Inquisitor 1706: Defence by Chalicea

18 comments on “Inquisitor 1706: Defence by Chalicea”

1. Thanks to Hihoba for the review, and to Chalicea for the entertainment.
   Although this was too simple for the blogger, it was a satisfying solve for us: not too difficult, but plenty to get our teeth into. Even then, we DNF’ed, as we failed to find the “attachment”, spending some time wondering whether some sort of “rescue ring” in the 11th and 12th rows may keep the sailors afloat, if not the ship.
   Our first way in to the thematic material was to note the clue in the preamble that 41a is an anagram (“terribly”) of “sad revelation”, but even then it took a while to solve the anagram due to our unfamiliarity with shipworms.
   Thanks again to both, and look forward to reading others’ thoughts.

2. My thanks to Chalicea and Hihoba. The anagram in the preamble caught my eye too, but didn’t really help until I finally saw the dread TEREDO. No complaints here about (relative) simplicity. Sometimes IQ is a quick solve and sometimes it takes me days and days — the uncertainty is surely part of the fun.

   But I was a bad boy this time: not having a copper-coloured highlighter and knowing I wouldn’t be sending this in, I just used the ordinary yellow. Must go and stand in the naughty corner.

3. Bless me! I never noticed the [SAD REVELATION]*. Thank you very much DavidO.

4. The biggest problem faced here, beyond untangling the anagram fodder for the wee beastie at the bottom of the grid, was working out what colour to highlight the alleged remedy with. 🙂 Thoroughly enjoyable though, as Chalicea’s offerings always are, and a nice introduction to barred grid puzzles for those who might not always try them. I know that a number of regular daily cryptic solvers did give this a go on that basis. The run of easier puzzles has also been a welcome, refreshing change here at least from a period where we had the exact opposite.

5. Better than Moby Dick

6. Lovely puzzle by one of my favourite setters. Agreed, this wasn’t hard by IQ standards, but that doesn’t mean it was easy – one shouldn’t forget that what’s straightforward to seasoned solvers will still be incomprehensible to the majority of the public. I found TEREDO NAVALIS the same way as the blogger did, and to my shame I didn’t notice the anagram in the preamble. Chalicea always goes the extra mile and this was a lovely little touch.

   I didn’t have a copper pen either…

7. Enjoyable and, in the endgame, quite challenging I thought. Plus I learnt something. But I never worked out whether a copper bottom in sea water goes green or not. Does anyone know? I guess brown would be the safer choice if you actually submitted the puzzle, although in my case that would have involved buying a new pen (and still not getting a bottle of Prosecco).

8. I shall remember this puzzle for quite a while (1) for the very neat ‘copper-bottoming’ of the ship of the line, completing a thematic set of four phrases of exactly 13 letters placed appropriately in the grid, and (2) for the brilliant clue to HORSEFEATHERS. Regarding the latter, I wondered only whether the clue deserved a ‘?’ to indicate Trump as a definition-by-example of the ‘(US)’ part (at least!) of ‘(US) nonsense’ (the Chambers definition).

   Teredo navalis was quite hard to find. I began with the Wikipedia article on Ship of the Line and found ‘shipworm’ as a likely attacker in a related article. Chambers gave me Teredo, and the name of the species came from another Wiki article. I never saw the anagram, and seeing it revealed now increases my admiration for this puzzle.

   Thanks to Chalicea and Hihoba.

9. Spotted the preamble anagram almost immedIately but then had a Peter Elliot style fade at the end by failing to see A COPPER BOTTOM. Enjoyable nonetheless.

10. I am only an occasional dabbler when it comes to the Inqy, and was defeated by the shipworm and the copper bottom. The rest was pretty straightforward.

11. Teredo Navalis!
    Wasn’t he in Kojak??

12. Thank you Hihoba and friends for all those warming comments. It seems the copper colour of the solution grid is accurate (not green) as the red colour traditionally appearing on ships’ bottoms is also because of the copper oxide paint that was used to defend against the beasts – that also gave a copper tinge – any colour copper to red. The Internet gives rather gruesome facts – it seems the teredo navalis is a delicacy – the 2ft-long things are prepared like oysters. Ugh! Using the anagram in the preamble was due to the brilliance of John the editor.

13. Another relatively easy puzzle, and I spotted the [sad revelation] anagram in the rubric, due to the number of letters in 41 across that I had that were also in those two specific words. Aaaaah, I said to myself – I must look for anagrams of sad revelation, and then promptly forgot to, for a whole week (!!!), so I was mightily relieved when I finally completed 41 across (last one in for me), wiki’d the latin term, read about copper bottoms on ships, and used an orange pen (nearest to copper I had) to do the shading.

    Thanks once again to the setters, and bloggers, for the quality Saturday experience that is the Inquisitor.

14. By the way, I didn’t like 40 across. ‘Everything on the radio that’s boring’. To my mind, both ALL and AWL would be acceptable, and with the central letter not crossing with another answer, either would fit the grid. Which end of the clue is the definition? I don’t like clues like that.

15. Me_sat_here_at_home #14, now you’ve mentioned it, I agree with you. I automatically read it as “Everything on the radio – that’s boring” but I do see that it could be “Everything – on the radio that’s boring”

16. One half of brain saw CHOPPER BOTTLE, other half thought of COPPER BOTTOM – but, alas, didn’t connect. Ah well, the rest was easy …

17. Yes, Me_sat_here_at_home, you are quite right, I should have clued that ‘On the radio everything that’s boring’. I dislike that potential ambiguity too. I think I expected the dash in the clue to make it clear that the last words were the definition. Hand suitably slapped.

18. Chalicea #17 … (‘Hand suitably slapped’): Please rest assured that if it has been slapped, then it was most definitely slapped with a velvet glove, and not with an iron fist! 😉

Comments are closed.