Inquisitor 1466: Lucky Number by Triton

38 comments on “Inquisitor 1466: Lucky Number by Triton”

1. I thought this was a rare editorial lapse. I don’t have anything against the puzzle itself, which had some inventive cluing (perhaps verging on being too inventive, but I’m not complaining about that), but having no knowledge of roulette I was completely stumped by the end game. Normally when this happens it’s time to reread the preamble, but other than the vague reference in the title I can’t see anything that could have pointed me in the right direction. I’ve come to trust that patience and logic will always get me there in the end, but on this occasion I stared at it nightly for most of the week, and feel I could have done so for a year, with nothing jumping out. Chambers doesn’t have any mention of this meaning for impair, nor any reference to manque. I can understand that the setter may not be able to judge how easy it will be for solvers to spot the theme, but I felt that there should have been some hint at least given to where to look.

2. Having stopped fuming quite so much I thought I’d make a more positive contribution – the clue for 30D is a nice touch, with the middle of gaggle being two gees and the middle of skein an e.

3. Oh, and the s in 15A is the character leading several, sailors and seeking.

4. Nicely clued, but the end game foxed me completely. One has got used to abstruse end games taking ten times as long as the puzzle in The Listener (one reason this Duck has become largely detached from it) but this Triton puzzle shows that The Inquisitor has strayed a long way from its original intentions when it appeared in the Indy Mag in the 80s. If there is a market for this sort of thing, fine, but we really could do with some easier special advanced puzzles, as well as Azed. The main exercise in a crossword puzzle should be about solving clues (shouldn’t it?). A final twist is fine, but a crossword for which solving relatively easy clues is merely an entrée to a much harder additional puzzle isn’t what I am looking for — but each to their own!

5. Yes, I too am a total roulette virgin, so this was another puzzle where gridstaring took hours longer than gridfilling. Having googled four-letter roulette terms, I was none the wiser. I came to the conclusion that the four letter substitution had to do with PLACING ONE’S BET, and was thus looking at CHIP, but this didn’t help. I arrived, correctly, at 3 being the correct number, by totally false logic … 1 had OPEN in its clue and 5, 7, and 9 had CLOSE in theirs. So I listed all the 4-letter substitutions I could think of for POCK, and decided that CALL did the trick, since Chambers told me CALLET = prostitute. I presumed that one “called” the number one was betting on. Then finally BALL swam into my ken, and Google confirmed that what I had always thought of as a SLOT on a roulette wheel is actually, and curiously, called a POCKET. Had the theme been snooker, and the grid a table, then it would have made sense straight away.

   As we approach the end of 2016, does anyone else share my view that the overall difficulty level of IQs this year has been higher than in previous years ?

6. I do think that the overall difficulty of Inquisitors has increased, though slowly over several years. It must become more difficult for editor and setters to find new themes as time goes on, so that might explain it.

   I was sorry to read about the difficulties people had with the end game of this puzzle, particularly OPatrick’s heartfelt fume! I suppose I was just lucky to spot the theme very quickly from previous experience, and I see that a rather more obvious hint than “Lucky Number” in the title or in the preamble might have been in order. I still think that this was a good and fair puzzle with an original theme (unless someone tells me roulette has been done before!)

   Thanks for the information about POCKET (#5) which I hadn’t spotted, and all the esses in 15A (#3)

7. Everything solved, including the roulette references but the endgame remained a total mystery (month of Sundays seems apt), so well done on spotting what was needed.

8. I too completed the grid, worked out the roulette link (with Google assistance) and then deduced which five clues needed to be examined. And then stared and stared. Well done to those who worked out what was required. Thanks for explaining ANOINTING and RASHER. I’d guessed that they were right but had no idea why. Same as OPatrick @2, I smiled at the wordplay for 30d.

   In terms of difficulty, I’ve only been attempting to solve the IQ for the last five years or so but the number I have managed to complete has risen each year (20 so far for 2016, including 2 wins!) so I wouldn’t consider them to have got tougher. I’d hope that this increase was mainly due to my improving skills as a solver 🙂

   Thanks to Triton and Hihoba

9. I eventually twigged that the ball should go in POCKET, as it made logical sense and was the only place I could find in the grid where the modification left real words. I didn’t spot the four LOSEs and the WIN, so congratulations to Hihoba for getting that. I assumed that the appearance of zappy/no suggestion of slowing/carrying no money/close/enclosed in small space in the relevant clues was meant to describe the movement of a roulette ball and I wonder if anyone else did the same. Probably not.

   I agree with Quixote that these days Listener puzzles often involve a 60 minute solve of the clues followed by hours of (fruitless) staring at the grid, and I think it would be a pity if the IQ follows the same trend.

10. Fairly straightforward clues, and a theme that revealed itself with a bit of googling. I put the BALL in the right place more by luck than judgement I suspect, but got there in the end. I must admit that I’ve got more interest in filling the grid than in any end-game, and tend to swiftly lose interest at that point unless it’s something relatively straightforward.

11. We completed the grid and worked out the roulette link. Googling a roulette wheel gave us the five clues. Then……….. nothing! We are still catching up on IQs after having been without internet access for 4 weeks, so being short of time we checked one of the well known crossword help sites for some ideas. Given a hint, we sorted it out.

    In terms of difficulty – we have been solving IQs from the beginning and have completed all grids but we have occasionally missed the end-game – both of us feel that the levels haven’t changed but sometimes feel that the end-games are a little more tricky. We do like solving the end-game however obscure it is, but we are not sure we would have worked out this one if we had spent more time looking.

    Thanks for explaining ANOINTING and RASHER – as Kippax said, we knew they were correct but not why. Congratulations Kippax on your wins – we really should start entering our completed solutions!

    Well done Hihoba for finding the end-game and thanks to Triton for a good challenge. Better luck next time – we hope!

12. I found the theme very quickly, spotting ROUGE and then seeing that IMPAIR and MANQUÉ would fit in with the few entries I’d made in the TR & BL quadrants. As others have said, ANOINTING was tough to parse (but I managed, without help) as was RASHER (which I didn’t).

    After a couple of evenings spent staring at the grid and wondering where to place BALL, I found the correct location by trial and error. (I was unaware that the slots in a roulette wheel were known as pockets – nice touch.)

    Having contacted my Listener pal about RASHER, I sent him the 5 clues and the preamble. After some time, he came up with “CLOSE” in 7d and then I found “disCLOSEs” in 5a and “enCLOSEd” in 9d. As I was looking through the puzzle for other occurrences of “close” (there’s one in (13) as it happens), there is of course the one in the preamble: “close viewing”. What caught my eye was “close vieWINg”, and then (other eye?) “cLOSE vieWINg”. And that was that.

    I’m sorry to say that I didn’t enjoy this a great deal – I suppose largely owing to a short grid-fill and a very long endgame, and a couple of other wordplays (14a, 18a) taking their time to figure out. Nevertheless, BALL in POCKET wasn’t the only nice touch: for example, there are 36 clues and no cell starts both an across & a down entry so the numbers 1-36 are those that appear in the grid (and as possible winners on a roulette wheel).

    Thanks go to Hi & Triton.

13. Thanks, Hi @ 6, I’m sure you are right about setters and editors trying to find new themes … my own take on the recent development of a tough endgame piled … like Pelion on Ossa … on to a preliminary, straightforward, puzzle, is that it stems DIRECTLY from the TV programme “Only Connect”, and, to a lesser extent, “Hive Minds”. As we know, eminent cruciverbalists compete brilliantly on both. Some of the connections which teams on those programmes are required to make are fiendishly obscure. Working out such complex relationships is, increasingly, what IQ and Listener endgames require us less stellar solvers to do these days. In my early Listener days I often had to trudge up to the library and hope to find an appropriate reference book. These days, often the combined might of Wikipedia and Google is needed, and even then does not always resolve matters … as with my four-letter roulette terms search !
    Tempora mutantur etc.

14. OPatrick (#2) I just understood your two gees and e reference. Sorry – a bit dim i’m afraid. It was an even cleverer clue than I thought!

15. I am actually quite relieved to see others felt the same way about this puzzle. I am regularly getting to the point where I complete the grid and am then left awaiting divine inspiration for what the hell I’m then supposed to do.

    If I were being polite I’d say it’s becoming more esoteric. But I’m not. The Inquisitor is in danger of disappearing up its own fundament.

16. PS. For what may be the only time in my life I find myself in entire agreement with Quixote.

17. Contributing to the chorus: I filled the grid happily enough (though unsure about the construction of RASHER), spotted the roulette references, identified the five clues and then got stuck in a maze of dead ends, mostly acrostic. (ZONQI? Place the Z of Zero on the first Q? But there’s only one Q and it doesn’t work anyway. And so on seemingly forever …)

18. I just wanted to add a more positive note in defence of the Inquisitor. Some endgames work better than others (this one perhaps less so), but my personal view is that the IQ provides consistently good entertainment and the variety of imaginative new constructions and techniques is deeply impressive.

19. What Kippax said.

20. I really enjoyed this and managed to complete this but not without a fair bit of googling. When in ignorance I run what look like thematic terms and words from the grid together in google and doing so with rouge, impair and manque led me direct to the roulette theme.

    Like Hihoba I managed to spot the win/lose dichotomy in the relevant clues and the four-letter word to go into clue 3D. So, not too bad this time in terms of sorting out the end game. I am pretty much ambivalent about the latter – some seem really convoluted – but I do agree with the point that the clues should not just be that simple and desiged solely as a route into a complex end game.

21. As a final comment on perceived difficulty, I agree entirely with what prizewinner Kippax says about IQ’s entertainment, construction and technique. Consistently impressive.

    However, what it all surely boils down to is HOW LONG is each of us happy to spend on solving, or not solving, our favourite puzzle every weekend !

    For me, the right level has always been between, say, 60 minutes and four hours. I have the luxury of more time on my hands than most, having now been retired for thirty years. You would be tempted to say that my elderly brain is not coping as well as it used to, now that many IQs and Listeners are taking me days, rather than hours, to finally crack … or not crack. But some of the comments above imply that others are spending longer than they previously did, too ?

    Like any other high-quality product, IQ must ultimately depend on the brand-loyalty of its regular “customers”. As Toblerone recently discovered, changing the product, even slightly, will disaffect some of that valuable core.

    If some of us are hankering after a Veyron or Lamborghini, rather than the Jaguars or Land Rovers which we and our friends have happily driven for years, then there’s always Magpie to move up to ?

    NOTE: These car names are used only to illustrate a point. I have just taken delivery of a power-assisted tricycle, which will be my only mode of transport, once I have found out how the damned thing works !

22. @21 – I agree with that to a large extent but my point was that I could literally have stared at the filled grid and the words IMPAIR, MARQUE and ROUGE for a decade and still had no idea what to do – I guess the ball fell kindly for the blogger in remembering a Fleming novel but I just don’t think there was any fair indication to those of us who hadn’t as to where to go next, and that seems to be the norm more and more these days

23. If the publication of this puzzle (which as a non-roulette-expert I thoroughly enjoyed solving, especially IMHO Clue of the Year) is to be viewed as “an editorial lapse” (comment 1 above), then maybe I should make some more of the same. Despite the weekly publication of my contact address, I receive very little correspondence – about the puzzles, at least – so I’ve learned a great deal from the above comments: many thanks for them.

    All of your comments are noted, as always. The endgame-staring issue is one which is often discussed by the solving team, and will be discussed again at our team meeting next month. That I got the BALL in the POCKET pretty quickly probably biased my decision to publish (and also the decision not to list the clues 1-36 as opposed to Across/Down).

    On difficulty: I’m not allowed to quote numbers, but the weekly entry has increased significantly since September/October. I’m not smug about it, but…how come, if the puzzles are getting harder?

    Thank you all, once again, for valued input.

    John

24. Thanks first and foremost to Hihoba for the review.

    I’m sorry that some of you found the endgame tough, and sorrier still that you didn’t like the puzzle. I seem to remember that at various points during its production (we’re going back a couple of years) the clues were listed in the order 1-36, the title was ‘Wheelspin’ and the word to be inserted was described as having ‘four letters, or five si vous voulez‘ (although BALLE would really have needed to go into POCHE for that to work) – perhaps such elements would have offered more help to those unfamiliar with the game. For those who were able to identify the theme, I had hoped that the rather stilted expression ‘close viewing’ would stick out when it came to narrowing the five clues down to one.

    Thank you for your comments, both positive and negative, and thanks to those who attempted the puzzle. I dish out enough criticism in my own blog, so I need to be able to take it too! I hope there was at least something in there to enjoy…

25. John H, A significant increase in entry numbers has to be the perfect answer to my worry about brand loyalty being eroded. Maybe the puzzles are getting easier, not harder ? Or, just as likely, you have found a rich vein of talent among the readership of the new host publication. In any case, it’s good news for IQ, and endorsement of your sound judgment.

    Hats off to all concerned, not least to those who unravel the Byzantine complexity of these endgames with such apparent ease !

    As Hughie Green used to say, I mean that most sincerely.

26. Quixote @4 : Writing clues – whether for barred puzzles, blocked puzzles or competitions – is my ‘thing’. If an ‘open to all setters’ outlet were available for non-themed or repeat-themed (Letters Latent, Wrong Number, Spoonerisms etc) puzzles along the lines of the Azed ‘plains’ and ‘specials’ that would be marvellous. As things stand, I’m just extremely grateful that IQ and EV provide an opportunity for an ‘unknown’ setter like myself to gain exposure and improve my abilities.

27. Don’t forget the Crossword Centre, Triton; Derek Harrison is always happy to accept puzzles and, though there is no financial reward, the feedback is excellent and the wait for publication is very short.

28. “a rare editorial lapse”, note 🙂

    And it wasn’t the puzzle itself – I truly enjoyed the solving process, unpicking some intricately constructed clues including some real gems. I can also now appreciate the quality of the construction, with the roulette theme playing out on several levels. But the sort of hints that Triton describes above would, I feel, have bridged the gap that was just too yawning for me.

    I really can’t judge if the IQs have become harder, or easier, though my solving success rate has certainly risen, mainly, I think, because I’ve come to trust that perseverance will pay off. What I would say is that I don’t think more entries necessarily indicates more people finding that they can complete the puzzles – I know that the rare occasions when I enter my solutions tends to be when I think the solve was particularly tough and I always have a suspicion that lots of other people are thinking exactly the same.

29. Triton @24: “the rather stilted expression ‘close viewing’” did indeed “stick out”, but I’m still unsure what it indicates. Maybe viewing the ‘close’ (i.e. last letters) in the clues? – soon dismissed.
    I’d have thought that some familiarity with roulette counts as general knowledge (or at least is highly Google-able given the three unclued entries). A few puzzles back, Willy Wonka, was the theme – now, I have never read/watched any of Roald Dahl’s creations but with ‘cultural awareness’ there was enough of a way in to figure out what was going on. Pretty much the same with your puzzle, but just not enough direction to identify clue 3 as the one to pick out.
    Having the title ‘Wheelspin’ and listing the clues in the order 1-36 would have been better (editorial interference?), even though it wouldn’t have helped me.

    John H @23: a quick solve by ‘the team’ can sometimes let a tricky puzzle with vague direction through, as it’s not vague to them. And I don’t think they are getting harder, but the mix of difficulty/enjoyment seems to have shifted away from ‘1-2-2-2-3’ towards ‘1-1-2-3-3’.

30. Thank you Triton for replying. I wouldn’t necessarily want IQ and EV setters to turn out the Azed repertoire and I am delighted that you have two good outlets for your puzzles. But you miss my point, which is that IQ once upon a time (before it was called IQ) managed for several years to be a puzzle nearer the Azed end of the spectrum for complexity, whereas now it seems to emulate The Listener, which itself has become more complex. Azed is usually at the easier end of advanced special cryptics, but there are few other setters now who seem to want to pitch puzzles at that level.

31. I’ve just read all the responses on this thread and it’s always interesting to see the views generated. My own views, for what they are worth, is that the difficulty levels of the IQs don’t seem to have been any different from previous years (though 1431 Life after Death was very hard if I recall). Indeed, I prefer those at the difficult end of the spectrum, even if it means I’m not able to complete. Though admittedly the odd easier one is welcome when I’ve less time on my hands.

    Regarding end-games, while there are some which work better than others, I love the originality and wit that can be packaged by the setters. The recent Hollibobs Halloween one being a brilliant example.

    In summary, I think the setters do an incredible job. There’s not one IQ this year I can say I haven’t enjoyed. For 60p it is the bargain of the week.

    I almost forgot to add. Loved the roulette theme, twigged on the hidden words. Shame the editor wouldn’t allow 1-36 numbering, that would have been a cheeky novelty. I hadn’t realised there were 36 clues. Nice! My thanks to Hihoba for the blog and also for clearing up 2D, 4D and 30D which I couldn’t parse. 30D is lovely, thank you Triton.

32. Quixote @30 : I understand what you are saying – my point is that I would dearly like to pitch some plain and themed barred puzzles around the Azed range of the difficulty spectrum (and I don’t necessarily mean puzzles using the established Azed themes themselves, but ones which are essentially PDM-less with the emphasis on the cluing, and where a repeat theme is welcomed by solvers as an ‘old friend’ – or enemy!). However, there seems to be no outlet for barred puzzles which difficulty-wise are roughly on a par with the tougher blocked puzzles (when I used to blog the ST Cryptic as well as Azed the former would often take me longer to solve and fully parse than the latter). The host newspapers promote the IQ and EV as ‘extra tough’ puzzles, a description which I reckon could probably only be applied to three of this year’s Azeds (2285, 2291 and 2318).

    John N @27 : Thanks for the suggestion – I’ll give it a go. It’s the fame that motivates me rather than the financial reward :), and if the turn-round time is short it perhaps gives me a chance to try something a bit different.

33. Well I guess there’s extra tough and extra tough! An AZ special will be extra tough for those making their way up the difficulty ladder, but I wonder who at the paper has decided what extra tough means. It just seems to me that what I would call the extra extra tough brigade have taken over some slots that were once extra tough. It’s become a sort of macho thing. Fine, if that is so, but as I say — each to their own! No more from me, promise!

34. HG@29, I was trying to think of previous puzzles that others might have found frustrating, in the way that I found this one. The Elimination Contest, with the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theme, I think illustrates a subtle difference from this one:

    In the Elimination Contest, even if you don’t recognise the theme you could find all of the first names of the losers and the organisers of the competition without any guessing. At that point you might have had to google to find their surnames (I find it impossible to imagine not having this innate knowledge, like trying to imagine what it is like to be a bat, but let’s assume this is possible for argument’s sake) but there is no doubt what it is you would need to google. In this case, I didn’t know what it was I would be googling for, so it would have been more of a fishing expedition. I don’t really now why I didn’t try random combinations of possible words – IMPAIR seemed the only obvious option and although GOUGE looked to be a better match to it, ROUGE was another obvious choice. I was finding it hard to think beyond MANFUL and MANAUS, but IMPAIR and ROUGE together look like they should have bought up the theme. I think it probably comes down to where you draw your own personal lines. I don’t mind googling when I know what I’m looking for, but googling in the hope of something popping up leaves me feeling dissatisfied – though I know I’ve done so in the past.

35. The Listener series is also open to all though the puzzles are themed of course.

36. Enjoyed this. I am not especially proud of the fact that I more or less know the order of the wheel of by heart! Having said that, I don’t believe that was such a huge edge for me; going to the Wikipedia page for roulette provided the three words and hence the relevant clues. From then I decided the 4 letter word had to be ball, and that only pocket could be suitably changed. A further search on the wiki page confirmed the specific relevant meaning of pocket (this I didn’t know!). Completely failed to spot the wins and loses in the clues, and whilst that annoyed me for a bit, I just moved on.

    Thanks

37. Thanks Triton and Hihoba. I really enjoyed this, and failed to finish. Personally I don’t expect to finish every IQ and so don’t feel aggrieved when one is beyond my knowledge and ability. In fact being hard so finish is sort of the point for a puzzle like the IQ is it not? There is no shortage of “easy” crosswords available.

    I did get the roulette connection but only by Googling of random combinations of words thrown up by word-search software. To me this went beyond “checking reference material” and was more akin to plain old cheating.

    My best guess at the five clues was “open” or “close” which most of them contained. I guessed BALL but had no real idea where to put it. I only knew balls went in pockets in pool, billiards and snooker. I also guessed at ZERO which was the only roulette number missing from the clue numbering.

    JH – please keep up these behaviour lapses of yours!

38. I’m slightly perplexed by John H’s comments in the i today – I don’t see anyone above saying that the clues were “easier than average”, the closest I can see is ‘straightforward’, which I took to mean that there was no extra step involved in the solving, such as extra letters. Indeed, I don’t think the puzzle itself needed defending, only, perhaps, the decision to give such minimal help with the endgame. I wonder if anyone had noticed the 36 uniquely numbered clues before they’d finished the solve, for example?

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