Inquisitor 1870: Rough Justice by Kirsanov

13 comments on “Inquisitor 1870: Rough Justice by Kirsanov”

1. Enjoyable challenge which didn’t require too much digging into the internet, and a nice simple endgame. Can’t say I really see the name in the SW corner… but thanks to Kirsanov and Jon_S

2. Gosh. Not often one goes totally wrong on the end-game. I decided that the letters ANDUR in row 7 could be amended to ANMER (the name of the King’s horse in the 1913 Derby), and noted that at its head could be found DA with VI in the next row. I couldn’t then manage to slot in SON in such a way as to form real words while also illustrating someone wrapping themselves around the horse’s head, or being trampled underneath it, but I assumed that was my lack of imagination. It simply never occurred to me that the actual result of the race was the intended outcome of this event. Was it simply coincidence that one could get so far down the rabbit hole, or did the setter originally intend to work in something like this and ultimately changed course?

3. A nice puzzle with a straightforward-ish gridfill (helped by the need for ‘real words’ when removing letters).

   But was I the only one who spent a long time looking for Emily Davison?

4. @2 I honestly had no idea that Davison could be almost found, though I assumed it would be the first thing solvers thought of. My interest was in the ‘outcome’ of the race, and of course, the incident with Anmer had no effect on that.

5. Thanks for the elucidation, Kirsanov (and thanks for the puzzle). One of those curious coincidences, given that actual words were obtained by amending to Anmer (taking a little licence for the bridge player’s “mis-card” and a rather unusual spelling for Libeloes). The mis-direction is perfectly legitimate; my personal reaction is “why bother?”, unless there is something particularly interesting about this particular disqualification of an initially-announced winner of an annual horse race, but it doesn’t seem to have bothered anybody else. And thanks to Jon_S for the blog.

6. “But apart from that, did you enjoy the play, Mrs Lincoln?” There is an element of that in this puzzle, but I think I liked the typographic equivalent of a photo finish, with one winner being displaced by another. And why not pick maybe the most Derby in its history?

7. This was a very similar experience to that of solving this setter’s previous Inquisitor last year – and that’s a good thing. Having two types of clue rather then three made this puzzle slightly less complex, and that was also a good thing – the excellent clues still took me quite a long time to solve.

   The theme revealed itself a bit sooner than I expected, and that was because I filled the right-hand side before getting very far on the left. The pairs of letters gave me the letters DERBYEPS towards the end, from which DERBY EPSOM became a certainty.

   I had to read up about the 1913 Derby and (of course) was baffled at first that the incident involving the suffragette Emily Davison and King George V’s horse seemed to play no part in the puzzle. But in the brief article I read about this race the more mundane incident of the disqualification of the first-placed horse seemed to have just as much prominence, and I spotted how four consecutive letters of CRAGANOUR could be altered to reveal ABOYEUR. A very neat outcome.

   Thanks to Kirsanov and Jon_S.

8. Total fail on the endgame. Like arnold#3, I looked for Davison, didn’t find her and despite helpful googling I never spotted the geegees.

9. All good fun but the endgame did keep me up rather later than I’d like… I had to go to *ahem* another forum where live puzzles are discussed with subtle hints. The penny then dropped!

   In a way I rather admire the chutzpah to take that particular event and focus on the less famous aspect of it.

   Thanks both!

10. Like most, I went off on the wrong tack (track?) to start with. Then I took the advice of one of our esteemed bloggers many years ago (HG or DS, can’t remember which): If stuck, go back and read the preamble carefully. In this puzzle, we are clearly told to “.. change the contents …. to illustrate the outcome of this event”. The title also suggests this rather than the very sad incident.
    Thanks to Kirsanov and Jon S (but too much detail about your social life, Jon)

11. Lots of thanks to Kirsanov and Jon_S. Enjoyable gridfill. On looking up the race I found the doomed suffragette very tempting, but read the whole Wiki entry and was struck (fortunately not literally) by CRAGANOUR since CRAG is an actual answer and, gosh, yes, the ANOUR followed in one of those little thickets of vertical bars that sometimes hint where we should look. It took a bit longer to see how ABOYEUR could wipe out the first-announced winner as per preamble instructions, but that too seemed neat.

12. My notes say “not that easy” but I don’t recall having had too much difficulty.
    However, to my embarrassment, I didn’t notice CRAGANOUR until I read this blog, but just went straight for ABOYEUR. So, thanks to Jon_S for alerting me to that, and thanks to Kirsanov – I now appreciate your puzzle more.

13. Not too bad finding the event but the mention of 7 and 4 had me thinking 11 letters could be SUFFRAGETTE but it was not to be. Then someone whispered in my ear “what about the winner”
    and there it was.
    In 1913 punting a quid and getting a century back could have purchased a few nice things.
    I believe 1904 was THROWAWAY-where on earth did I get that from

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