Inquisitor 1442: Text Message by Xanthippe

19 comments on “Inquisitor 1442: Text Message by Xanthippe”

1. Thanks Hi.

   We noticed many of the fish during the solve and BABEL at the end but it took a long time before the PDM. Despite enjoying the book and series on TV we didn’t know the name of the relevant book. We needed to check quite a few words in Chambers before we located CRUCIAN and LAKER as the remaining fish.

   We had MERCI though as a foreign thanks as CIAO was in Chambers. We missed the 4 x thanks and 4 x so longs which was very neat.

   A lovely construction and idea – the ultimate answer featured in the number of the puzzle too!

   So long, and thanks to Xanthippe – we hope we see you again soon.

2. A frustrating experience for me: I failed to complete the grid, with biggish gaps in the NW and SE corners. Despite that, I’d spotted 4 fish [I’d incorrectly assumed that RisSOLE would be one of these though] and also guessed that the book might be the Hitchhiker’s one (as that was the title that immediately came to mind that concerned fish). Looking at my incomplete grid now, I had all of the crucial diagonal in there but failed to spot it 🙁

   Thanks Xanthippe and Hi for the blog and allowing me to see where I fell short.

3. Yet another failure for me in this “new regime” of Inquisitors …I did not need Babelfish for the Fishes, but I had the four So Longs as CIAIO, SEE YOU LATER, MATE. Which seemed both friendly and utterly plausible.

   Your blog explains all, Hihoba. But it could heve been kinder of Xanthippe to have put the substitutions beyond doubt by giving us unchecked letter changes ? And is VALE really English, Hihoba ? Another suitable Latinism on this occasion might be VAE VICTIS, of whom I am one (of many ?) Stamps will be saved from now on.

4. Thanks for the blog. I had entered Merci, and didn’t think to check Mercy. Pity the “I” was unchecked. I also had Vale as foreign, so couldn’t make the Babelfish count work.

5. I enjoyed this one to a point. About the same point as, in his blog, Hi says, “… TUNA would have to wait.” Realising that all four letters would have to change, I lost interest :(.

   B&J @1 “… the ultimate answer featured in the number of the puzzle too!” – explain!?

6. Thanks Hi and Xanthippe. I enjoyed this but couldn’t come to a definite conclusion on the replacements. My understanding was that we were asked to replace “all the fish” with “so long” (singular) and “thanks” (plural). So I had “SEE YOU LATER” for the “so long” bit and various other words that could at a pinch mean “thank you”. I was also unsure as to which of the words were clearly English and which were clearly foreign. Most seemed as though they could fall fall into either category depending on how strictly one interpreted “foreign”. In the end I gave up. The number of unchecked or mutually checked letters gave too many possibilities for me to consider.

   Having said all this I though the “so long and thanks for all the fish” device was fabulous and not being able to finish off completely didn’t really spoil the fun for me at all.

7. kenmac – I think Hi has mistyped the puzzle number in the title of the blog. It is actually 1442, 42 being the answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe and everythingor some such.

8. Enjoyed this but the confusion over what counts as “English” or “foreign” – CIAO is almost ‘lingua franca’ amongst teenagers here, well at least the ones I count as offspring – detracted a bit for me, as did the need to replace all four letters of TUNA and whether SEE YOU and LATER (I’m a frequent visitor to the US and never heard this) were meant to be a single valediction or two ?

   Thanks Xanthippe and to Hi for the blog.

9. Rob H – my two children use “later” all the time, neither of them are Americans as far as I know.

10. Apologies to all – I mis-numbered the blog. It is 1442 not 1432.

    This explains why I couldn’t understand Bertandjoyce’s comment at #1. Kenmac – see #7. Below is an explanation:

    Deep Thought is a computer that was created by the pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent species of beings (whose three-dimensional protrusions into our universe are ordinary white mice) to come up with the Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Deep Thought is the size of a small city. When, after seven and a half million years of calculation, the answer finally turns out to be 42, Deep Thought admonishes Loonquawl and Phouchg (the receivers of the Ultimate Answer) that “[he] checked it very thoroughly, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you is that you’ve never actually known what the question was.”

    Deep Thought does not know the ultimate question to Life, the Universe and Everything, but offers to design an even more powerful computer, Earth, to calculate it. After ten million years of calculation, the Earth is destroyed by Vogons five minutes before the computation is complete.

11. Thanks Hi. On yesterday’s BBC News website we were told about China’s new supercomputer, the Sunway Taihu Light. It apparently has 93 petaflops, whatever they are, and can perform 93 trillion calculations per second, far more than any other previous supercomputer can achieve. Arthur C. Clarke once famously said “Whatever we can imagine today will one day be possible”, so don’t bet on Deep Thought being too far away ?

    There are recurring crossword themes which I find difficult … pop groups, e.g. Pink Floyd, and trendy authors, e.g Douglas Adams. Unlike most setters, I am totally unfamiliar with most of their works. Luckily my punycomputer laptop, though light years behind Taihu Light, can still access Google and Wikipedia for me. I remember when cruciverbal purists would throw up their hands in horror at the thought of using G and W, or even, heaven forfend, Bradford !!!

12. Found the fish, guessed the book, highlighted the author and had a filled grid (BABEL and all) in a reasonable amount of time. In an unreasonable amount of time I realised that some of the fish had to be replaced by “thanks”, and in translation; this gave me DANKE, MERCI, GRA… etc. – none of which is in Chambers. After yet more time, I realised that the other fish had to be replaced by “so long” – the top right corner was a pig to sort out.

    CIAO & VALE are both in Chambers, so it seems clear to me that the 4 “thanks” are the ones that need translating, and the others (“so long”) don’t, reinforcing the ‘symmetry’.

    Thanks to Hi for the blog, and to Xanthippe for a rather superior grid construction.

13. I see your point HG. It will be interesting to see which interpretation (mercY or mercI) wins the prize. I think both are valid, as would be GRASIE. I’m not sure that something being in Chambers qualifies it as English, not needing translation, so I think there is some latitude for interpretation here. It will be interesting to hear from the setter and/or editor.

14. re post #5.

    They say never to post anything to the internet when you’ve been on the sauce but it seems that I’ve discovered that you shouldn’t post after only three hours sleep.

    I knew that “42” was the answer and I knew that the puzzle number was 1442 (since I’m in the middle of blogging 1443) – what a coincidence that Hi should type the wrong number just so that I could go and check it and make myself look a fool.

    Or maybe Hi is in league with my dog and my cat. Neither of whom felt that I deserved a full undisturbed night’s sleep.

    BTW. Thanks to Hi for the blog and to Xanthippe for the puzzle which was great fun – until the TUNA incident.

15. Thanks to Hihoba for the blog and all for the feedback. The idea was that one set (thanks) required translation and the other didn’t. With ciao and vale being in Chambers I considered these not to require translation. I can see that this was not explicit enough in the preamble and other final grids could be justified – the suggestion of an anagram of unchecked changed letters would have stopped this.
    Initially I tried to get all changed entries crossing the Douglas Adams diagonal but couldn’t manage that.
    For the anoraks the two protagonists (Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect) appeared in clues (1ac, 28ac, 8dn).

16. Role reversal here this week, as Mrs T completed the grid, spotted the fish, BABEL and the author and identified the book title, before tossing the puzzle over to me to tie up the loose ends on the grounds that I “do languages”. The isolated changes were straightforward enough, but the NE corner, where four intersect was very tricky. Thanks to Xanthippe for an excellent puzzle and for confirming that we have a correct submission! Like HolyGhost, the symmetry of two groups of four and the non-inclusion of one group in Chambers was convincing enough for me. Having said that, I have just had another look in that dictionary and whilst German “danke” is omitted the longer “danke schon” (sorry can’t work out how to do an umlaut here!) is included.

17. An enjoyable, fairly straightforward puzzle. Well, as straightforward as these get. 😉 The Babel fish leapt out, as did the partial author’s name across the diagonal, which was a major help. Getting the changes right in the NE corner was a little tricky, with so many crossing, but I got there after a little head scratching.

18. I loved this, and the theme was right up my street. I thought for a while that all the fish had to be replaced by a word for thanks, but then had a ‘lightbulb’ moment and completed the grid with a smile on my face.
    Thanks loads to Xanthippe and Hi!

19. A prophetic puzzle ? … SEE YOU LATER has been paraphrased in one paper this morning as SEE EU LATER. Ciao, Vale etc.

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