Inquisitor 1817: 7 Across by Shark

15 comments on “Inquisitor 1817: 7 Across by Shark”

1. A game of two halves is an apt way to describe my experience of this puzzle. For the first half, it was interesting to see the names of countries forming in the shaded entries, DJIBOUTI and ETHIOPIA being the first, while I was filling the grid. I thought they were all going to be African countries until SRI LANKA came along. The Across and Down clues were excellent.

   For the endgame (the second half), I worked out from a couple of the thematic clues that they all led to former names of the countries named in the grid. These clues were, in a sense, not really needed – except the one for PERSIA, in order to confirm IRAN. However, a few of the former names were not so easy to find, and for those the wordplay was of considerable help! (Duncan, it’s true the space for Zambia could have accommodated Gambia, but when I looked up the latter it was always The Gambia. The thematic clue resolves it anyway, of course.)

   I was more than pleased to notice SWAZILAND almost staring at me in the grid (I dislike grid-staring!) – a nice piece of luck, and a clever coup by the setter as it required only three changes to make ESWATINI.

   I liked very much the original idea for this puzzle, which was well implemented to give us a grid replete with thematic names.

   Finally, an observation on the thematic clue to EAST PAKISTAN (leading to BANGLADESH).
   “No starter for meal, by the sound of it, jam’s brown (2 words)”
   For the wordplay, ‘jam’ sounds like pack (PAK) and ‘brown’ is TAN, as indicated above. The pronunciation of PAKISTAN given in both Chambers and Collins, however, is PAHK-IS-TAHN. The clue works only by pronuncing it PACK-IS-TAHN (or -TAN), but that pronunciation is not in the dictionaries!

   Many thanks to Shark and Duncan for an excellent puzzle and an excellent blog.

2. Much enjoyed, though it took a long time — all thanks to Shark and duncanshiell. Many red herrings pursued owing to the uncertainty of just how far back an ORIGIN might go: some time here was spent trying to persuade the SRI LANKA clue to yield SERENDIP or SERENDIB or even TAPROBANA. Overthinking the thing, I suppose.

3. I’ll stick my neck out to say that I thought this was a really interesting theme that was badly executed.

   Hands up please anyone who solved a single wordplay-only clue before figuring out the corresponding country entry. I certainly didn’t and I thought they were WAY too hard as answers and then clues to be of any help, other than confirming a back-solve of a known country. I feel that wordplay-only themeless clues need at least a few very obvious ones (usually anagrams) that get you on your way, which just wasn’t the case here.

   I did eventually get there via the grid (starting with Ethiopia and Djibouti) but found the process very frustrating as I kept trying and failing to make any sense of the wordplay only ones.

   A 3/10 for me I’m afraid.

4. Very much on #3 Arnold’s wavelength here. No need to solve any of the themed clues at all, although it was fun to go back afterwards and try to remember what they used to be and see if they fit the clues.

   Duncan, you’ve entered the final version of the grid with mistakes, starting with 16a.

5. Arnold @ 4 – thanks, corrected now

6. What a wonderful puzzle – it took me back to my youth and my days as a small child searching (mostly in vain) for small scraps of paper, hoping to find examples from former territories around the globe. A great way for a small boy to learn aspects of geography combined with relatively recent (i.e. post-1840) history.

   DJIBOUTI really made me laugh out loud … as I have a personal story relating to cryptic crosswords that involves a clue with the answer DJIBOUTI … 🙂

   Arnold @ 3 : Hands raised here … I solved a couple of the wordplay-only clues (but to be fair only a couple – thanks to my childhood stamp album).

   A lovely puzzle from start to finish, with some really nicely constructed clues – the only down side here is that one thematic clue solved very much gave the game away for all of the rest.

7. Arnold @3
   I didn’t actually attempt any of the thematic clues until the theme became apparent and my grid was more than half full. I realised that I would not need them except the one for PERSIA, and that was the first of eleven that I readily ‘solved’ (i.e. parsed) when I already had the answers. I failed to solve CEYLON, NYASALAND and FRENCH SOMALILAND.
   I agree this aspect of the design was a peculiar one, serving (as it did) only an incidental purpose, or a confirmatory one at best. It was the normal clues and the interesting subject of the theme that made this puzzle for me.

8. Alan B @ 1 : Unless, of course, you’re an autocue reader at the BBC … in which case you now seem to refer to PAKISTAN in an incredibly exaggerated, drawn out and guttural form : BAAARK-EEE-STAAAHN

9. Me_Sat… @8
   Thanks!
   I pronounce it PACK-IS-TAHN, which disagrees with the dictionaries but might be appreciated by Shark.

10. What Arnold said

11. This was my fastest Inquisitor ever. Once through the regular clues, solving most of them, saw DJIBOUTI then a host more, finished the regulars then resolved the remaining thematics. (As well as ?AMBIA & IRA? there’s the possibility of CHINA instead of GHANA, but that seemed unlikely.) Having made the SWAZILAND/ESWATINI switch and worked through the thematic clues, I wondered why Shark didn’t have ANON as the answer to 1d, which would then be changed to AEON by the ESW… – anyway, thanks to him for the (brief) entertainment, and to Duncan for the blog.

12. I agree with Arnold – found the thematic clues next to impossible – even when I knew what I was looking for

13. Took me back to my stamp collecting days as a kid.
    My MO was to bung in what fit with the crossers and work backwards

14. It’s true that the thematic clues were very difficult to solve cold and mainly not needed to solve the puzzle. As mentioned Persia was the exception, making for a fairly challenging endgame – especially if you’d also guessed China not Ghana. D’oh! – I was genuinely hoping for “Cathay” for a while. I guess the relation of thematic clues to puzzle amounts to a defect, as Arnold pointed out, but I certainly thought this was fun overall, and I even enjoyed the relatively pointless working out of those thematic clues at the end.

15. I don’t get all you whingers, complaining about the thematic clues being unnecessary! When it comes down to it, solving an Inquisitor crossword is about the most unnecessary activity I can think of. I still do it religiously every week — in fact it’s the only reason I subscribe to i. So why is it worthwhile to fill in the grid, but not worthwhile to go the extra mile and solve the thematic clues?

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