34 comments on “Inquisitor 1679: Heavy Metal Band by Harribobs”

1. A miserable failure here. I cold solved about half the clues, but from there had no idea how to enter them given the number of common letters between answers, combined with cycling, and clashes. The first time in several years of doing the Inquisitor that I’ve been forced to record a Did Not Start, in effect.

2. I was very frustrated by this initially. When I had substantial numbers of answers I realised that I would never have the patience to follow the letter count manually, so I entered all 228 letters into separate cells in an Excel spreadsheet, followed by a row of serial numbers (1-228), then a third row of the numerical values (A=1, B=2 etc.) of the letters in row one, using the CODE function which returns the ASCII value of a letter. So CODE(cell_address)-64 gives you the number of letters to jump. It was then down to pencil and paper to work out the singers. I was well aware of the names, having gone with my parents to hear and see the Ring cycle in Bayreuth as a student We did a lot of pre-listening to the leitmotifs on vinyl record (this was the early ’60s before CDs, internet etc) before the trip – an absolute necessity if you want full enjoyment out of this great work.
   It is worth mentioning that the “Heavy Metal” of the title is Gold!
   This led me on to do some Macro programming in VBA on the spreadsheet, the first real programming I had done for about 20 years. (I used to teach programming to professionals in my previous working existence.) I eventually had a spreadsheet with just the letters in row A and pressing Ctrl+w entered the singers in rows 3 and 4 – there were three found on each pass.
   So I found this eventually very rewarding despite its complexity and the online reactions. Thanks to Harribobs and to Kenmac.

3. Thanks as always for the explication. My experience was alas similar to @1 above — I couldn’t cold-solve enough clues to get anywhere useful. Wrote in the FETAL CURRANT GUDGEON chain which seemed to have a unique solution to possible cyclings; started another with NEEDY EYESTRAIN which turns out to be correct, but I got discouraged by the belated realization that the two Es in NEEDY didn’t necessarily lie together, and also by the horrific-sounding description of the endgame.

   My one good guess, in response to the massive over-egging with heavy metal band references, was that the title wouldn’t refer to that particular kind of heavy metal band… which didn’t get me any further. Oh well!

4. Maybe I’m thick but I can be put down as a DNS as well, as I simply could not see how one could choose the numerous ways of entering a solution if it had to be cycled. Sorry, not for me this one at all.

5. In Jon_S @1’s personal blog he comments that the grid is pretty. I fully agree. It reminds me of Spirograph that my sisters had that I played with more than they did.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph

6. I thought the grid was amazing and enjoyed the challenge of filling it, which took a long time. But then I’m afraid that I got bored with the tedious task of identifying the singers: I see from my notes that I got as far as RHINEMAID and SIEG without ever thinking of the Ring cycle, even though I had spotted Wagner in the grid. So I gave up at that stage. It reminds me of Harribobs’ previous marathon effort (Tourist Information) which also needed computer (or at least spreadsheet) skills in order to complete the endgame without too much manual effort. But I’m kicking myself for persisting in my belief that I was looking for lead singers in heavy metal bands.

   Incidentally, I think that Emile in 11* is just to indicate that “steps” is to be translated into French. But no doubt there is also an Emile somewhere in a heavy metal band!

7. Once I got started on this, I found it wasn’t quite as daunting as it looked, although it was challenging enough. Having a “clean” copy to ink in the answers from a “working” copy was essential as the latter was soon a blur of pencil rubbings.
   However, having extracted the singers I was convinced I was missing something as the preamble clearly states that TWO circuits of the whole chain are required, whereas all the singers emerged after just one. The final distance marker takes you back to the start at the peak of 1 leading to no possibility of identifying further singers. Also, what is the significance of the four extra pink cells, all on the inner perimeter? Are they just to make to it look prettier and to confuse the solver, or is there some deeper significance? After all the work which was involved, I found these unanswered questions somewhat deflating.
   Kenmac, you haven’t given any wordplay for BRASSET at 6/10. It looks like a double definition except I can’t see any reason for “unaccomplished”. Thanks for the impressive blog, and, more particularly, the animation. How do you do that?!

8. Only the editor’s exhortation kept me from immediately running for the hills (apart from everything else, something about it made it look like work); as it was, I made an effort, some tentative early efforts – and then went wrong. On the plus side, the Geoff Dyer book I read instead was terrific.

9. Howard L #7 I think the definition for 6/10 is “protection for member” which is BRAS(s) unaccomplished (i.e. incomplete) metal + SET (band)

10. I’ve checked my solutions and my lead singers are all ok, so I assume I completed the grid correctly. I’m not going to check the individual cells – I printed the puzzle in grayscale and in portrait format, so it was quite difficult to see my letters in pencil, especially when nearly all entries are non words.
    I found the area round about 9 – 12 the most difficult, probably because of the 3 clashes.
    I also remember having a Spirograph set round about the mid to late 1960’s.

11. Joyce had a spirograph too which she enjoyed.

    We found this IQ a challenge and ended up back-solving quite a few when we had some crossers. Probably a bit too much of this than we would have liked, so it did become a bit of a slog. However, it was Harribobs so we persevered. Once we had the grid fill we realised the theme and started to work out the singers. By the time we had the first couple we gave up and guessed the rest. If we had submitted the answers we would have been correct.

    Kenmac -your blog with the animation is as delightful as Harribob’s grid fill. Many thanks.

    Thanks also to Harribobs – an impressive construction – we are sorry that we did not get as much satisfaction in solving it as with your other puzzles, maybe too ingenious!

12. Thanks Hi@9. I didn’t think of a set/band of people.

13. Howard L @7

    6/10 completed now. It was one I was going to come back to but clearly never did.

14. My experience was exactly the same as Bridgesong’s @6, ie completing the grid after GBH of the brain, taking the correct first steps in the endgame, but failing to make the key mental jump from heavy metal to Wagner and thereby frustrating myself. But many thanks to Harribobs for the intriguing and satisfying gridfill, and to Kenmac for the excellent animation.

    One minor question to add to those of Howard L’s @7. Why are we asked to settle the three clashes by discarding the distance markers? Surely it would make more sense to leave the final grid internally consistent with the list of lead singers by discarding the letters that aren’t the distance markers?

15. I quite enjoyed the filling of the “grid” when I got into my stride. I was delighted by the theme too, as I like Wagner. But as to the endgame, even though I perhaps had an advantage in that I knew what to look for from the first letter of each singer, I found it a tortuous, joyless slog. One slight miscount and it was back to the beginning, and the clashes were (in my view) an unnecessary complication. I think I went round about 20 times before finally finding all the letters. A very clever construction, yes, but one can argue that some torture instruments are cleverly constructed too.

    Another quibble – the Rhinemaidens and Fafner are hardly “lead” singers: their parts are relatively minor compared to the other four.

    It will be a long time before I will be able to listen to the Ring again without recalling the grind of counting round the grid!

16. Found this quite a tour de force which was one ring too far. Got as far as WOTAN but then must have jumped track (for the umpteenth time) since didn’t hit the C/R clash and just ran out of steam.

17. Managed to finish this but only by cheating extensively. I wouldn’t have stood a chance were it not for the availability of wildcard characters in the search feature on the Chambers app.

18. I’m in two minds about this. An intricate piece of setting and a beautiful looking puzzle, which I actually solved, but… Entering cycled words is not much fun at the best of times, and this was no exception. Several clues were really tough and/or obscure: fine if there’s no cycling but if there is… My LOI was Lartius, which I thought was pushing it. A general in Coriolanus? Of course he is. Obvs. Then the counting and the mistakes in counting and the starting all over again meant that the ideal gridfill/endgame ratio (scientifically tested and proved to be no more than 95/5) was exceeded. Hmm.

19. My experience was much the same as David Langford above. I cold solved some 20 clues, discovered that none of the consecutive ones shared a unique letter and put the puzzle aside for a couple of days. When I picked it up again, I realised that I could eliminate some common letters where I had three or more answers in a row, and I actually wrote some in the grid!
    Despite reading the preamble several times, I never understood the deal with the clashing clues, and found the whole thing too frustrating to put any more effort in. It was just too complicated for me to persist with, I’m afraid.

20. I lost my co-solver during this (Covid resurgence in Vic)and I really needed. I got the grid filled with 7 to ACERB clash-I got the other two(clashes) though and would have filled the grid with co-solver.
    I am useless at this numerology and still cant understand how the number 18 gets you from R to H
    And I have seen the Ring and have the score for Valkyrie-I saw Donald Macintosh as Wotan
    None of which helped here/
    A great grid construction . many thanks to Harribobs, Hihoba and kenmac

21. Copmus @20

    You start at the “R” in square 1. Then use your finger to count 18 squares further on. This takes you to the “H” in 5/9. Then count 8 squares and land on the “I” (between “T” and “U”, near 10).
    If you watch the animation, you’ll see this happening.

    I hope that helps.

22. I’m disappointed that most solvers found the puzzle such a struggle, but your feedback is useful – so thanks for that.

    Solving of the puzzle was perhaps harder than it should have been. Firstly, NormanJL’s comment was right – I set the clues as I would for normal entry, and made few allowances for the extra difficulty involved in cycling. Secondly, as Howard L points out, some of the inmost cells should have been gold rather than pink. So, there were 44 cells marked as starting positions for only 39 clues, which must have been confusing. The colours were correct until the puzzle’s final review stage, and I don’t yet know how they came to be changed.

    A few solvers commented that the puzzle would have been easier without the three clashes. Unfortunately, when the letters of the singers are ALL used as distance markers, letters in the second pass of the chain collide with those placed in the first pass. The three distance markers in the clashes shuffle the singers’ text into the gaps.

    The main gripe seems to be the ‘slog’ of counting out the singers. I shouldn’t have been surprised because I’d used the distance marker device in different ways in two puzzles earlier in the year, and had similar complaints, but here I thought the shorter text would be fairly simple. I’d estimated five minutes to count to 450 (twice round the chain), plus another three minutes to determine the distance marker in the clashes. Ten minutes tops! Child’s play! But from the almost unanimous disapproval, it seems I misjudged it. I suppose it’s easy to lose your place as you trace around the chain. Also, once it’s clear that the text is a list of the characters in the Ring Cycle there’s perhaps no incentive to continue to the end.

    The grid is a rotated sine wave. I did look at Spirograph patterns (hypotrochoids and epitrochoids), but inner or outer cells were too squashed.

23. Hi Harribobs,

    Thanks for dropping in. It must be a bit gutting when you produce a masterpiece – and I think we can all agree, it was beautiful; to then have it ripped to shreds.

    From a personal point of view, the problem really was lack of time but I realise that for many others, crosswords provide much needed companionship during “festive” times.

    You’re clearly in a class of your own when it comes to going the extra mile where grids are concerned.

    So, I’m looking forward to your future effort.

24. Hi Harribobs, To be honest, I wouldn’t have even started this one if it wasn’t for the Editor’s plea to give it a go. Because of this, I did cold solve just over a dozen of your easier clues, but it was the cycling that was too tricky for me. Most of my answers had two repeated letters, which meant that there were three possibilities for each entry. Then I solved ERROR and EUGENIE and saw that there were four possibilities. This made it too difficult for me to get a foothold into the puzzle, so it was a blank grid for me.

25. Thanks so much for your detailed comment Harribobs.

    We would like to echo kenmac’s last two sentences @23 although the ‘I’m looking forward to’ should be – we’re looking forward to. If it wasn’t for your brilliant Tour de France IQ last year, our son would not have started solving IQs.

26. I’m mainly frustrated with myself here. I somehow managed to enter PETAL instead of PEDAL for 12* which completely scuppered my ability to get the entire name list. Rather flukily, however, this did allow me to spell out RHINESIEGFRIEDBRUNNHILDE before returning to the initial R so I did at least get the theme correct.

    Many thanks to Harribobs for yet another spectacular grid construction.

27. @Harribobs
    i think it should be entered for the Turner Prize

28. Many thanks for your comments Harribobs. I too don’t think you should be in the least discouraged – for me this was an excellent puzzle, brilliantly conceived, and in not quite completing it the failings were all mine. And I now see the answer to my question @14. I look forward very much to your next offering.

29. I really enjoyed filling the grid, a great challenge. It took almost the whole week but I see that as a bonus!

    As is often the case I lost interest in trying to finish the “end game”. I had a couple of goes looping round not quite understanding what to do and gave up. I don’t see this as a big problem, those that enjoy word-searches get enjoyment out of that, I got enjoyment out of the excellent grid-fill.

    I think the blogger has a special view on this: they can’t just give up once the puzzle loses interest for them. They have to stick it out to the very end regardless.

    Thanks Harribobs and kenmac.

30. Crikey , a lot of comments in just a few days. I had a feeling this one may split the crowd. I absolutely loved it. Yes, it took me way longer than an average Inquisitor puzzle, but when I saw the beauty of the grid and the setter I wasn’t going to give up. I used two copies like one or two others. The endgame didn’t take too long, maybe I just hit lucky, but once I had rhinem I knew where we were heading, being a fan of the source material. The rest of the gold themed cast soon followed.

    My only gripe was the clashes, thanks to Harribobs for coming on to explain why he had to do that and more.

    Now off to choose my puzzles of the year 2020…

    Many thanks kenmac for the blog and animation and to Harribobs for another cracker.

31. I didn’t manage to finish more than 22 clues, though it seems I managed to cycle most of those correctly – hooray! It was an intriguing exercise, as far as it went – there were too many variables after that, and not enough help from crossing letters to allow me to get any further, plus the final part of the instructions was just too complicated – and I’d probably not have clicked that the theme was Wagner-related. A shame perhaps as my knowledge of heavy metal singers is limited to two or three, and I figured I wouldn’t find them anyway – and I’m not interested enough in them to have wanted to research. Still, I agree the grid is a work of art, though one quibble was that it was too small and fiddly to see my pencilled entries clearly (especially after all the rubbings out!). But sometimes it’s more fun to see how far you can get with a really tough grid than to finish an easier one, so I’m definitely not complaining! Thank you very much to setter and blogger for the explanations – much appreciated, and really interesting to see what the answers finally were.

32. It’s nice to see some positive comments recently after the earlier carping. I thought this was another excellent puzzle from Hbobs, but it was certainly tough. There were times when I didn’t think I would ever start inserting answers, never mind finish the thing, but I’m glad I persevered, if only for the PDM when it became clear that this was about the Rhine Maidens rather than Iron Maiden! It helped that the first Listener of the year was easy, as is often the case, giving me more spare time, and that I was able to share answers by text with Kippax as we chipped away at it over the course of a week. Insertion was slow too, but I got lucky on the endgame when I jumped the right way on the first clash (N/D) after which it was largely downhill to the finish, with one or two restarts after miscounting while trying to watch the Manchester derby at the same time. I was very relieved when the last letter of Brunnhilde led me back to Cell One, confirming that I must have completed the right number of circuits. I’m annoyed that I failed to spot Wagner in the grid before I’d got the theme and completely missed the generous hints provided by the title and the cycling.

    Thanks to Harribobs for a stern but fair challenge. It’s not surprising that these rarely appear more than once a year.

33. Many thanks to Harribobs for coming on here, it’s really appreciated. I do take exception to Terrier’s categorisation of less-than-gushing feedback as ‘carping’. If the setter himself can be gracious about any negative feedback, I’m sure other solvers can be

34. A bit late to the party.
    My way in after quite a while (encouraged by the editor’s “It gets easier”) was solving 5 in a row (17..6): NEEEDY, EYESTRAIN, EUGENIE, TEPIDER, PILSNER, which run together in a unique way. Then things moved up a gear or two, until there was only LARTIUS left – a hefty nudge from my fellow bloggers helped me over that line.
    I was cycling merrily round the grid but got stuck not initially understanding “each clash must be resolved by discarding the distance marker”. That was on the day before the blog was published and it was only yesterday that I got back to the puzzle and completed the second circuit.

    My comment: “Another tour de force!” Not as good as last year’s Tourist Information, but close, so I’m with the +++ on this one. A v.strenuous but v.satisfying workout – thanks all.

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