Inquisitor 1696: Title Sequence by Gila

52 comments on “Inquisitor 1696: Title Sequence by Gila”

1. All thanks to Gila and HG. I got there in the end, but being a musical ignoramus who’d never heard of Nick Drake or any of his albums made the endgame a bit of a slog. Satisfying enough when all was revealed, but I prefer not to depend too much on Mr Google!

2. I enjoyed the crossword very much. It was a good set of clues, and I identified the five surplus ones (with their answers) and collected all the letters of the ‘(cryptic) clue’.
   Finding the theme was tough. I saw EARTH and MOON in the grid, also TORCH, PINK and even GILA, but I could not make any proper connection. The ‘hint’ got me nowhere: even if I had seen the leaf connection I would not have thought of ‘five leaves’. What got me to the theme was a lucky break with the clue. I was misdirected at first by ‘old norse’, believing ON would be in the answer, but I was lucky enough to find DRAKE for ‘warship’, and with the name NICK for ‘jail’ I had a possible name that I could look up. I had never heard of Nick Drake, but when I looked him up I found Pink Moon, along with the other two titles.
   Thanks to Gila and HolyGhost.

3. I struck lucky having filled the grid: I noticed PINK & MOON, symmetrically placed and knowing that the cryptic clue identified an individual, I guessed his first name was Nick. A web search with the three words came up trumps. I had heard of Nick Drake, but knew nothing else of him or his oeuvre – Wikipedia filled it in.

4. The grid fill was surprisingly straightforward, even if my resultant clue ended up pretty much looking like gobbledygook. I did though think to look at what the five extra answers had in common, and had enough of the clue to be able to make a sort-of-intelligent Google search. I’d vaguely heard of Nick Drake, though didn’t know any of the albums. Nice puzzle overall I thought.

5. I love jigsaw puzzles and really enjoyed filling the grid, which was a generous grid I thought. However, I spent longer ‘on’ the endgame than I did on the fill, not helped by that two-letter word in the clue. I wasn’t looking for two names and focused on …onman using Old Norse and MAN for the ship. In the end I got there, like HG, by searching with ‘five leaves’. It didn’t help that I am not at all familiar with Nick Drake’s work.

   Neat way of implementing a theme.

   Thanks to Gila and HG.

6. A shocker! An obscure solution with no way to reveal it by any normal means. I realised that the first name of the protagonist must be Nick, but Drake was unbelievably obscure as an old norse warship. Never heard of the artist, don’t want to know anything about his oeuvre. Nice gridfill. Dreadful and unfair puzzle with no Googled combination of any of the elements leading to the answer. Unless you were a fan, FOUL!!

7. Well I happen to be a fan. Having said that, I only rumbled the theme by seeing Bryter Layter in the grid. I don’t think I ever would have got it otherwise.

   I appreciate Hi you may feel this was unfair but I’m not sure you need to be so dismissive of someone’s work just because of a bad experience solving. At least it makes a change from Flanders and bleeding Swann, without whose oeuvre many setters here and in the Listener would struggle…

8. My objection is not the the artist or his work – I merely state that I am not interested, but that may well apply to other topics. BUT if I (and also note HolyGhost) can’t find the answer even after fully solving the whole crossword because it is so obscure and un-googleable, the I feel I have a legitimate beerf!

9. or even a beef – maybe a beerf would have helped.

10. You do have a beef. It’s the ‘never heard of him, not interested in knowing about him’ bit I found a little jarring.

11. @Hi, I don’t believe it was that ungoogleable, because I googled it without having DRAKE and without having ever heard of the artist . I tried googling FOLK HERO NICK with no luck then a friend suggested folk music so I googled FOLK SINGER NICK and he was in the very top results.

    I enjoyed it. Thanks Gila and HG

12. Nick Drake’s oeuvre is well worth bringing to our attention (but my CD, a compilation, was of zero help); I do think at least one unobscure leaf would have been nice. I also spotted Pink Moon, and if there hadn’t been an actual pink moon in the news, maybe a search engine would have come up with the goods.

    Enjoyable grid fill, rapidly abandoned endgame, thanks to Gila and HG.

13. I knew nothing about Nick Drake (hadn’t heard of him) but I got home without too much difficulty, which means I don’t think this was unfair at all. As far as I remember, I noticed the almost-rhyming BRYTER LAYTER and thought that might mean something – and after a search for that I found Nick Drake and the rest fell into place nicely. I didn’t know a drake was a warship but since NICK was clearly the jail, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to confirm it in Chambers.

    The joy of barred puzzles is the variety of themes, and inevitably what appeals to one will be anathema to another. I love the opera-themed ones (if not always the implementation, as in IQ 1679) but I’m aware that many people hate opera – which is why I would never complain when the theme is a genre of music I don’t like (except rap perhaps!). Maybe I just got lucky with my choice of searches for this puzzle, but if I can determine a theme about which I know nothing and finish the puzzle, I deem it fair.

14. I only made one mistake in grid fill (CIMA instead of CYMA_
    Parsing well above me but I do have all three albums plus a vinyl,I think.
    Brilliant, tragic man
    Thanks

15. I really enjoyed it, but Nick Drake is far from obscure to me. (Even with the – deliberately? – obtuse theme clue Pink Moon got me there fairly quickly.)

    I’m surprised so many (of an admittedly small sample) didn’t know Nick Drake. If that means the Inquisitor is attracting younger solvers I suppose it’s not all bad.

    It’s hard to judge these things when the theme is so familiar to yourself, but I was more worried about the latest Inquisitor (Ifor’s Sold Down the River). I hope that doesn’t elicit too much anger.

    Newcomers could at least give Northern Sky a listen (“the greatest English love song of modern times”, according to the NME).

16. So do I, Herb. But I think the policy that applies elsewhere, of making no reference whatever to a currently-active puzzle, is perhaps a wise one for this board also.

    I’ll look forward to your thoughts in a week or so!

17. Louise #11 – great, but how was I expected to guess singer from the cryptic Folk Hero? There aren’t any other indications in the rubric. I don’t recall folk singers being referred to as folk heroes in my time!
    I note that everyone who has leapt to the defence of the puzzle was aware of this singer. I feel that we should have been afforded a better hint in the rubric.

18. However, Hi, as someone who wasn’t aware of the singer’s work and who took ages to figure the endgame, ‘I feel that we should have been afforded a better hint in the rubric’ seems a fair comment, but ‘A shocker!’ doesn’t.

19. Hi @ 17
    No, contra your last para Cruciverbophile @13 hadn’t heard of Nick Drake, ditto Louise @11 who you were replying to!

    Also, I would agree the theme clue’s charade (the Drake bit) is maybe too obscure, but the “folk hero” definition itself seems fairly helpful – as Louise & her friend found.

    Maybe a more helpful rubric would have helped as you say. Or a musical title? “Title Sequence” isn’t giving much away.

20. I too had never heard of Nick Drake, and drake is a bit obscure. But Nick was a fair bet from jail; pink and moon stood out in the grid; and given that we were clearly looking for a creative artist, “folk hero” strongly suggested a folk singer. The leaves link didn’t reveal itself readily, but clicked nicely into place in due course. So I think it was tough but fair. Many thanks to Gilda for an inventive puzzle and to HolyGhost for the blog.

21. Gila not Gilda, apologies.

22. Hi @6 – I understand the impossible to spot this if you don’t already know the answer feeling, this endgame was beyond me too. It puts me in mind of the “helpful” advice I used to get occasionally from technical specialists work: the answer is in the manual. If you already know what the technical name for your issue then it is then true: the answer is clearly there on page 496 line 23. What was the problem!

    I think it is fair though. It would not be fair at all in a daily puzzle, but the IQ is in the top division when it comes to difficulty. I think being able to dig obscure facts (i.e. the things one doesn’t know) out of Google comes with the territory at this level.

    Thanks to HG and Gila

23. Many thanks to HG for the write-up and to all who’ve commented. All the feedback is – as always – an interesting read and very much appreciated.

    Ali/Gila

24. The gridfill was fairly easy, but I never got any further on my own, and wouldn’t have without help. The help was forthcoming, fortunately, but one reason I was stuck was that, living in France, I was only familiar with drakkar as a Viking ship, and never made the connection to drake. I had also thought of Peter for jail and couldn’t unthink it. Ah, well.

25. I think some of the negative comments are rather unfair. We managed to discover Nick Drake by goggling “five leaves left” – which is what had after completing the grid. This is just as well because we had taken a completely wrong turning with trying to answer Folk Hero appears from Jail on an Old Norse Warship. We were working on Arthur son of Pen (Jail) Dragon (Norse warship). Naturally we were getting nowhere until Nick Drake appeared!

26. Loved the puzzle. I didn’t bother with the clue at the end because once I had ‘ 5 leaves left’ it could only be Nick Drake. I’m surprised that he’s not known among many people here
    Thanks to Gila for eschewing Flanders and Swann.

27. Just to add, I thought the clue was perfectly fair. Surely it’s part of the appeal
    of advanced cryptics that a setter will go to the depths of Chambers for a definition.
    I know, as a sometime Magpie setter myself, how important it is for the setter to
    get feedback, so I hope Gila enjoys this one.

28. Tony @27
    Where you mention ‘definition’, I take it you mean the definition for ‘drake’ (the old Norse warship). I agree with you, but there are two things about the clue that have caused some of us to query its fairness: (1) the definition for Nick Drake (he’s not really a folk hero) and (2) the fact that both the solution ‘Nick Drake’ and ‘drake’ the warship make this, arguably, a ‘double obscurity’ clue of the sort that is frowned on – and fortunately rare in both barred-grid and blocked-grid crosswords. A clue that is a key to the whole theme can of course be cryptically tough but in my view it must be both sound (which this clue is if you allow ‘folk hero’ as I do) and clear (which this clue might not be because of the possible double obscurity). I felt I was lucky to solve that clue – on another day I might not have. In a previous puzzle by Gila (‘Blank Face’, a long time ago) I was not so lucky, and what I enjoyed then was a puzzle full of excellent clues – but no endgame!

29. Alan – Yes, I meant the def for ‘drake’. I also think that ‘folk hero’ is a good definition for the answer, which clearly leads to ‘Nick Drake’. The so-called obscurity of Nick Drake is irrelevant, I think. When you solve a clue and have the answer but don’t know what it is, you look it up. In this case by using the internet.

30. I tackled this puzzle only after somebody asked me if I thought one aspect of it was fair. The grid and clues were certainly fair, and the 12-letter answers led to a fairly speedy filling of the grid. Then I ground to a halt. The situation I encountered could be described in various ways: too many clues; clues left over; five unused clues; five X over/left, etc. The solver asking for my opinion gave me a couple of hints, including a comment that the words shared a common meaning (which I had assumed, but hadn’t seen the common factor) and the puzzle’s hint was FIVE X LEFT. That reduced the options considerably and I found the singer and works rather more quickly than my friend who had spent more time on the endgame than on solving clues and filling the grid. Without his hints I think I might have lacked the patience to persevere. I wasn’t sure what the ‘old Norse warship’ might be, so I had a possible Nick as a first name. I have never heard of NICK DRAKE, like many others it would seem.

    Whether something is fair is a subjective thing, but I don’t agree with Gavin Brown that the negative comments are unfair. At the very least thie puzzle was almost guaranteed to cause some frustration. Firstly is the inclusion of two very obscure leaves, one of which is an archaic meaning. Then there is the mutiplicity of ways of describing the situation encountered. Lastly there is the clue to the singer, which is far from a pure clue, so has many possible interpretations. By ‘pure’ I mean a clue without decorative surface features. Here we have a link of two words and an otiose ‘on’ acting as juxtaposition indicator. All standard stuff in cryptic clues, of course, but we have to cold-solve with no crossing letters, no indication of the length of answer, nor any indication of how many words. To me the preamble struck me as somewhat stingy.

31. Just to add a further thougt: I do think ‘folk hero’ as a definition is arguably unfair, despite Tony Edwards’ comment above. It’s very misleading and doesn’t help solvers groping for the answer. One paragraph in Wikipedia ends with the words, “he had come to represent a ‘doomed romantic hero,'” but you need to know the answer before seeing how that applies.

32. ‘thought’, not ‘thougt’.

33. Fair or unfair – who’s to say?
    But arguments such as “I knew nothing about the theme but figured it out and finished the puzzle, therefore it was fair.” aren’t logically sound.

34. If you are referring to me HG that is not what I said. I said that 5 leaves left was enough for me to discover the theme which I know quite a lot about. As I say, if I had needed the clue it was cryptically sound and thus solvable.

35. Tony Edwards @34: I wasn’t.
    Clearly your swift move from the album title to the theme meant that you were very much in the know. And you weren’t arguing from the particular to the general.

36. I assume you meant me, HG @ 35. I would say at least a third of barred puzzles involve me knowing nothing about the theme, figuring it out and finishing the puzzle. And if I can do that, I assume the puzzle to be fair because there must have been enough hints in the puzzle to know what information to look up. What’s illogical about that?

37. AlanB @ 28 – you make a good summary of the obscurity issue here, but the argument hinges on the words in the middle: …clue of the sort that is frowned on…. Frowned on by whom?

    It is frowned upon by those that think such double-obscurity is not fair at this level.
    It is not frowned upon by those that think such double-obscurity is fair at this level.

    As HG says @33, Fair or unfair – who’s to say?

38. ‘Fair or unfair – who’s to say?’

    Isn’t the answer to that ‘every solver who wants to comment’? The setter can then take a view from the comments.

39. I really enjoyed this – love a jigsaw grid fill, but I failed at the endgame in spite of having heard of Nick Drake. My problem was having written C instead of F as the additional letter for the first clue ?. This left me going down a rabbit hole looking for “Col. K hero” (leading me to Hogan’s Heroes), and didn’t help at all!
    Part of the joy of Inquisitors is solving puzzles on themes about which I know very little. I am really surprised at this one being described as. ‘A shocker”. Perhaps other solvers are less accustomed to the state of battlement in which I routinely find myself.

40. PeeDee @37
    Saying ‘frowned on’ was a bit weak, I admit, but I do have the strong impression, without any inside knowledge, that crossword editors discourage ‘double obscurity’ clues, where (to give a typical example) there is an obscure word or meaning making up part of the solution and an obscure word or meaning as the solution itself. Once, when I got interested in doing a simple analysis of a number of consecutive Inquisitor puzzles more than a year ago to see how many double obscurities there were among all the clues, there were at least three consecutive puzzles having absolutely none at all followed by a puzzle with three such clues and then a puzzle with two of them. They made a significant difference to my solving experience of those puzzles. Setters do seem to be aware of this potential issue, and for all I know it is practically an unwritten rule to avoid clues of this sort unless there is a thematic reason or else some other payback for the solver. I could be wrong, but I am sure that double obscurity clues are rare – I would be only too well aware if that were not so.
    Returning to the clue in question, I do consider it a ‘double obscurity’ (although the majority of solvers here, or in general, may not think that), but I took it on, knowing it was absolutely key to the theme, enjoyed the struggle of solving it, and got my payback! I particularly liked ‘folk hero’, a kind of cryptic definition that must be read as ‘hero of folk’.
    Thanks for your comment.

41. Alan B @40 – to add to your comments, not to contradict them:

    The crossword editors (and setters) have different criteria for evaluating a clue/puzzle than a solver. The editors try to find something that fits for a population of solvers, individual solvers need something that works for them. Size medium slippers will be the best size for a hotel chain to leave in their rooms, medium will fit most people. If an guest has size 14 feet then the knowledge that the medium slipper worked for 90% of the hotel’s guests is of no comfort to them.

    A solver can’t have an “averaged” experience of solving a single puzzle. The editor can have an averaged view (for that same single puzzle). The term obscure is not referring to the same thing when considered by the editor and considered by a solver.

    Another illustration is 1% of the UK population dies every year. It makes no sense to apply the same to an individual. An individual will not be 1% dead at the end of next year, they are either 100% alive or 100% dead. A fact might be recallable by only 10% of the population (ie is an obscure fact), but the fact is not 10% recallable by you (or any other solver), it is either 100% recalled or 100% not recalled.

    Fairness is another such term, it means one thing for a puzzle to be fair for an editor (was it accessible on average), the term means something else for an individual (it might be impossible for them to solve it).

    Fairness (for the majority, as viewed by an editor) will entail unfairness for some individuals. This isn’t a contradiction, it is inherent in the setting and solving situation. The setter sets for many, the solver solves for an individual. One can’t use the term (fairness/obscurity) in the same way for both.

42. PS – I meant to add thank you for sharing the info on counting double-obscurities a sample of puzzles. Interesting.

43. ‘Fairness is another such term, it means one thing for a puzzle to be fair for an editor (was it accessible on average), the term means something else for an individual (it might be impossible for them to solve it).’

    I think you might be confusing fairness and difficulty with that statement. I would say that all editors ensure that all puzzles are fair. Solvers who tackle these thematic puzzles have a wide range of solving ability and the editors do a great job of satisfying everyone’s tastes. That means that they know some puzzles will be too tough for some solvers, but they still make sure those puzzles are fair. We regularly read comments from solvers who couldn’t finish a puzzle, but they rarely claim that was because the puzzle was unfair.

    Back to this puzzle, there was a clue to the artist from clue gimmick, a clue to the title from extra solutions, both PINK MOON and BRYTER LAYTER in symmetrical positions in the grid (I missed the latter). Although the endgame took me an age, I have to accept all that together made the puzzle very fair.

44. PeeDee @41
    Thanks for your response and further thoughts. I would query only your last paragraph, and John @43 has expressed very well the kind of thing I would have said in response; so thanks to him as well.

45. Re fairness in puzzles: think of a fair die, it provides an even chance for everyone. What I am trying to say is that you can’t experience this fairness on a single throw. On a single throw you might get a 6 which is great, or a 1 which is terrible. You can only experience the fairness over a number of throws.

    The IQ as a series can be fair, over a year you will get your share of puzzles that suit your knowledge and some that leave you out in the cold.

    My argument is that you can’t experience fairness on a single puzzle. A single puzzle is like a single throw of a die, you either win or you lose. You knew/found the answer or you didn’t.

    To talk of a single puzzle (i.e. this one) being either fair or unfair doesn’t make a lot of sense. Fairness has to be viewed over a series of puzzles.

46. An interesting discussion, thanks. My own view is that obscurity and fairness are personal concepts that can’t readily be generalised.

    A very long time in shortened Turkish cap (5)

    When I saw this (or something like it) many years ago I thought it unfairly obscure. But then I didn’t know KALPA or KALPAK. Now I do, so this clue doesn’t contain an obscurity, let alone a double one, when viewed from my personal perspective. Like beauty, these concepts exist in the eye of the beholder rather than being absolutes.

47. I agree with previous posters that it’s hard, if not impossible, to judge fairness of a puzzle on what basically amounts to “I did/didn’t know this”. I do think it’s possible to judge a puzzle unfair if it involves an endgame that’s ambiguous, and the solver has no logical way of knowing if he or she has got it right. Listener solvers may recall a certain hare…

48. ‘The IQ as a series can be fair, over a year you will get your share of puzzles that suit your knowledge and some that leave you out in the cold.’

    You shouldn’t need prior knowledge of a theme though, that is the whole point. The puzzle should lead a solver who hasn’t that knowledge to the theme. That is the fairness we are discussing. A puzzle that doesn’t lead the solver to the theme, often called a GWIT, would be an example of an unfair puzzle.

49. Hi John, I can see what you mean about fairness defined in those terms, which is different to the idea of fairness I was thinking of.

    I think my personal take on that sort of fairness is that if the knowledge is generally available in the public domain, recognisable as a topic of some sort, and relates in an obvious way to the puzzle just solved, then a failure to find it means I was just not up to the task this time. You should be able to recognise the solution if you see it, but being led to it by the setter is an option, but not a requirement for a puzzle to be fair (IMO).

    I realise that I am out of step with many on this. In general I don’t have a great respect for crossword rules and traditions in general. From my perspective what a puzzle should or should not do is secondary to whether I solved it and how much I enjoyed it. If I enjoyed a puzzle it can break every rule in the book as far as I am concerned.

50. Blimey, I wasn’t suddenly expecting there to be 20+ more comments on here. I doubt I’ll be in for many points at the end of the year, but I might be up there for the most comments.

    As I’ve already said, I appreciate any and all feedback, so any comments solvers have to make about my puzzles will always be fine by me.

    It’s pretty much impossible for me to comment on issues of fairness/unfairness as regards this particular theme, but I guess it would be interesting to know if any members of the editorial team hadn’t previously heard of Nick Drake and therefore had to work it out from the puzzle itself. If they were all aware of him, then maybe there was some unwitting bias and certain aspects of unfairness/ambiguity were overlooked. As a solver for the other 51 Saturdays of the year, I fully appreciate the frustrations of not being able to crack an endgame though, so apologies to those who didn’t manage to nail this one or found it a bit of a grind.

    FWIW, I’m sure that I thought to myself at some point during this puzzle’s construction that the clue would probably be the least likely (standalone) way that anyone would grok the theme, and that it would likely only serve as confirmation for those who had worked out the five leaves thing or found potential things to highlight in the grid. It doesn’t strike me as being any less ambiguous than any other clue you would expect to see in a cryptic puzzle, and – for me at least – ambiguity/trickiness is an accepted part of the deal when setting about solving these types of puzzles.

    I did once clue NICK DRAKE as “Folk singer in prison with rapper (4,5)”, which – if used here – would have been less ambiguous from a definitional POV, but would no doubt have ruffled the feathers of those who don’t know/care to know who Drake is. Also maybe worth noting: it’s one thing to write an OK clue with a decent surface reading/wordplay, but quite another thing to do that with the added constraint of the clue needing to be a certain number of characters long (which it has to, because you’re the kind of idiot setter who wants every clue to contribute to your theme)!

    Until the next battle, thanks all for the comments.
    Ali/Gila

51. When I used to set exam papers and later 9 out of 10 candidates commented that a particular question was unclear or confusing, then that was my fault; however if only 1 out of 10 made such a comment, then that was their fault.
    Looking back at the comments on this puzzle, I don’t think any firm conclusion can be made here regarding fair/unfair.

52. Interesting, HG, though I would think ‘1 out of 10’ and ‘9 out of 10’ make for easy decisions. It is when it gets to 4 or 5 out of 10 that it gets a bit more difficult. I understand that the Magpie editors look at how the top solvers got on in such situations. If all the top solvers got it right then it is judged that was likely hard rather than unfair, but if any erred or didn’t finish there would be a case for unfairness. I am not sure even that is completely ‘fair’ though as top solvers might be able to solve an unfair puzzle 🙂

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