What’s this, a grid and font-size forgiving of the blogger’s eyesight?
Eleven clues contain a word not needed for solving. In clue order these words give a line (verifiable on the Internet) from a novel followed by the title of the book. The line indicates how four entries are to be amended before entry into the grid, where only two form real words (one in Collins). The author’s surname should be highlighted in the grid. Enumerations give the spaces available, while indications such as ‘(2 words)’ refer to clue answers.
So it is, an Inquisitor that could be said to be lite on both the clue count and difficulty level, but not as far as entertainment value goes. As this was the first IQ I’d solved for some weeks, I was duly grateful on all counts.
Extra words. Sometimes I tend to spot them where they’re not, in this case with “the clots”, assuming that “clots” alone would suffice, but Phi I’m sure would point out that his surface reading wouldn’t have worked half as well. I also circled “expensive”, but that was when I confidently wrote in STRIDES instead of STROLLS with minimal support from the dictionary.
The amended entries. I got PARTY-POOPER and RAINFOREST first, omitting the POOP and INFO. A glance at the dictionary confirmed that POOP can indeed be a synonym for information, and the rest isn’t history, but GRAN(D OPE)RA and MAN(DATA)RY. PARTYER, btw, is the one that’s in Collins.
Satanic being one of our unneeded words, with The and Verses immediately preceding and following, confirmed that we were looking for a quote from a book that certain people are still getting rather hot under the collar about. One suspects that they need to get out more. Anyway, the lines we needed were:
Information got abolished sometime in the Twentieth Century.
All that was left was to highlight Salman Rushdie’s surname. Neat, eh?
| Clue | Extra Word | Answer | Grid Entry If Different | Wordplay | |
| ACROSS | |||||
| 1 | One struggling to find alto, having secured a new director for musical work (6, 2 words) | GRAND OPERA | GRANRA | GROPER about A N D | |
| 6 | Bird information book to be in poet’s favour (5) | information | GREBE | B inside GREE | |
| 11 | Science promoters backed live opening (4) | RIMA | RI plus a reversal of AM (live) | ||
| 12 | Walks in street beside expensive car (7) | STROLLS | ST ROLLS | ||
| 14 | My OBE’s lost, with King blocking initial concept (6) | EMBRYO | An anagram of MY OBE about R | ||
| 15 | Elizabethan’s got device, without much substance, but entertaining English (7) | got | SLEIGHT | SLIGHT entertaining E | |
| 16 | No longer reckoning Academician abolished medieval rhythm (5) | abolished | TALEA | TALE (reckoning) + A | |
| 19 | Hate half-hearted pressure being displaced in thermal device (11) | SUPERHEATER | An anagram of HATE and PREsSURE “half-hearted” | ||
| 22 | Backing some third-rate ruler in old Ireland (5) | ARDRI | Reverse hidden in thIRD-RAte | ||
| 23 | A lot of punishment seen around game – something to stop the clots required here (7) | HIRUDIN | HIDINg about RU | ||
| 27 | Year engaged in this, sometime waving wands (6) | sometime | THYRSI | YR inside an anagram of THIS | |
| 28 | Salon botched reservation, losing last of hair gels (7) | SLOANES | An anagram of SALON + rES | ||
| 29 | Say one in Society will get protection from Americans (4) | in | EGIS | EG I S | |
| 30 | Legate, perhaps: chap that’s formal about a word of gratitude (5) | MANDATARY | MANRY | MAN + DRY about TA – someone who holds a mandate | |
| 31 | Area expecting to be swallowed up by others is a jungle (6) | RAINFOREST | RAREST | A + IN FOR inside REST | |
| DOWN | |||||
| 1 | Theism’s reinterpreted with endless grace in religious breakdown (11, 2 words) | GREAT SCHISM | An anagram of THEISMS + GRACe minus the last letter | ||
| 2 | French poet borderline wrong about university (7) | RIMBAUD | RIM BAD about U – French poetry’s most famous enfant terrible | ||
| 3 | What helps to cram the bodies in an old pulpit? (4) | the | AMBO | Hidden inside crAM BOdies | |
| 4 | Hurried up around evening, poetically delivering sleep inducer (7) | NARCEEN | RAN reversed + C + EEN | ||
| 5 | Twelve letters left for island (5) | ATOLL | A TO L + L | ||
| 7 | French King accepting Japan’s twentieth design for gardens (4) | twentieth | ROJI | ROI about J | |
| 8 | Writ no longer in use initially entirely acceptable (6) | ELEGIT | E LEGIT | ||
| 9 | Pretentious talk getting half of Germany upset (4) | BLAH | HALB is half in German, apparently | ||
| 10 | Strange erotic sites identifying Aleister Crowley, say (11) | ESOTERICIST | An anagram of EROTIC SITES | ||
| 13 | Fifteenth century letter brought in about religious dignitary in school (7) | century | ROEDEAN | O (the fifteenth letter) inside RE + DEAN | |
| 15 | Weathered grey stone where a fish takes refuge? (7) | SARSDEN | SAR (the Sargus)’S DEN | ||
| 17 | Controversially portray Pope as a spoilsport (7) | PARTY-POOPER | PARTYER | An anagram of PORTRAY POPE | |
| 18 | Dry conditions having shrew climbing over the island (7) | the | XEROSIS | SOREX (a shrew) reversed over IS | |
| 20 | Pressure leading to blunder on platform (6) | PERRON | P ERR ON | ||
| 21 | Fool taking on Satanic Majesty no longer explosive stuff in US (5) | Satanic | NITER | NIT + ER | |
| 24 | Actress Fisher is linked to Hollywood area (4) | ISLA | IS LA | ||
| 25 | Hesitation over Arabic name of Muslim chap (4) | UMAR | UM AR | ||
| 26 | Some of your verses generate desire (4) | verses | URGE | Hidden inside yoUR GEnerate |
Like Jon I found this pleasingly straightforward; the biggest challenge was to accept that GEN was not one of the extra words, and therefore ceasing to play around with variations of GENT in trying to solve 30A. Having never read the Satanic Verses, I have no idea how the quote fits into the book, or whether it’s ironic, but it reads oddly in the internet age, when information feels far from abolished. Many thanks to Phi and Jon.
Grand Opera fell first for me, and it wasn’t so hard to see what might be going on, and to find book and quote and author, but finding all the missing data proved harder – it took me quite a while to work out rainforest – the final information dump. Easygoing fun, thanks to Phi and John
Too easy to be very enjoyable for me – I don’t recall the last Inquisitor that was so over so quickly. “Satanic” and GRAN[D OPE]RA were identified in minutes.
I still can’t find PARTYER in my copy of Collins (2003, 6e) so thanks for that, I’ll take your word for it – I looked for MANRY too but without success.
HolyGhost@3 – MANRY was one of the two non-real words, wasn’t it? For PARTYER I referred to Collins online.
Jon_S @4: I couldn’t decide which of PARTYER & MANRY was a non-word (along with GRANRA) since neither was in my copy of Collins. (And I didn’t bother to check online – didn’t seem that important.)
While we’ve never been close to fifteen squared, I feel like somewhere around 150 cells should be the minimum for an Inquisitor – something like 13×13 or 14×11 perhaps or maybe 12×12/14×10 at a push. 11×11 did feel like being a bit short changed.
Especially as I felt like some of the clueing was a bit “rushed” eg 24d, 25d plus some non words left in the grid at the end.
So overall: pleasant enough, but a bit below average. Sorry Phi.
There’s a setter’s blog (which does say why I settled on 11×11) at: https://phionline.net.nz/knowledge-gap/
A well-clued puzzle, with much to appreciate also in the thematic design. My first whiff of the theme came when I identified the extra word ‘Satanic’ in 21d having already got ‘verses’ from 26d. The further words ‘information’, ‘twentieth’ and ‘century’ enabled me to find the required line from the novel. The most interesting part was identifying which four clues needed to have their answers changed and what ‘information’ words should be ‘abolished’ from them. For me, they came in the order GRAND OPERA, MANDATARY, PARTY-POOPER and RAINFOREST.
Thanks to Phi and Jon_S
I’ve done a fair few Phi barred puzzles and this was definitely at the more accessible end. The book title fell quite early and finding letters in the author’s surname helped things along a little. But I must confess I found it oddly unsatisfying that a couple of the amended entries were non-words, which for a setter as clever as Phi comes across as a bit of disappointment. But a very minor point in an enjoyable puzzle!
The theme stood out like N Farage in a working men’s club but took a bit of scrolling down to find a quote starting with “information”
Im a bit of a rookie at these puzzles so this gave me hope
As an addendum to some of the “could do better” comments, I felt that it was a bit of a shame that the amended entries managed only three of the full set of top row left & right, bottom row left & right.