15 comments on “Inquisitor 1567: The Magic of Opera by Phi”

1. I’m very much in the pro camp as I love the source material. I thought Phi treated the theme very elegantly, with the one reservation that Kenmac mentions: the reference to Acts 1 and 3 doesn’t gibe with the structure of Das Rheingold, which consists of four continuous scenes. All the action involving the Tarnhelm’s magic takes place in the third scene. First of all Alberich makes himself invisible to frighten his brother, Mime, and later he transforms himself into a giant snake (usually translated from the German Riesenwurm as “dragon”) and then a toad, in order to show off to the gods Wotan and Loge. Therefore I’m not sure where Acts 1 and 3 fit in; if it refers to the stages of solving, where is Act 2?

   I don’t suppose the above will bother most people, except that it may have been rather confusing for those who weren’t familiar with the story of Das Rheingold and had to look it up. This quibble aside, I really enjoyed the puzzle, and having said my bit I’ll sit back and and wait for the “not more bloody opera” posts to roll in…

2. I thought this was an interesting, enjoyable solve. I didn’t know the source material beyond the title, but thankfully Wikipedia does. Without working out both wearer and item worn I don’t think I would have filled the grid, but thankfully the former revealed itself pretty sharpish. The snake / dragon thing gave me pause for thought, but, well, it’s close enough to be solvable. But that preamble, colour me confused throughout!

3. I don’t understand the final part of the instructions as to how to resolve the clashes.  Making the cells blank leaves garbage in the grid.  Is that really the intended solution?  Also the instructions seem to imply that the solver should deduce what to enter in the affected cells (after the magic has made the contents disappear).  How can you enter nothing into an already blank cell?  It is saying the final step is to do nothing.  Why have that as an instruction?  It doesn’t make sense to me.

   I like opera and guessed DAS RHEINGOLD after only a couple of crossing letters but had to use Wikipedia to find out the details. I didn’t understand the significance of Act 1 and Act 3 either but that didn’t seem to matter for solving the puzzle.

   I enjoyed filling the grid and learning about Alberich and friends but if kenmac’s solution is correct then the instructions are bit confused (again!).  I wonder if there is a feeling among the setters that they have to produce something extra clever?  It might have been better to just keep it simple.

    

4. PS – I forgot to thank Phi and kemac.  And also I would like to say that the standard of the IQ is such that even the not-so-good puzzles are still good.  So thanks Phi!

5. @PeeDee – The preamble tells us “to determine what should be entered in the affected cells”. The answer to which is nothing…

6. My reaction to any puzzle involving a Wagnerian theme is normally a stifled yawn and I’m afraid this was no exception. I didn’t see any difficulty with the instruction to make the contents of the cells ‘disappear’ (not that I ever enter anything in cells containing clashes in any barred puzzle I ever do…!) but the whole was rather underwhelming for me. Thanks to setter and blogger in any event.

7. Thank you Jon – so it is the conjunction of ALBERICH and TANHELM that make the effect of WEARER AND HELMET DISAPPEAR in the opera, and we the solvers who make them disappear in the grid by entering nothing in the affected cells.  That makes sense.

   I guess I would prefer some instructions that explain how to solve the puzzle rather than instructions that I can explain after I have solved the puzzle.

8. PeeDee @7 suggests a follow-up themed puzzle.  You solve this one, then you write “NOTHING” in the

   empty cells, then Phi sets another one based on this one, but involving Part 2 of the megawork in

   question, in which a sword of major important called “NOTHUNG” appears … and so on until the

   Gods finally get twilighted.

9. PeeDee @7

   I tend to disagree with your last sentence. I was first attracted to these things by the perverse nature of not being able to finish the puzzle without understanding the instructions whilst not being able to understand the instructions without finishing the puzzle.

   I think it’s this paradoxicalness that puts a lot of people off even attempting them.

   All of which, of course, makes us a bunch of weirdos 😉

10. Thanks to some helpful crossing letters, I got to Das Rheingold very early (and thought – oh, please don’t make me read the plot, but it turned out clear enough). So it was a case of the theme informing the solve, which is never quite the same. For all that, I found this one a real challenge, and enjoyed it. I didn’t see any ambiguities, though I did see plenty of words new to me – Ebor, Lanai, Chaebol, Muraena… and I could go on.

    Thanks to Phi and kenmac.

11. Thanks Phi, I enjoyed this and am a little surprised by the rather mixed response so far [Phi’s previous moon phase puzzle seemed far more divisive to me!]. I know nothing about the opera, but that’s never stopped my enjoying other puzzles of this type and I learned about it from reading a synopsis. Fortunately, I was sufficiently aware of the title to guess it correctly from a couple of crossing letters and was also helped by a conversation with my boss, who is an opera fan. I asked him what the item of clothing might be and he instantly suggested ‘Tarnhelm’.

    I also liked that it was necessary to fully complete the message from the extra words – on seeing WEARER and DISAPPEAR my first thought was to enter the letters for Tarnhelm, but this was would have been incorrect. The resolution (to leave them blank) seemed clear enough to me.

12. Hi kenmac – I think that too, so maybe my dissatisfaction has more to do with removing the letters not leading to anything in the final grid.  I was left looking for some clever way to try make sense of the mutilated grid entries by entering something in the cells that would resolve the situation.  I think if the instructions are inexplicit then that is OK, but they then have to lead to a clear end point.

13. A bit late maybe but the word count alone pretty much narrowed it down to DR which is particularly famous for kicking off The Ring.Getting SPEARHEADED and GROTTO  confirmed this. However. doesnt the opera have ONE act and FOUR scenes? (But it was PHi afterall).

    I like a lot of Wagner especially the Ring but finishing this seemed to me Bletchley Park or maybe the girl with the dragon tattoo.Well above my pay grade.

    Thanks to all

14. I have to say that I really enjoyed this – but I think that was because of the way my solving process turned out. I too guessed Das Rheingold from the two long down answers + GROTTO, and then chipped away at the clues. At some point I had enough of the ‘first and last letters’ to take a stab at the message, which then helped to identify which were the redundant words in as yet unsolved clues, and therefore also which were the ordinary clues whose entries produced a clash. And then determining the rest of the letters in the ‘item of clothing’ and ‘its wearer’ fixed what the remaining clashes were, and helped locate where they occurred. (Ken, you were not alone – I too first tried to read the clashes across then down.)

    I popped in TOAD and DRAGON to finish off, and now know a lot about The Ring than I did before. I’m another who failed to grasp the Act 1/Act 3 stuff, or where the magic comes in Act 1, but what the hell … I’d had a good time. Thanks Phi (& Ken).

15. After I’d solved all clues except 11a and 29a, my Final Grid agreed with kenmac’s, and I now see it agrees also with the official solution.  So I didn’t have to solve those two clues anyway.

    I guessed Das Rheingold from the two Ds, and I learned a lot from reading all about that opera in the Wikipedia article.  In particular, Tarnhelm and Alberich had to be the two thematic names, and on getting the last two clashes (L/C and M/H) it was clear how the names should be read, thus vindicating the preamble that told us to read across – not across and down.  The required entries for 11a and 29a were also clear from that article, the ‘large snake’ being the dragon.

    I was a bit confused by the references to Act 1 and Act 3, but I thought they might refer to Scenes 1 and 3 of that one-act opera.  Apart from that, and the fact that 11a and 29a could have been left unclued (subject to an adjustment to the preamble), I thought this was a cleverly constructed puzzle with many excellent clues.

    Thanks Phi and kenmac.

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