Inquisitor 1621: Stone the Crows by The Ace of Hearts

12 comments on “Inquisitor 1621: Stone the Crows by The Ace of Hearts”

1. I found this really hard to get started on, but eventually the answers and the theme emerged.  However I never solved either 21 or 36 ac to my satisfaction, and it wasn’t until I read the blog that I saw where I went wrong. I was convinced that 21 must be ISOCYCLIC, even though I needed an N to complete the message.  Incidentally, why “line in map” instead of “line on map”? And for 36, I was sure it would be CP (Canadian Pacific), so never found the correct answer.

2. At the start, it was good to be told how many ‘normal’ (thematic) clues there were – the kind of information I like to have but don’t always get.

   I guessed that we would find crows in this puzzle and have to modify them in some way, and having that in mind may have helped me to get UNKINDNESS and BUILDING quite early on. However, I had to broaden the subject a bit when EXALTATION (of larks) had to go in, followed by RUSH (of pochards). Birds, yes, but not limited to corvids.

   30d CLAN was the tough one. The only credible match for that term that I could find was ‘hyenas’, which didn’t fit the clue and didn’t seem to belong to the theme either. I finally twigged that ‘community’ meant PEOPLE – going beyond corvids, and Aves for that matter, to another species altogether. A nice and unexpected way to finish.

   I took too long to get ASTER, being flummoxed by ‘discarded’, used here as an indicator of an indicator (‘obsolete’). Neat, and worth remembering.

   I much admired the construction of this puzzle. The four-way symmetry was impressive, as was the incorporation of all those interlocking ‘non-words’, which had to release the right letters in the right order for the message. I thought it was a remarkable achievement.

   I encountered two new anagram indicators with this puzzle: ‘administered [to]’ and ‘light’.  I wasn’t keen on the former particularly, but I realised, working back over the clues, they had to be that.

   Thanks to The Ace of Hearts for an enjoyable and challenging puzzle and to Duncan for an excellent and clear blog.

3. I found this very tough going indeed, with most clues hard to parse, and falling only slowly. CLAN held me up at the close, and while I had UNKINDNESS, for reasons that elude me now I assumed it was … of CROWS, and wondered why I couldn’t parse the clue that went with it, not that it mattered for the completed grid. 😉 Looking at the blog above, though, as was the case with all the clues, they looked straightforward in retrospect. And both Google and Chambers throw up… of RAVENS. Safe to say then that the setter had me well and truly rattled.

4. Further thanks from this direction, to The Ace of Hearts for a challenging IQ and duncanshiell for clear explication. I too took a while to get started. At quite an early stage I wanted 10D to be EXALTATION but kept telling myself that a longer word with a missing letter was the likely answer … until eventually I looked hard enough at the clue. As with @2 above, A?ER = ASTER was the last to yield.

   19A was made easier by the fact that WELSH RAREBIT, again defined as a snack, also featured in the Prize Cryptic two pages earlier (which I do as a warm-up before the joys and frustrations of IQ).

5. My first two solved answers were PEOPLE (with confidence) and SAMOSA (with less confidence cos I couldn’t quite get it to work – at first) but, of course, I couldn’t fit them together so they were both quickly discounted.

   In the end, PEOPLE was the last one I justified because, like others, I expected more birds.

   Nevertheless, to echo my comments on Inquisitor 1447 – once I had a handle on how the clues worked, they were actually quite gentle.

   Great fun – thanks to S-er and B-er

6. Like others, a slow start but once the nature of the theme dawned it all file nicely into place. The only slight reservation was the CLAN/PEOPLE pairing, when there are so many more interesting collective nouns for birds to choose from. If there’s a special reason for the anomaly it escapes me!

7. I’m not a big fan of Letters Latent puzzles, especially coupled with answers having to be changed thematically to create entries, and in particular when those are collective terms – never heard of a pochard before, let alone a rush of them.

   I had a query about the wordplay for 33a: Chambers gives LIEN as the form of the past participle found in the Bible, but gives LIE as a Shakespearean meaning of LIE. Now I know that he wrote rather a lot, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t write that book.

   Nevertheless thanks to setter for the puzzle & to Duncan for the blog.

8. Thanks to duncanshiell and A of H

   I struggled with this, not least because I kept expecting the title to have more significance.

   In retrospect I wondered if convert “answers to” gave “stone-raws”, which are apparently a species of bird also known as “turnstones”.

   This led nowhere so then I looked at the grid. There we find “rocker” sitting vertically on “train”. This might easily (though rather loosely), be interpreted as “Stone the crows” – Jagger et al.

   Straws are there for clutching at.

   I enjoyed it anyway.

9. A challenging but ultimately satisfying puzzle. Many thanks to the composer and to Duncanshiell. I took the title to be a play on stoning being one method of murder, but thought if so it might have had a question mark.

10. I found this really tough and had three clues unsolved/unexplained at the end: CENTI MRGAN, PEOPLE/CLAN and ATER.  I enjoyed getting this far, but clues were just too hard for me to finish in one week.

    Thanks to Duncan and the Ace

11. I got the collective noun thing relatively quickly, largely because ‘exaltation’ rang a very loud bell, sending me to a helpful website (though I never got to pochard). So it was more a question of reverse engineering, guessing the probable missing letters helping to answer the clues, which continued tough-ish to the end. I liked the ‘people’ twist; I won’t be alone in wondering early if it was ‘people’, only to dismiss it as impossible.

    Thanks to Ace of Hearts for a real challenge (but not as hard as some recently), and Duncan.

12. I found this virtually impossible for a week, managing to solve two clues only. After putting it aside to start on Inq1622, I picked this up again a couple of days ago. Something clicked and I managed to get the theme and fill most of the grid reasonably quickly. I’m glad that I persevered as it was a satisfying solve, although I was rather disappointed that the 5th collective noun wasn’t bird-themed. I knew that it had to be 30d and resorted to finding the answer on here after failing to solve it.

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