Inquisitor 1481: The Listener Crossword by Nimrod

22 comments on “Inquisitor 1481: The Listener Crossword by Nimrod”

1. 

   OPatrick

   #1 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 05:40

   
   

   Ah, Nimrod – an equal mix of pleasure and trepidation. You know it’s going to be an unsettling experience; he has a knack of breaking the normal rhythm of cluing. Almost none of the clues were easy, some of them instant pleasures as soon as they fell (34A PEEL-AND-EAT, 35A MIXER-TAP, 14D MANTELPIECE…), others I’ve had to come back to over the week to convince myself, but I think I did in the end with all of them. NO-BALLED was the one that niggled the longest, but I find now looking back at it a week later that even this, with the obscure synonym for BUG, has mellowed for me.

   At 8D I think the correct choice is CALX. It took me a long time to spot it, but my sad-face notation has been crossed out and replaced with a questionmark/happy-face – the X is clued by the ‘by’. My best explanation for the ‘for Listener’ in 1A is as an instruction to read Gateshead out as Gate’s head.

   Great crossword, great blog. Thanks all round.

2. 

   OPatrick

   #2 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 05:48

   
   

   …and I’ve just seen another clue that’s changed a question-mark/sad-face to a full-on happy-face – in 28D, thanks to Duncan’s thorough explanations, I’ve suddenly read the ALL and the O together as ‘all or nothing’ – those little pennies keep on dropping.

3. 

   duncanshiell

   #3 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 07:44

   
   

   OPatrick @ 1

   Thanks – X for ‘by’ is a hurdle I have fallen at before and probably will do so again in the future. I now see from the dictionary that CALX is also referenced under Calcium Oxide where it is defined as ‘lime’

4. 

   cruciverbophile

   #4 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 08:34

   
   

   Very enjoyable with some lovely misdirection and not one to frighten the horses too much. I found this easier than JH’s Guardian puzzle on the same day! I put EAVES in the top row but didn’t actually remove it from the top, which was careless.

   I parsed 1 across the same way as OPatrick. Gateshead = G isn’t really on for barred puzzles so the homophone got round this and added a further layer of misdirection at the same time.

5. 

   cruciverbophile

   #5 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 08:35

   
   

   Sorry, meant I put EAVES in the bottom row but didn’t actually remove it from the top.

6. 

   Jon

   #6 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 09:27

   
   

   Another one who failed to remove EAVES from the top row after moving (or rather copying it) to the bottom. Oh well. That I should have done so is obvious in retrospect.

   Overall not as difficult as I expected from Nimrod, and pleased to get through most (or as it turns out not all) of the endgame.

7. 

   Kippax

   #7 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 10:23

   
   

   Based on the comments above perhaps I ought to have given this a proper try. In truth I was frightened off by the combination of setter plus baffling (to me) preamble, assuming that it would be way beyond my level.

8. 

   David Langford

   #8 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 12:49

   
   

   I too was terrified by the combination of setter and preamble, but was lucky enough to see MIXER(TAP) and HAZEL(NUT) quite early, leading to a useful guess at the lengths and positions of the Symmetrical Six. When the blanks all seemed to be in the bottom row and I looked hard at the top, the EAVES and the penny dropped simultaneously. Best red herring: expecting one of the bugs to be an insect, I spent a lot of time trying to make 32A start with FLY. Then more time staring at 8D trying to choose between CALP, CALX and the plausible construction CALO (CaO with a dash of L in it), a musical abbreviation that sturdily refused to match the definition. But “by”=X eventually dawned. That one always trips me.

   Wow, I finished a Nimrod puzzle! Maybe for the first time … As usual, thanks all round.

9. 

   David Langford

   #9 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 12:52

   
   

   PS to duncanshiell: grid has superfluous bars in (E)DIT and FET(A).

10. 

    duncanshiell

    #10 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 13:20

    
    

    David Langford @ 9

    Oops – sorry. Amazingly the omission of 6 down [balanced by 32 down] didn’t affect any other clue number and I usually check that any grid I have constructed is OK by looking at the value of the last clue number.

    I’m afraid I’m not going to change the grids now. I’ve put an apology into the body of the blog.

11. 

    Bertandjoyce

    #11 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 13:42

    
    

    Our solving experience was very similar to David Langford@8. What helped was the expectation that John would make sure that the final grid would have some symmetry which enabled us to anticipate where the gaps would be.

    We can only remember sending in a completed grid on a couple of occasions so the fact that we couldn’t be bothered to erase EAVES was not a worry!

    Thanks Nimrod and Duncan.

12. 

    Neil Hunter

    #12 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 13:53

    
    

    First time of reading, I thought I’d get nowhere. However, I kept nibbling away over the week, and bit by bit the corners fell. Some great clues, and some very tricky ones, though I don’t think I’ll ever understand quite how 2D works.

    Loved the eaves dropping (has anyone pointed out that the various bugs form a ladder?), but didn’t work out the bug connection…

    Thanks to Nimrod, and to duncanshiell for some very helpful parsing.

13. 

    Bertandjoyce

    #13 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 13:58

    
    

    Back again – we have just looked at our completed puzzle and realised that we failed to parse 32ac. Well done Duncan for sorting it out. As Neil Huner has said @12 – very helpful.

14. 

    HolyGhost

    #14 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 15:27

    
    

    Even when I’d figured out the somewhat tortuous wordplay at 1a, and pinned down the X at the end of CALX, the connection between the 6 thematic items didn’t jump out — until I stepped out of the shower the following morning and for no good reason I thought “BUG”.

    Some good clues, but also a couple of stinkers (and I don’t mean ‘difficult’). Overlooking “Grumpy” and “Happy” clueing MRS, I think that “our Oly” for ED in 25a is poor; and equating DIY with “prefabricated” in 32a isn’t great in my book — my DIY consists of painting the dining room and fixing hooks in walls to hang mirrors, etc. instead of hiring a workman.
    {Duncan: your wordplay has DAILY, not DIY.}

    Nevertheless, thanks to Nimrod & Duncan for a neat puzzle & the blog.

15. 

    duncanshiell

    #15 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 15:44

    
    

    HolyGhost @ 14

    Oh dear!, it’s not been a good day on the proof reading front. I’ve changed DAILY to DIY now – thanks

16. 

    OPatrick

    #16 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 17:35

    
    

    HolyGhost has picked out most of my remaining grumpy faces (am I right in thinking that MRS at 14A is the plural form confirmed by Collins?), though I came round to prefabricated cluing DIY, I think by flicking back and forth between the definitions and deciding, incrementally, that they matched well enough: ‘designed to be built by an amateur’ = ‘composed of standardised parts to be assembled later’. I’m not 100% sure that I like the clue for SCUT at 36A – I think I do, but whenever I try to work out if it makes sense it seems to slip away from me and I find myself going in circles.

17. 

    Murray Glover

    #17 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 17:47

    
    

    I spotted the two EAVES fairly early on and realised that the top one had to go into its corresponding spaces below, yielding real words in both cases. As a keen fan of the Sopranos, I hunted in the grid for likely words … discounted the three EELs, noticed HAZEL, COB and PARA, (all types of nut) and ANT (a bug) and couldn’t find the Mafia favourite, WIRE. But was interested both in TAP and TAPE. My old Bradford only had TAP and VEX under “bug” but that was enough to direct me to the centre three columns, and quickly FLU, FAD and NUT. Which left me, for several days stuck on 25a. Only on Friday did I realise the hyphenated NO-BALLED met the definition, and found that both a big bug and a nob were “important people”

    However, one thing I have learned, from early days, is that a parsing guess is usually fatal. And, on this occasion, I had pencilled in two such in the top r.h. corner : ESTOPS = “they signal the end” and TALC (a compound found in Dolomitic limestone.)

    So, in the words of the song that rang out every time a Gladiators contestant fell into the safety net, “Another One Bites The Dust”
    Vae Victis etc.

18. 

    Terrier

    #18 - Wed 22nd Mar 17, 20:27

    
    

    After a DNF last week, the last setter we wanted to see was Nimrod and the intro suggested he would be taking no prisoners, but he proved to be surprisingly benign. In a solo effort I managed to fill the grid in a 2.5-hour session, without worrying too much about missing elements of wordplay, and when you have a row of blank cells at the bottom you can be pretty sure that letters from the corresponding ones at the top will have to fall to fill it. That was “eavesdrop” sorted, which chimed with the title, so I left it at that. On resumption next day, I wasted some time looking for synonyms of “ear” before giving up and trying “bug”, which yielded a couple of quick results but most were obscure synonyms which took some finding, whether I looked in the grid or the wordplay. They wouldn’t have done if I had followed my usual practice of highlighting as I go along, as that way the central column “ladder” would have quickly revealed itself. It didn’t help either that for a long time I suspected that TAG in 18d might be one of the bugs.

    Thanks to Nimrod for a fair challenge and some very clever clues, of which my favourite was 16a, and I can’t see a problem with 14a, which presumably refers to the “Mr Men” books for children.

19. 

    HolyGhost

    #19 - Thu 23rd Mar 17, 10:31

    
    

    OPatrick @16: My take on 36a (‘Share’ with initial S – or without it?) was “share” = CUT, “with initial S”, becomes SCUT; and “share, without initial S” becomes “hare” = SCUT.

20. 

    OPatrick

    #20 - Fri 24th Mar 17, 06:42

    
    

    HG, I can see how the clue works as you’ve explained it, but where I think I start going round in circles is when I then read the answer as a further self-referential instruction: the S is to be cut. I don’t know if this was an intentional layer of convolution on Nimrod’s part, or my own unnecessary complication.

21. 

    Terrier

    #21 - Sat 25th Mar 17, 10:45

    
    

    I liked this puzzle even more when the chocs arrived yesterday (Friday), ahead of the paper with the results!

22. 

    PeeDee

    #22 - Wed 5th Apr 17, 10:55

    
    

    I filled about half the grid and then ground to a halt. I wish I had persevered a little longer, but I have gotten so used to being defeated by JH over the years I think gave up out of habit.

    Having seen Duncan’s solution I am very impressed with the puzzle’s construction. Very elegant in idea and execution. Thanks to all.

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