Inquisitor 1489: Blank Verse by Triton

18 comments on “Inquisitor 1489: Blank Verse by Triton”

1. 

   jonsurdy

   #1 - Tue 16th May 17, 23:39

   
   

   There was a young lady . . . from Spain?

2. 

   OPatrick

   #2 - Wed 17th May 17, 05:46

   
   

   …of Spain, I went for.

   Astoundingly, I hadn’t noticed the rhyming couplets! Still, at least it gives me a whole new layer of pleasure revisiting the puzzle. It also goes some way to explaining my feeling that, wonderful though it was, it was all just a bit too obscure. My uncertainty over some of the cluing resulted in me persuading myself for quite a while that 30D was MEAT (MAT = padding – on the rear of thE, with the whole clue being some sort of &lit), leaving ‘of’ as the removed word and a very contorted interpretation of the clue for ROTTER at 36A, involving rotater as a synonym for dancer. This in turn lead me to assume that the ending of the poem must be ‘The result of just no brain’, and hence the removal of BRAIN from the grid, with TRITON appearing either side of the gap. Fortunately as I worked through my remaining questions elsewhere in the cluing I realised that this was all just too clumsy and did eventually sort it out.

   What I enjoyed most of all about this was that when I succumbed to the temptation to Google, unsurprisingly I didn’t find any hits for the first line or two of the limerick. Being forced to work through it independently gives that little extra glow of satisfaction, even if I couldn’t really afford the extra time!

   Big thanks to TRITON and Duncan.

3. 

   kenmac

   #3 - Wed 17th May 17, 05:49

   
   

   Yes, I had that too. It certainly scans better.

   Good fun this one.

   Last one to justify was TIDDY having dismissed it several times. Oh, how I kicked myself when I realised … d’oh!

   Nice blog and great puzzle. Thanks to all.

4. 

   duncanshiell

   #4 - Wed 17th May 17, 06:55

   
   

   jonsurdy @ 1, OPatrick @ 2, kenmac ‘ 3

   Indeed, ‘There was a young lady … from Spain’ makes eminent sense. Thanks all

5. 

   Jon

   #5 - Wed 17th May 17, 08:06

   
   

   Thoroughly enjoyed this, pleased to get the limerick (and yes my first line ended with Spain), and the last line. A treat from start to end.

6. 

   Howard L

   #6 - Wed 17th May 17, 08:42

   
   

   There was an old solver from Devon
   Who thought this crossword was heaven
   Last week’s was fantastical
   With theme cartographical
   But this was its equal and then some.

   Many thanks to Triton for arguably the best Inquisitor this year and to Duncan for the blog.

7. 

   Kippax

   #7 - Wed 17th May 17, 10:21

   
   

   Blimey. All very impressive: thanks to Triton and to Duncan for explaining how it all worked. I managed to fill ~80% of the grid but this proved beyond me, particularly the clues that lacked a definition. Looking back over various scribbles, I’d managed to sketch out much of the limerick but I was still some distance from cracking this. Well done to those who did.

8. 

   David Langford

   #8 - Wed 17th May 17, 11:36

   
   

   Brilliant. Much enjoyed, though it took me some time (with many a baffled stare at TIDDY) and I didn’t see A QUATRAIN until I’d got the other rhyme words. Very glad I didn’t yield to the temptation to work through The Lure of the Limerick and suchlike references in search of some classical example.

   The deduction that Triton is a SHE didn’t occur to me, any more than that Triton must come from Spain. After all, the Young Lady can only manage four lines of verse and Triton has provably written five!

   Many thanks all round.

9. 

   Bertandjoyce

   #9 - Wed 17th May 17, 12:22

   
   

   We are kicking ourselves. Early on we replaced TIDDY with TINY. As the limerick unfolded we failed to spot IN VAIN and NO MORE. Had we looked back at TIDDY we may have struck lucky.

   Joyce spent too much time googling limericks and was rather distracted by Mick Twister’s Twitmericks.. It was good to have a look at them again even if it didn’t help with the puzzle.

   Thanks Duncan and congratulations on completing it all. Thanks Triton – we will have to try harder next time we meet!

10. 

    Neil Hunter

    #10 - Wed 17th May 17, 12:39

    
    

    How to thwart the search engine: write a new limerick. What with the sonnet, I was expecting a bonnet, and searched google in vain. But got close enough to thoroughly enjoy an ingenious challenge.

    Big thanks to Triton and duncanshiell

11. 

    OPatrick

    #11 - Wed 17th May 17, 13:56

    
    

    I’m just taking the time to fully savour the rhyming couplets, which certainly makes me more forgiving of things like using ‘might’ to clue ‘beef’ and equating tiddly with steaming (as Duncan questions). An extraordinary achievement, though it’s surely a stretch to rhyme Rouen with ‘half gone’!

12. 

    bridgesong

    #12 - Wed 17th May 17, 18:15

    
    

    This was the first Inquisitor I had attempted for quite a while, and it was just as well I had a week’s holiday in which to complete it. I found it very hard to work out which clues (not solutions as the instructions said) were lacking definitions, especially as it was impossible to be sure where the individual clues ended or started. But perseverance paid off and eventually I worked out most of the verse (but lacking four as a definition for tidy) and saw a quatrain and Triton in the grid. I think it was a remarkable achievement and I can only wonder how long it took to compile.

13. 

    Trebor

    #13 - Wed 17th May 17, 21:05

    
    

    Another belter after last weeks classic too! Steady stream of clue solving starting with electoral and frontman but a bit light on the very start until “There was a” immediately made me think of limericks. Next hold up was thinking (for no good reason!) that the missing definitions would appear at the end, in sequence themselves but out of sequence with the extra words… then further held up on Senorita by thinking they’d all be single words (Meat for beef was pencilled in by this time). A friend suggested young lady from Spain and the whole thing fell into place, guessing the remaining rhymes and reverse engineering to fit clues. Great stuff!!

14. 

    HolyGhost

    #14 - Thu 18th May 17, 15:45

    
    

    I thought this was (mild oath) hard. When I’d sorted out SENORITA, IN VAIN etc, I had the limerick running through my head but kept hitting a wall in the last line … and then the three syllables magically arrived.

          a difficult puzzle from Triton
          with couplets for clues that did frighten
          but at long last I saw
          that the line count was four
          like someone had just turned the light on

    Thanks go to him/her, and Duncan for the blog.

15. 

    Terrier

    #15 - Thu 18th May 17, 22:16

    
    

    I’ve expressed disappointment before about very clever puzzles which can be solved without understanding their full complexity and I thought for a while that this was going to be another example. Once I’d got SENORITA and worked out the first line of the limerick, the final word of the last line had to rhyme with “Spain”, and once I’d realised the poet was Triton one change would give TRAIN. Sorted! That’s obviously the last word and the poem’s about the tragic end of a Spanish Anna Karenina; just a matter of filling the rest of the grid then. But once I’d done that I had a crack at working out the full limerick, essentially for the fun of it, and what a good job I did!

    Thanks to Triton for one of the best puzzles of the year so far.

16. 

    Triton

    #16 - Sat 20th May 17, 13:22

    
    

    I’m gratified that the puzzle seems generally to have been enjoyed – particularly since writing the clues was a challenge that on more than one occasion I started to regret giving myself! Thanks to all who have commented, and to Duncan for the blog, though please note…

    Some crossword setters are of female gender,
    And many in their ranks are blessed with youth;
    A few perhaps call home a hacienda –
    But I am British, male, and long in tooth.

17. 

    Kippax

    #17 - Mon 22nd May 17, 07:35

    
    

    By chance I’ve just learned that Edward Lear was born on May 12 – was it a coincidence that this puzzle appeared very close to this date?

18. 

    PeeDee

    #18 - Thu 1st Jun 17, 09:30

    
    

    I filled in the grid but couldn’t see how to finish off. I was convinced the verse was going to start “There was a young lady from…”. I really should have connected SENORITA with YOUNG LADY FROM SPAIN. In retrospect it seems harder to miss that to spot, but I managed to miss it anyway.

    Thanks for a super puzzle and excellent blog.

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