way there but didn’t get the final WINDSOR connections so I couldn’t fill in the blanks. Very hard I thought. Too hard for me anyway.

    Thanks Duncan for another super blog.

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