Inquisitor 1734: Fifty Percent Extra Free by Nathan Panning

30 comments on “Inquisitor 1734: Fifty Percent Extra Free by Nathan Panning”

1. A convoluted endgame to be sure, but I thought the way all the 50% extra stuff was followed through from the grid fill to 6, and then 9, was pretty neat. Relieved also that my desperate stab at inverting the grid seems to be correct! A good puzzle overall that a lot of work and thought had obviously gone into – a promising debut.

2. 6 becomes 9 was a step too far for me.

   Well done for persevering but than I guess that’s your job.

   Tough but enjoyable up to that point.

3. All thanks to setter and Hihoba. Yes, an exhausting one. I was ready to down tools and call it finished on finding that Six existed, but the Tony winner bit suggested further complication. An alternative result from clashes — other than the obvious — has always seemed a possibility since I fell into the dread TRILBY/FEDORA trap many Inquisitors ago, and the Guido bit stood out in my scrawled list of clash pairs. So onward to 9 and thus 8 1/2 after much strenuous Googling….

   I assumed from the outset that “Nathan Panning” was a hint pointing to the theatre — some production which US drama critic George Jean Nathan had panned? But he died in 1958 before 8 1/2 or either of the musicals appeared, so maybe that was a red herring. A useful one even so!

4. This was the first Inquisitor that I’ve tackled for some time now, and I found it tough. I filled the grid (apart from 21 ac, where I couldn’t see how “fume” defined “outgas”, a word that isn’t defined in Chambers). I thought that the clashing cells were in an S shape, so although I had a word beginning ANN, the rest made little sense. I also failed to see some of the surplus letters, ending up with TMUSICWINNER, which was not much help. Congratulations to those who persevered, especially working out the final part of the endgame. And welcome to Nathan Panning!

5. Ah. I took NINE to be the thematic work (as it won a Tony) and wrote 8½ under the grid. My reasoning was that SIX was “a” work but not thematic because it didn’t win a Tony; you had to invert the grid to find the one that did, and adding a half to 8½ gives 9.

   I should have spotted Anna of Cleves sooner than I did, but Guido Contini is hardly a name familiar to those who don’t know the musical and it took me ages googling the characters in the list of Tony winners before I hit on it. Pretty well every plausible combination of letters yielded pages of nobodies on social media.

   I may well be wrong about the Fellini but I was past caring by that stage. At least I did depict the 6 in the grid. Nice idea but I agree with your assessment of convoluted and obscure.

6. I thought that this Inquisitor contained some wonderful clues – I particularly liked the that for PARR at 33D, which I felt was very cleverly done indeed. ARAGON at 1A was also worthy of note. I sensed a theme, searched for the other four, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to SEYMOUR! I was unable to parse 10A, but all makes sense now. I found ANNA OF CLEVES pretty quickly and drew the numeral SIX, also noting that the clashes when read in the opposite direction (after turning the grid 180 degrees to see a figure NINE) could spell GUIDO CONTINI (shame that the V of the NV clash wasn’t needed). ‘Live at Roseland: Elements of 4’ has been suggested to be the inspiration for SIX (FOUR – SIX – 50% extra), so I’m not 100% sure that I agree with the inspirational work as stated. So overall, the ending was a little over involved, clever, but just a little bit too much of a leap of faith to be able to confidently declare a successful finish. What actually is the thematic work here, SIX or NINE? To me (reading the rubric), SIX looks to be the thematic work, the NINE is 50% extra ‘for free’. I’m happy to be wrong though.

   Many thanks, as always, to both setter and blogger

7. We bloggers have no inside line to the correct answer, so cruciverbophile and mshah you could well be right about the reversal of 6 and 9. My reasoning was that we didn’t have to “manipulate the grid” until after the finding of the answer. I too, David L suffered from the TRILBY/FEDORA debacle – in fact I blogged it incorrectly!! So I might be wrong again – we’ll see.

8. @5 My (eventual) thought exactly re the “50% Extra Free” relation of 8½ to 9.

9. Hi of Hihoba @7 :
   Many thanks for the input, and for struggling onwards to get the blog sorted for us all. If ‘manipulation of the grid’ is indeed turning it 180 degrees, then we’re no longer writing the name below the grid, but above it, if we write it along the line given – I therefore assumed that the manipulation was the choosing the appropriate letters from the clashes and drawing the outline of the six.

   I strongly suspect that none of us can confidently state that we’ve had a truly successful finish, such is the level of uncertainty in so many aspects of the endgame. We await Saturday morning, where the printed solution will undoubtedly amaze us all.

10. It was a pleasure to try a puzzle by a setter I have not encountered before. While working through the clues I was struck above all by the ingenuity and originality of so many of them.

    I very much enjoyed the ‘50% extra’ device in the clues and would welcome seeing it or something similar again. Clashes are a more familiar device, and in this puzzle they duly spiced up the solving process, but the potential for clashes anywhere also added considerably to the solving time.

    I completed the grid leaving one clue unparsed, but I had everything I needed for the endgame, namely, the complete thematic description and all 12 clashes. The top left was the hardest corner to complete, purely because I entered EARTHA at 1d (I’m another!) and ENURES at 4d – both of them valid answers, but making ARAGON and TRIAS impossible to solve without creating (far) too many clashes. When I twigged the cause of the problem everything was fine, and ARAGON became my favourite of many excellent clues.

    I also had a query with 35d DYER, in which either ‘Return’ or ‘turn’ would serve the wordplay in the same way, but that dilemma was resolved when the letters RE (the would-be 50% extra) turned out to be surplus to the thematic description.

    The broad subject of the theme was clear from the description, but I saw no pointer to the actual theme (the ‘work’) except a big ‘6’ whose relevance passed me by and an unknown name hiding in the pairs of letters. I should have tried to make something of the ‘6’ (and studied the title, perhaps) or scan the titles of Tony-winning musicals to see if any clicked. Instead, I looked through the leading characters in those winning musicals, backwards from 2021 as far as I needed to go, and, in 1982, the name Guido Contini popped up in a musical called Nine. I didn’t know this musical, but I did know of Federico Fellini’s film 8½. A relief and an overdue reward.

    I took ‘manipulation of the grid’ to mean writing in the name GUIDO CONTINI, resolving the clashes.

    Congratulations and thanks to Nathan Panning, and thanks to Hihobe for the blog.

11. I found this quite tough but very rewarding. The 50% extra was really well implemented throughout – as the clever device for extra letters, as the change from Six to Nine, as the extra half added from 8½ to Nine, and with the three queens in the grid (Aragon, Parr, Anna of Cleves) leaving it ‘free’ of the other 50%. I took all the Six references as essentially distractions (and was well and truly taken in by them), with the thematic work being Nine, as fitting the ‘thematic description’ from extra letters, so: character Guido Contini, symbol requiring ‘manipulation of the grid’, and inspiration being 8½. A lot of Googling required for me, but that’s down to my own lack of general knowledge – I don’t really think a Tony-award winning musical should be considered too ‘obscure’. And, of course, some lovely clues. Many thanks Nathan Panning!

12. Did anybody else wonder if Nathan Panning might be Pointer in disguise?

    And in the early stages of identifying the message from the spare letters I had “BEST MUSIC ….TONY WI….” and began to ponder a Hacienda theme. Not to be.

    FWIW, My interpretation of the resolution is pretty much as described by CranberryBoat @11 although I must be honest and say that I completely missed the relevance of Aragon and Parr in the grid (tsk) until discussing with a fellow solver.

    Thanks very much to the setter.

13. ‘You’re a Nathan panning’ is a line in ‘You’re the top’ in Anything Goes by Cole Porter, referencing the theatre critic mentioned by David Langford above

14. Another one here with the EARTHA/ARETHA problem, and a failure with Rey (“I’ve never seen Star Wars”) at 35d, which I thought was a pretty poor clue. I got the 6 shape, rotated it to 9, was aware of the nod to Fellini, then spotted GUIDO CONTINI – but completely missed ANNA OF CLEVES, owing to my problem with 35d & a mistaken clash. So I wrote “8½ (Otto e mezzo)” below the grid and put the thing away.
    It seems from the comments that it wasn’t totally clear what we were supposed to do, so I have mixed feelings about this debut. Nevertheless, thanks to Nathan Panning (whoever they may be) and to Hihoba – but I don’t think Hamilton can be correct.

15. Another vote for 8½ here, btw, as it is the inspiration for the thematic work (9), as requested in the preamble.

16. I must say everything seemed clear to me regarding the character and the inspiration. No doubt that was partly because (1) Guido Contini was the name I found, together with Nine (‘9’), and (2) that character name happened to uncover a faulty clash that further obscured the name Anne of Cleves (already not recognisable because of the name Anna). And there was no doubt in my mind about the inspiration (8½).

    Thank you James for that info about Nathan Panning. When I looked it up I saw “You’re Inferno’s Dante” in the next verse, which I’m sure I have encountered in another thematic puzzle in the fairly recent past.

17. On behalf of a number of solvers, may I just say: Aaaarghhhhft! Which is the sound of frustration emanating from an Inquisitor-solver after an hour of staring at a completed grid, and trying to figure out how on earth to possibly connect twelve cells when there is no obvious way to get there.

    Of course I’ll always be more frustrated by a crossword I didn’t manage to complete, but I do feel that the endgame was just too obscure here. With the thematic description being ‘Best musical Tony winner’ I felt it reasonable to expect that the line drawing would be of an actual Tony winner, which Six is not. So I went down the Moulin Rouge road initially (winner of the 2021 Tony award), as with some artistic flourish you can draw a windmill through the available letters – but that didn’t seem to make sense.

    I also found the song ‘Fifty Percent’, which was part of the 1980s musical Ballroom (though not Tony-winning) which might have inspired Moulin Rouge…

    And then the ‘thematic character’ was not ‘thematic’ either (how is Anna of Cleves a best musical Tony winner?) and I instead went down the road of finding actual Tony winners such as Evan Hansen, none of which fitted.

    So all in all, rather frustrating – a lovely endgame now that you’ve explained it, but in my view not one that can be sensibly deduced from the information provided.

18. @13 All thanks for the “Nathan Panning” context. My ignorance of musical lyrics is once again laid bare!

19. The traced line looked like 8 to me which went with seeing PARR and ARAGON in the grid
    Didnt quite get the phrase but I did suss MUSIC or maybe MUSICAL
    Googling Henry 8 wives musical led me to SIX and I saw where ANNE OF CLEVES became ANNA OF CLEVES
    I googled and found extracts with “DIVORCED BEHEADED DIED and DIVORCED BEHEADED SURVIVED”
    And the main writer was doing his finals at Cambridge at the the time
    The excerpts looked great-wonder what Rick Wakeman thought of it

    I learn something new each week on these-last week ot was Georgia O Keeffe’s great painting

    Thanks to all

20. Hihoba
    I’ve read and appreciated your addition to the blog (in red). I was one of the luckier ones who hunted down the thematic Tony winner Nine and found Guido Contini (with the inspiration 8½). This must indeed be the unique solution.
    I never saw Anna of Cleves in the clashes and was therefore not put off by the items that pointed to that plausible theme. Anne was born ‘Anna’, and as you say she is in the recent musical ‘Six’ as Anna of Cleves. It’s really only the fact that Six is not a Tony winner for Best Musical that rules it out.
    I noticed, by the way, that if the setter had put TRIES instead of TRIAS at 16a the ‘false’ text would have read ‘Anne of Cleves’. ‘Anna’ was perhaps intentional in order to point more to ‘Six’, the red herring. It’s unusual for misdirection (or deception) to be taken this far.

21. PEDANTS CORNER : By the way, the idea of 8 1/2 becoming 9 is NOT 50% extra free … it is only 1/17 extra, or just over 5%. 1/2 is only 50% if the number in question is 1. So that bit of the proposed solution just does not fit, mathematically speaking. In other words, 50% does not necessarily equal the number 1/2 (aka 0.5), it is one half (50 parts per 100) of the particular quantity specified, in this case 8 1/2, so ‘50% extra free’ should result in 12 3/4.

22. Me_sat… @21
    I agree: the idea that 9 is 8½ with 50% extra is absurd. But the setter clearly never intended this, and it is not a part of the theme. The only 50% extra is what makes ‘6’ into Nine, and this is neatly foreshadowed by the title and echoed in the 50% extra device used in certain clues. ‘8½’, or ‘otto e mezzo’, just happens to be the the title of the thematically related film.

23. Reading the blog thoroughly Im glad I got as far as I did-a friend said that SIX didnt win an award
    The last bit was a bridge too fat for me but very clever-I probably have a copy of 8 and a half
    Thanks

24. We looked at the blog soon after it was published but due to lack of time we did not add a comment until today. Having looked at your additional comment in red Hihoba, we would concur with the first comments made by Alan B. We never noticed the other possibility – it took us ages to come up with 9 and Guido.

    Thanks to S&B.

25. Me_sat… @21 / Alan @22. I can’t see why we’d be asked to provide the inspirational work unless it had some further relevance – without the 50% it seems an unnecessary step. Of course the idea is somewhat absurd, but taking 50% as literally 50/100 doesn’t seem too much of a stretch – playfully similar to a river being a flower/banker or ‘discovering’ something to remove the ends. Well, it worked for me anyway.

26. CranberryBoat @25
    Actually, I think writing down the name of the inspirational work was indeed an ‘unnecessary step’ – except that it was a stated requirement to do so. Writing in the name Guido Contini (and not Anna of Cleves) was enough to prove that the solver had identified the correct musical.
    I noted what you said about the ‘lovely clues’ in your earlier comment, and I agree. It was in fact a desire to do justice to such a good crossword that led me to work so hard researching a subject I have no interest in and know nothing about! This was not an easy endgame.

27. Cranberryboat @ 25 : It’s a brave individual that ‘disses the culture’ of a mathematician – as a humble and retiring chemist I stand shoulder to shoulder with my fellow brethren the physicist, gazing upwards in awe and wonder at the majesty of the mighty mathematician, the sole occupant that abides above me at the very top of the pyramid of truth – if we’re not careful we might incur the wrath of the setter known as Serpent (ex mathematics professor I believe), so causing him to come slithering from his lair to set some even more fiendishly difficult challenges than he does already – joke about mathematics? … not me, no, not me … but perhaps it was just the hallucinogens in the cranberries doing the talking! (joke about chemistry? – yes, I’m ALLOWED to do that). Tee hee.

    Odd end to an Inquisitor though – I think that much e all agree on – when I see the official solution in the paper tomorrow, I’ll probably be forced to record this as a DNF.

28. Well, this one certainly divided the troops, didn’t it? … so it was with a wry smile that I noticed, early on Saturday morning, that the official solution in the i (electronic edition) NEGLECTED to write 8 1/2 below the grid as instructed in the rubric … thereby resulting in an incomplete solution – this therefore possibly being the only recorded case where the setter (albeit on a technicality probably beyond their control) must also record a DNF.

    Made me smile anyway – as did the reminder by Nimrod of the wonderful clue from Artix in an Inquisitor of 2021 – thanks, old chap – that makes me smile every time that I look at it.

    Keep up the marvellous work, one and all – setters, bloggers and commenters.

29. True, MeSat… but the explanation in the printed version ends with

    However, Six has not won a Tony; so the grid must be inverted to produce a 9: the musical NINE, featuring the character GUIDO CONTINI, did win; it was inspired by the film 8½.

    It shows the inverted grid (to show 9) which probably made it impractical to write “under” the grid, but I think it’s fairly clear that 8½ was required. Phew!

30. I enjoyed the grid fill. There was some excellent clues – I particularly liked the &lit clues for the queens at 1A and 30D. I am not into Star Wars but guessed that REY must be the key since the D was clearly clued. I got the thematic description and all the clashes. But then line I drew was a closed loop which looked more like a peanut or perhaps a distorted B, neither of which helped. I am not into musicals either, so after a quick look at the Tony winners on Wiki and seeing nothing that meant anything to me, I went no further. Having read the above, I am pleased I stopped when I did.

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