Inquisitor 1769: VI Fun by Wiglaf

18 comments on “Inquisitor 1769: VI Fun by Wiglaf”

1. Enjoyed this one — my thanks to Wiglaf and duncanshiell. Nothing much to report except that (after recovering from an initial lapse of putting the more familiar WETA for WEKA) I became fixated on flightless birds and of course couldn’t find one to fit the POAKA slot. But counting the omitted letters made it clear that it had to have a P and a K.

   I never made sense of the title either, and will no doubt feel like a total idiot when revelation appears in the comments!

2. Fairly gentle this week, but thoroughly enjoyable. Who would have thought that so many birds would have such odd names?

   The title is avifauna without the a’s…

3. This is the second puzzle in a row that had what was for me a meaningless title. (But there is no law against that, and it did not detract from the enjoyment of this puzzle.)

   I have met the cryptic device involving the removal of a letter in this way several times now, and this was a good implementation of it, with not too many instances of more than one letter being removed. (In fact there were five.) I filled in AXIT from the wordplay but had to find the missing letter by elimination at the end. (AXITE is not in my Collins sixth print edition 2003.)

   I was puzzled by the strange-looking “LOT’s” in the clue to TAILERONS. (I found no meaning for LOT that made the surface of the clue read well.)

   Of the New Zealand birds, HUIA and APTERYX revealed themselves first while I was solving, giving me the key to the rest. It was an interesting theme, from which I learned some things abut birds in New Zealand, including the fact that their names use a lot of A’s and K’s. (Without A or K, four of the names would reduce to PO, PO, WE and THE.)

   Thanks to Wiglaf, and to Duncan for the clear (and colourful) blog.

4. Jon @2
   Thanks for the explanation of VI Fun.

5. A fun solve from start to finish. As per duncanshiell, I struggled with the title, so thanks to Jon_S @2 who I think might well be correct (althought the use of capitals is a bit of a stretch to my mind). Speaking of capitals, I did wonder why exactly the capitalization and punctuation of LOT’s was necessary … anybody have any idea? Lastly, 26D in Collins is indeed not listed in Chambers (or the online update pdf file), but can nevertheless be found in the Chambers Word Wizard!

6. LOT Polish Airlines, the “flag carrier”.

7. Not only was the title a mystery to me, why is the grid referred to (twice) as a “diagram”?

8. HG @6
   Thanks for the explanation.

9. But why are the As deleted from AVIFAUNA? What does it signify (if anything)?

10. I have apologised privately to Duncan (for possibly putting him off) so I might as well do it publicly here.
    My “Small, Medium, Large …” message to him wasn’t a hint, but a question as to what size hint he might want.
    Anyway, thanks for the blog, and also to Wiglaf for a fairly easy puzzle.

11. Bingy @ 9

    Given my proven inability to understand the title, I’m probably not the best person to answer your question, but I guess it is just an imitation of the crossword where all the entries are missing each occurrence of a specific letter

12. My best guess was Avifauna as well, but I wasn’t totally convinced.

13. Indeed a relatively gentle solve, further helped by the (clue lengths) referring to the full answers, hence making it clear how many times a letter needed to be removed.

    But good fun & nice to have an easier one, so I’m not complaining!

14. I enjoyed this one. Not too difficult once I got going. I spotted/guessed KAKAPO fairly early on which helped no end with the other shaded entries. LOI was AXITe, which, AB@3, is not in my old Collins either so I had to confirm it online.
    I thought the title was brilliant once I eventually spotted it. I cannot see why folks have a problem with it as all the clued entries have a missing letter. Inserting the As defines the theme very neatly and seems to me obviously correct.
    I am full of wonder at how Wiglaf managed to construct this puzzle, considering all the constraints needed to make it work.
    Thanks to Wiglaf and Duncan.

15. The pedant in me would point out that we have five Maori names with one (perhaps the most iconic) given its Linnaean sobriquet. I know: grid constraints and all that, to which I’d respond ‘Thematic consistency and all that’. Some of us were rather pleased to see a focus on the Maori names, and thought KIWI must be one of the four-letter answers in consequence.

    Some of us would also like to know how to put a macron on the ‘a’ of ‘Maori’, but I can’t even manage diacritical marks on my own site!

16. Thoroughly enjoyable and the first time I’ve done (finished!) an Inquisitor. I do the enormous variety of puzzles in the Telegraph (D&S) and was pleased to be thrown this by my wife. Thanks to Nimrod I have been directed to this site which is a boon. I can usually cope with the DTel but sometimes it is just because letter combinations leave few options so….in goes an answer even when I can’t parse it. Case in point in this puzzle was 10a Tailerons.
    So, thank you, Duncan, both for the explanations and for the presentation…a thing of beauty.
    Btw, just because VIFun is avifauna without ‘a’ does NOT mean that “the joy of six” and variants thereon are incorrect. It is in the nature of setters to be ambiguous.

17. Those with long memories of other places may recall that this compiler used the same theme, gimmick mechanism and the same title in a puzzle in the Crossword Club in October 1993. While it was a different puzzle (e.g. 10 x 10 rather than 12 x 12), the earlier incarnation did use four of the same birds – HUIA, APTERYX, POAKA and KAKAPO, but the other two were KEA and TUI.

18. No explanation of the use of ‘diagram’ in the solution on Saturday. Surely there was a reason for that choice of word?

Comments are closed.