Inquisitor 1467: Multiplication by Radler

18 comments on “Inquisitor 1467: Multiplication by Radler”

1. I breezed through the first few clues and then had to put it aside for a day, assuming that I’d be able to come back to it and complete it in one short session … how wrong I was! Five days later I shaded in the final IN with a smile, and a mixed sense of relief and satisfaction. Looking back, a real corker of a puzzle with interest maintained throughout and all the elements helping with the final solve, the unchecked letters for example helping me to sort out ARMY and INTRUSION. I didn’t have any question marks at the end, my closest being the parsing of FINCH at 17D, which I had the same as kenmac.

   Thanks to kenmac and Radler for an occasionally frustrating but ultimately satisfying and rewarding challenge.

2. I found this heavy going – the misprints were very difficult to spot in many cases. I struggled through, despite having spotted the theme with sheaf and cortege almost immediately. My final SKEIN was in d4-d5-e6-f7-g7, but kenmac’s is a better shape.
   I was delayed by having the misprint in 20D as T (leTs instead of leSs) and wondering what Phil Tuffnell (Tuffers) had to do with it.
   Unlike OPatrick I couldn’t parse 8D (GOOIEST) and can’t really accept kenmac’s explanation. What does the word “edges” have to do with the clue, and how do you arrive at the letters EST? I can’t see any wordplay for them and the clue isn’t even remotely &lit-ish.

3. I think I had GOOIEST as GOEST (an archaic version of go – so past move) around OI.

4. That makes sense. Thanks OPatrick!

5. @2-@3-@4: It was one of those that I managed to justify while solving but when it came blogging I had no idea.

   Thanks OPatrick – blog has been corrected.

6. Like others, I thought this was going to be a breeze, as I guessed the theme (helpful title this week) rather early. And, like others, it turned out to be tough going, and solving the clue didn’t always guide me to the ‘correct’ letter (nor did guessing the multiple always guide me to the singular). But I thought it was enjoyably challenging, not a slog. Thanks to Radler and kenmac.

   Surely a collection of snooker players should be a rack?

7. Thanks for puzzle and blog. I too found it quite a struggle in spite of an early jump from ARROW, MOURNER and LISTENER to the Multiplication theme. At least one “it has to be that but I can’t quite justify it” remained at the end, and then I spent a while trying to persuade myself that d4-d5-e6-f7-g7 (as at @2) was an “appropriate form” before very belatedly spotting the V formation.

8. Very much enjoyed this. Like others, I found some of the cluing quite tough but I don’t mind that

9. We guessed the theme early on but as others have noted, it still took a great deal of sorting out.

   We worked out everything apart from the very last step probably because we weren’t looking for SKEIN!

   Thanks to kenmac and Radler.

10. Like others, I found the theme quickly but finding the misprints tough on the whole, esp. where these were wordplay references to anagrams e.g. 18A, ‘bust’ instead of ‘just’ etc. rather than, as kenmac says,being in the definition. That said I thought there was just enough to guess entries and ‘backfill’ misprints and definitions, to give me encouragement to keep going, so a really good puzzle for my money.

    In the end I just couldn’t see ‘Camel’ in 12D and oncluded that the wordplay yielded Caramel without the ‘ra’ i.e. lighter on the inside…d’oh. Somtehing here about Occam’s razor ….or don’t go looking for convoluted explanations when the obvious one will do !

    Many thanks Radler and to kenmac.

11. Another nearly there but not quite…

    Filled the grid OK, but failed on the final part. I had overlooked one letter S in the misprints so could not make sense of my malformed additional clue.

    I also did not get a couple of the asterisked clues, but this did not seem to be a problem. It was easy to guess the grid entries without solving the clues and in the end I ignored some of them. By this time the grid was full and verified by the THICKHEAD anagram so the remaining clues seemed redundant and I lost interest. I think this was perhaps the only weakness with the puzzle.

    Hard work but very enjoyable. Thanks to both Radler and kenmac.

12. @9 SKEIN was still fresh in the memory thanks to the “gaggle and skein” clue from IQ 1466!

13. I’m another who highlighted the ‘wrong’ SKEIN (and like David @12, seeing it the week before made it come quickly to mind). I ought to have realised that it looked more like a flat boomerang than a true V but having spotted it I just shaded and didn’t think to look any further.

    My completed grid was really a joint effort with Terrier, although I think he didn’t make the same mistake as me at the end. Like several others have commented, we found many of the incorrect letters very tricky to locate.

    Thanks to Radler and kenmac.

14. CORRECTION on today’s IQ1469 by Schadenfreude:

    The letter count on 5dn should be (7, 3 words).

    A correction will appear with next week’s puzzle, but I would be grateful if in the meantime solvers would spread the word. Thanks!

    John

15. I’m afraid to say that I didn’t enjoy this as much as others seem to have. The first few ‘changed’ entries for me were SHEAF, LOCK, DECK, CORTÈGE, which to my mind aren’t collective nouns as such, apart from possibly DECK. (Compare, for example, a QUIRE of paper, with a FLOCK of sheep.) So there was a lot of cold-solving and a filled grid with over half the asterisked clues unsolved, the intended theme becoming apparent only sometime later.

    To top it all off, I highlighted the same SKEIN as did Hi (@2) and others. Hmph.

    Q: What do you call two crows on a branch?

16. @15

    A: Rooks??

17. Manslaughter?

18. Attempted …

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