Inquisitor 1536: Exits by Schadenfreude

13 comments on “Inquisitor 1536: Exits by Schadenfreude”

1. I went for <a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javed_Omar”>Omar</a>, in the 9th column. Unless I’ve also missed something, the lack of connection between the cricketers rather detracted from what was an otherwise enjoyable puzzle. I echo your final paragraph.

2. Likewise. I identified cricket as the theme, found most of the cricketers and found AMES but, other than the fact that they’re cricketers, I couldn’t find any connection.

3. Not unlike HG, I struggled at the end to squeeze my cricketers into answers…but being a former cricket saddo, I was a lot more successful with this one than with the parts of a ship a few weeks ago. DeepFRY was my way in…the advantage of subsisting off takeaway food finally pays off! I assumed Ames is the “survivor” as he appears as part of a grid answer and is not “treated” like the other 10. Beyond the fact that the resulting 11 cricketers form a very nicely balanced side I don’t think there’s any connection.

4. I couldn’t find any connection between the cricketers either, despite wondering if the selection covered the entire range of possible dismissals. Like others I wasn’t too confident with identifying the survivor, and with all respect to Les Ames I would have thought it would have been better to have had a player with a more individual name (Tendulkar perhaps?). Or at least to have put Ames in the centre of the grid.

   It feels almost sacrilegious to quibble with a setter of Schadenfreude’s standing, and in any case a slightly “flawed” puzzle from him is still top-notch. The theme did rather rub in England’s Test defeat in NZ though!

5. A spookily similar solving experience to HG’s, with 25ac also my LOI. I too went with AMES for our survivor and felt similarly unsatisfied with the outcome. I half expected to log on here this morning to find I’d missed something fairly fundamental, but it appears not.

6. I enjoyed this but it remained not quite finished.  I had many of the crickets but there were still a few empty lights in the grid that I could’t solve.  I think I went wrong by spending hours trawling Wikpedia looking for some connection between the names I had so they formed a “set of ten”.  Did they all bat in the same side at some point, perhaps a testimonial match?  In the end I gave up. I hadn’t considered that they would just be a random collection of cricketers.

   I did find all the names in a list of people who were executed in the UK.  This fitted the bill as “exits” and the cricket dismissals seemed like the sort of red herring that setters use.  Their names were among thousands of other people executed so I think almost any old name you might pick would be on the list too.

   I had no idea who the survivor was or why he/she survived.  Having seen the solution AMES fits the bill but seems to be a little vague, it is the sort of indistinct word that crops up randomly in completed grids.  A more distinct name or a more obvious placing would have been clearer.  Easier to say than do of course!

   Thanks Schadenfreude and HG.

7. I went for Javed Omar as the survivor as his Wikipedia page tells us that he carried his bat, i.e. survived, on his test debut in 2001. I haven’t checked, but I assume none of the other cricketers have performed this feat on debut or otherwise.

8. I usually look forward to a Schadenfreude and am not disappointed. The clues tend to be fairly demanding but always very fair and watertight. But, this time, I must agree with most of the above. Too much obscurity – Dr Doolottle was too far in my past to remember Prof Challenger! An enjoyable solve on the whole – I got the perimeter and 8 of the names ejected from the grid entries and realised they were cricketers. Congratulations to HG for persevering with the internet. As I’ve observed before, I don’t mind a little bit of surfing but am not prepared for this to take longer than the grid fill – I would rather start another puzzle.

   By the way, I think Howard L @7 is on to something, although I would never have found it.

   A good idea Schadenfreude but a disappointing finish this time.

9. Our experience appears to be similar to most of the comments so far. We thought we were looking at real words but thankfully recognised the possibility of WARNE and Bert knew he was a cricketer.

   A google search was needed to find all the ways of being ‘out’ though – neither of us are cricket fans.

   We had a look for the missing cricketer but as we don’t enter the competition and were a little disappointed by the seemingly random other cricketers, we gave up.

   However, the solve was enjoyable so thanks to Schadenfreude.

   Thanks to HG for the blog – it’ll be interesting to see who picked the correct last man standing on Saturday.

10. Cricket is so much not my game, but I’ve soaked up enough terminology from books to be able to cope with the ways of getting out. The names of actual cricketers were the hard part: C.B. FRY was the only one I knew, but my wife remembered LARA and googling for other likely guesses led me to the Wisden Cricketers of the Year list, which seems to cover all of them. After much hunting around the grid for possible last men (No. 11? 11TH? Just LAST? Could something be made of IIII on a diagonal in the SW corner?), I got to the idea of “survivor” meaning a remaining untreated answer. AMES looked plausible and there he was in Wisden. But I wasn’t at all sure …

11. Same as David, I wondered if “eleven-eleven” (IIII) was an obscure cricketing term for someone who carries his bat in both innings. Apparently not.

12. I had OPPO as the survivor and won a box of chocolates even though the published solution had AMES

13. William – is that OPPO the sponsor of the Indian cricket team?  Considering the ambiguity I think JH must have decided to leave the survivor out of the judging altogether.

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