Inquisitor 1646: Pocket Money by Shark

13 comments on “Inquisitor 1646: Pocket Money by Shark”

1. I’m not sure ‘Russian city’ is a an adequate definition. The city is named after ‘Togliatti’ (an Italian communist) but the city is as far as I can see transliterated as ‘TOLYATTI’. I’m probably bitter because it was the one clue I was confounded by, despite having studied Russian…. (I’d never heard of it, FWIW)

2. Of all the Inquisitors I’ve ever solved, this one was the toughest. I had to have a lie down afterwards! I bet that I’m not the only one who thought that PETRODOLLAR might appear as the bottom word. Thanks to Shark for some clever closing and an enjoyable puzzle and to Hihoba for the blog. Also, thanks to fifteensquared – it’s archive of previous Shark puzzles proved very useful!

3. Also, The 12th May is also International Nurses Day, so it had added poignancy during these difficult times. Florence also advocated good hygiene practices like proper hand washing…

4. I thought the gridfill was very hard, and I never satisfactorily parsed some of my answers, so thanks for the explanations in the blog.  Considering its obscurity, I thought that TOGLIATTI could have been clued a little more helpfully: “young child” (not “young child in game”, which would have been fairer) to give IT?  And isn’t the clue for 23 down ungrammatical – it should read blocks, shouldn’t it?  I know that the clue as a whole would then be ungrammatical but I think as it stands it is just unfair.  And LIE for “bouncer’s delivery” in 17 down seems a bit of a stretch.  But once the grid was filled, the endgame was neat.

5. My thanks to Shark and Hihoba. Hard slogging here too, but with a nice eventual payoff.

   @2 Put me down as another solver led astray by PETRODOLLAR (only abandoned when CRIMEAN WAR dawned on me). Seeing TETRADRACHM brought delusive hopes that the other unclued entry would also relate to money. The little-known Albanian qadmyp, or something like that …

6. An engaging and interesting puzzle. There were many unfamiliar words and names to look up, but all was fair, I thought, except for TOGLIATTI, which I managed to get, but I would expect to find it only on Italian maps (the city being named after an Italian). I liked the LADY/LAMP device – also the concentration of thematic material in the centre, in which and around which the gridfill was impressive.

   There were some excellent clues, of which TUSH was my favourite. Unusually, though, I found that parsing became a bit of a luxury, as others also found: I left five clues unparsed, or at least not fully parsed.

   From the preamble I assumed we were looking for 10 letters from the 10 clues. In other ways it was deliberately vague (!).  I doubt that too much would have been given away by saying ‘two’ for ‘multiple’, ‘seven’ for ‘several’ and ‘a relevant letter’ for ‘a relevant character’.

   Of the thematic items that I discovered while solving the clues, I got TETRADRACHM first, then CRMEAN WAR and LADY/LAMP. With a full grid I finally got ATHENA and NIGHTINGALE. An appropriate theme with an interesting variation.

   Thanks to Shark and Hihoba.

7. Technically a DNF for me, since I didn’t actually spot Nightingale wrapped around Athena, despite getting everything else. In my defence the instruction to highlight ANOTHER character was misleading, since the Lady ..Lamp and Flo are the same person. I knew Togliatti, though, he said, smugly 🙂

8. I never did get the bottom line, though I was in the market for Petri dishes for a while… Frustrating.

   Like Alan B, I liked the central emptiness, and the Lady / Lamp arrangement – which I only saw after I knew we were in the Nightingale Crimean business.

   Like others, numerous half-parsed clues and some frustrations.

   Thanks to Hihoba and Shark.

9. A pretty tough solve, and one where it took an age after to realise how the disparate elements held together. The latter I suppose is my only criticism – you could quite happily finish and be none the wiser at the close. Was I the only solver to fill the central squares based on possible real words, and then spend an age working out what was supposed to be spelled out? If only I’d read the preamble properly…

10. When I finished this I was confused as to how exactly the thematic stuff all fitted together, and after reading the blog I’m not much wiser (though better informed). I share Bridgesong’s concern about “block” in 23 down. I suspect this was an oversight than an deliberate relaxing of grammatical standards (I hope so, anyway).

    I didn’t think this was one of Shark’s best, but still enjoyable for all that.

11. The vague uneasiness about how the disparate elements of the theme fitted together were with me right to the end. It all worked and yet I never did feel entirely satisfied. And I’m still not at all sure why. I enjoyed the LADY?LAMP device and the coin in the pocket after struggling too long over why NIGHTINGALE was appropriatel positioned.

12. I need to check more thoroughly before posting my comments. Previous entry should say LADY/LAMP and appropriately

13. A bit late to the party – I enjoyed this, but it was rather hard. I thought that it was fairly easy to deduce which cells were initially blank, and to answer Jon_S @9: No, you weren’t the only solver to fill those blank cells by searching for completions that left real words, but I didn’t understand “without crossing bars” until I’d actually found ATHENA.

    And as Ylo @3 points out, 12th May is International Nurses Day – no coincidence, as it was deliberately chosen to coincide with FN’s birthday.

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