I initially thought that this was Encota‘s debut in this series, but I checked and saw that his/her first Inquisitor puzzle was published early last September.
Preamble: In 32 clues the wordplay generates an extra letter not to be entered in the grid; read in clue order, these letters assist with the theme. Six answers must (appropriately) traverse the grid before entry (thus avoiding potential clashes); each entry being associated with a thematic word. Two clues have interchanged definitions: the thematic way they are entered defines the entire crossword and they must be appropriately highlighted.
Some of my partner’s family came for the weekend, so this puzzle took second place. But I did manage a quick run through the down clues before they arrived, and glanced at a smattering of across clues after they’d all gone to bed. This yielded the first potential clash: GIVER at 29d with KING at 34a. Hmm.
After shovelling snow for about an hour on Sunday morning, we managed to wave goodbye to one lot, and then I sat down with a steaming mug of coffee and the crossword – at least I had something to occupy myself indoors if the weather didn’t make outside look like a rewarding option. The second potential clash soon emerged, with FIVE at 12a not fitting in with either 8d or 9d – but KING did (and was symmetrically disposed) with FIVE fitting where KING had been. The KING move made me think of chess, and the puzzle title could stand for “not check” so I thought we might be building to some configuration of pieces in an endgame (despite FIVE not really harmonising with that idea). But we weren’t.
After lunch, answers came in a steady stream – having the long answers in the top two rows and the bottom two rows, along with half a dozen of the longer down answers, helped me sort out many of the shorter ones without too much trouble. It became clear that most of the clues that remained to be solved were either ones whose answers “traverse the grid” or the two with “interchanged definitions”. And I had enough of the extra letters from wordplay to be confidant that they would read NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNERS ONE HUNDRED YEARS ON … but resisted the temptation to pursue that for the moment. TUDOR & FLOYD swapped places and now sat at 20a & 25a – I knew the latter from the track “Pretty Boy Floyd” on Sweetheart of the Rodeo, an album by The Byrds from my student days. I exchanged PICKLES & TUESDAY (top left & bottom right), and that just left the intertwined 22a and 15d, which quickly fell out as SETTERS & CAPTAIN.
Google led me to the Red Cross as the relevant Nobel prize winners, so we need to highlight those last two entries in RED – the grid was complete but there were a few loose ends to tidy up. Red Setters was immediate, quickly followed by Captain Scarlet, so now on to the thematic (red) associations of those answers each of which traverses (crosses) the grid. I think that the order I got them was Ruby Tuesday, Pink Floyd, Tudor Rose, King Crimson, Cherry Pickers, and, after five minutes of head-scratching, Maroon 5.
Thanks Encota. A stiffer challenge would have been a welcome diversion whilst at home waiting for the roads to be passable – but quite entertaining.
Oh, I nearly forgot. The title. By coincidence, on the Friday before the puzzle I went to the exhibition ‘Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?’ at the Wellcome Collection in London, and one of the first items on display was the flag of the Red Cross – and on the accompanying note it said “not to be confused with the Swiss flag, which has the colours reversed”. So the title indicates not Switzerland using that country’s IVR code, namely CH.
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Clue | Answer | Extra letter |
Wordplay |
| 1 | We colts never made the distance of just over a furlong (11, 2 words) | TWELVE SCORE | N | [WE COLTS NEVER]* |
| 10 | One local with ranges of opinions lacking right to be seen boring (13) | UNSPECTACULAR | O | UN (one, dialect) SPECTRA (ranges of opinions) − R(ight) OCULAR (to be seen) |
| 11 | Old play the supreme controller always unveiled with ballet move (8) | EMPERISE | B | (s)EMPE(r) (always) BRISÉ (ballet move) |
| 12 | When high this may be congratulations received at tea-time? (4) | FIVE | high FIVE (slap hands … in congratulation) | |
| 13 | Hesitation after local drain came to the surface once (4) | SWUM | E | UM (hesitation) after SEW (drain, dialect) |
| 15 | Library of Congress advocates return to House (4) | CRAB | L | LC (Library of Congress) BAR< (advocates) |
| 16 | Accompanist emerges from trance? On the contrary (4) | COMA | P | (ac)COMPA(nist) |
| 18 | Natural adult men due to change (6) | UNMADE | E | [A(dult) MEN DUE]* |
| 19 | Building blocks, say, when following half the alphabet? (5) | ATOMS | A | AS (when) after A TO M (half the alphabet) |
| 20 | Take plane across Ohio to date “Pretty Boy”? (5) | FLOYD | FLY (take plane) around O(hio) D(ate) | |
| 22 | Cook for one squeezing King Edward in new tests (7) {definition for 15d} |
SETTERS {defn at 15d} |
ER (King Edward) in [TESTS]* | |
| 25 | Recollected cue as Henry’s named so (5) | TUDOR | ROD (cue) UT (as) all rev. | |
| 27 | In Italian, here is Long Island’s cause of food poisoning (5, 2 words) | E COLI | C | ECCO (here is, Ital) LI (Long Island) |
| 28 | With members, for example, repeatedly found in light (6) | LEGGED | E | EG EG (for example, twice) in LED (light) |
| 30 | Papua New Guinea outsiders to boycott table tennis, Scots reveal (4) | INGO | P | PING-PONG (table tennis) − PNG (Papua New Guinea) |
| 31 | Liberal club for rugby player (4) | LION | R | L(iberal) IRON (club) |
| 33 | Last of Trescothick after bouncer in mischievous game (4) | LARK | I | (Trescothic)K after LIAR (bouncer) |
| 34 | Good to chase family man never taken on board (4) | KING | G(ood) after KIN (family) | |
| 35 | Rush to fill in unstarted letter about US accommodation (8) | ROOMETTE | Z | ZOOM (rush) in (l)ETTER< |
| 36 | Bases harbouring comment about European, ever a supporter of capitalism (13) | FREE-MARKETEER | E | FEET (bases) around REMARK (comment) around E(uropean) E’ER (ever) |
| 37 | Iron’s use is as revolutionary turns in Moscow’s direction perhaps (11) | RUSSIANISES | O | [IRON’S USE IS AS]* |
| Down | No. | Clue | Answer | Extra letter |
Wordplay |
| 1 | Select the Queen’s musicians, perhaps? (7) | PICKERS | PICK (select) ER’S (the Queen’s) | |
| 2 | Wine being put up might outrage Spanish oenophiles initially (8) | ESPUMOSO | N | ENS (being) P(ut) U(p) M(ight) O(utrage) S(panish) O(enophiles) |
| 3 | Loquacious Indian physicist supporting shift (7) | VERBOSE | E | BOSE (Indian physicist) after VEER (shift) |
| 4 | Regularly rechecking roll-up replacement? (4) | E-CIG | H | (r)E(c)H(e)C(k)I(n)G |
| 5 | Sea-green water in Brittany stopping nuclear production (9) | CAERULEAN | U | EAU (water, Fr) in [NUCLEAR]* |
| 6 | Elevated Tory reserves books in sector (6) | OCTANT | N | CON< (Tory) TA (Territorial Army, reserves) NT (New Testament, books) |
| 7 | Fair lady in British Honduras once, stripping at short notice (5) | ELIZA | D | (B)ELIZ(e) (formerly British Honduras) AD (short notice) |
| 8 | Urchin lad ran Lord’s amok (10, 2 words) | SAND DOLLAR | R | [LAD RAN LORD’S]* |
| 9 | One to take issue once till housing less than ordinary rogue (6) | ARGUER | E | EAR (till, obs) around ROGUE − O(rdinary) |
| 14 | Honeyeater’s inventor governed jail informally (10) | WATTLEBIRD | D | WATT (inventor) LED (governed) BIRD (jail, sl) |
| 15 | People like me to lead (7) {definition for 22a} |
CAPTAIN {defn at 22a} |
CAPTAIN (lead) | |
| 17 | Toy armadas irritated Spanish fighters (9) | MATADORAS | Y | [TOY ARMADAS]* |
| 21 | Rising dictionary supported by poorly seated gifts of God (8) | DEODATES | E | OED< (dictionary) [SEATED]* |
| 23 | An émigré returns after finally swapping course (7) | REGIMEN | A | AN EMIGRE rev. with (afte)R exchanged |
| 24 | Study answer to anagram, keeping end of puzzle for three days’ time? (7) | TUESDAY | [STUDY A(nswer)]* around (puzzl)E | |
| 25 | Trump’s after Florida; screws up (6) | FLUFFS | R | RUFFS (trumps) after FL(orida) |
| 26 | Almost stop before manuscript summarised beliefs in God (6) | DEISMS | S | DESIS(T) (stop) MS (manuscript) |
| 29 | One donates rib and radius (5) | GIVER | O | OGIVE (rib) R(adius) |
| 32 | Fail advanced score in judo (4) | KOKA | N | KONK (fail) A(dvanced) |
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I had difficulty with this at first, and left it for a week. Then I finished 1521 so quickly that I found myself IQless and decided to revisit it. On a second reading it didn’t seem so hard, and I thoroughly enjoyed it in the end.
A really good coherent theme with the entries and clues <b>crossing</b>, and a real variety of reds. I particularly liked the “logical NOT” of CH in the title.
Thanks as usual to blogger and setter.
My bold symbol didn’t work. Sorry! Oh for the preview function to return!
Thanks, Encota; thanks, HG. Very pleasing. I liked the “traversing” or crossing (just to check whether the bold button works for me) and all the reds, but fell short by never getting Maroon 5. As a stopgap I thought of it as Five Red Herrings even though that clearly didn’t work since none of the others had a superfluous word and “red” was eventually needed for SETTERS.
Speaking of red herrings, I assume the repetition of SCORE in the 1A answer and 32D clue was a bit of deliberate misdirection re NOTCH = SCORE?
Merry Christmas to all!
Not too difficult this week, especially when it became clear with a few checking letters where the traversing clues were. I never did work out what the title meant, so thanks for the explanation. Thoroughly enjoyable. More please!
Merry Christmas everyone! 🙂
I got nearly all of this but unbelievably failed on RED CROSS. I had considered both “red” and “cross” as possible themes linking the various moved solutions, and had realised that the solutions cross the grid and that the other two formed a cross. In retrospect it seems more difficult to miss “red cross” than to spot it, yet somehow I managed to do just that.
Thanks to HG and Encota.
Hi @2: I think you’ll find that the tags “strong” and “em” will work for bold & italics.
Thanks HolyGhost for another clear blog.
We managed to sort everything out successfully including the title, although we needed a Google search earlier on to confirm the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Thanks Encota for a good challenge.
Merry Christmas to all the IQ setters, bloggers and commenters.
This looked harder than it was (which is just fine by me). I failed to notice that the theme words could all be linked with flavours of red (and wasn’t there a Tudor Cross?), or that what they had done is CROSS the grid. Which is why I find this blog so helpful.
Thanks to Encota for a very enjoyable puzzle, and HG for pointing out the retrospectively bleeding obvious.
Fair clues and clever use of the theme, although I did not get Maroon 5. I guessed Red Cross but then checked on Wiki, where each winner is assigned to a country. In this case, the country was Switzerland but the winner was the International Red Cross, hence Not (just) Switzerland. To echo NH @8, I missed the bleeding obvious reference to the flag!
Thanks to E & HG.
I was a bit unsure of this for quite a while, even after I’d finished – the thematic elements seemed a bit tenuous. But having reflected on it, with the help of the blog for the last few connections, it now seems a neat and clever puzzle. I got all the ‘red’ links for the six answers that traversed (nice – I hadn’t noticed that they were crossing until I read the blog) the grid, but not the two in the middle, which I thought were going to have some other significance, based on a careless reading of the preamble. Was Captain Setters a leading light of the Red Cross 100 years ago? Erm, no.
I was held up a couple of times, first by a tenuous ROOK at 33A, which also had me searching for a chess theme for longer than I should, and then by thinking the extra letter at 25D was a G from GUFF, rather than RUFF – perhaps I’m more puerile than the average IQ solver!
Hi @2 and HG – the old text-based comment editor has recently been replaced. Typing html tags such as <b> or <em> will no longer work.
To make text bold or italic first select the text you want to change and then click the B or I button just above the text area.
… I forgot to add that the advice above only applies to the desktop site. If you are viewing using a mobile phone site then you should use the old <b> or <i> tag styles in the editor.
Thanks PeeDee. I find that when sites and systems are updated there is always change for changes sake. Have we gained any functionality? No, but they have moved things around so that it is not so easy to find them. Last week I used the html tags on the site, this week the tags don’t work and the functionality has moved to buttons, which of course I didn’t notice. I am pretty tech savvy, having worked in the industry for years, but am becoming a Grumpy Old Man (just thought I would try the buttons out) who resists change when it doesn’t accomplish anything!!
PeeDee & Hi @11-13: on any screen I use (PC, tablet, or smartphone), I can’t see any of those decoration buttons, just above the text area or anywhere else.
Hi @13 – the recent change on the site have been prompted not by a desire for change but because the now very old components of the site do not work well with the latest versions of WordPress. What the change helps to accomplish is a more secure future for the site.
HG @14 – are you using Internet Explorer on the desktop PC to view the site? If so then make sure that you are not using “Compatibility View” to view the site. You will find the settings under the Tools menu.
From the tablet and phone you will probably get the mobile version of fifteensquared which does not use the same comment editor, so will not display the buttons. You still have to add the tags there manually.
As someone who takes a full two weeks, with much blood and sweat and many ref. books + Internet to struggle with the Inquisitor, I’m amused by how 15 Squarians finish these puzzles before breakfast and wish they were harder! It’s great to be able to have things explained on this blog though – thank you. NB Can anyone explain why CRAB at 15 ac means “house”?
Ah it’s a zodiac house – idothei enlightened me!
Thank you HolyGhost and to you all who provided such kind feedback on the puzzle – much appreciated 🙂
And though I’m personally a fairly serious music fan (after all, how many setters are named after songs such as “Octane Twisted”?), Maroon 5 was reaching the limits even for me. My children own some of their music, I think.
Thanks again.