Inquisitor 1474: Plucky Hero by eXternal

16 comments on “Inquisitor 1474: Plucky Hero by eXternal”

1. Is there any way that we Southerners can get to vote in the next Scottish devolution referendum that Sturgeon is threatening ?

2. This was one where the setter definitely scored points at my expense. I get irritated by overuse of obscure Scots words in barred puzzles – I think it’s often a lazy and cheap way of adding an extra layer of difficulty – and was getting progressively more irked here until I twigged what the theme was. Then I realised that this was an “offaly” good puzzle.

3. I never got round to finishing this one. Actually, I almost never got round to starting it and now I’m annoyed.

   As one of the chosen few, from the correct side of the border, I remember my father (when we were posted with The Irish Fusiliers in Germany) being the token Scot who was chosen to address the haggis. My brother and I helped him to learn the address (as lang’s my arm) though I never really managed more than the first verse, myself.

   For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure of huntin’ the wild haggis, here’s all the information you need: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_haggis.

4. Murray G @1 The way to have a vote in a Scottish referendum is to move there! My son-in-law, born and bred in St Andrews, now working in London has no vote, my best man, with English and Canadian connections living in Edinburgh does vote! Mad!

   Can anyone help with my slight worry about my explanation for 9down – the word kip is the issue.

5. Hi of Hihoba
   Yes, I can help. You have ended up with the extra letters giving PUDDDIN! The parsing for 9dn is LIT (drunk) reversed (around) in (to interrupt) AT (bit of kip {a monetary unit of Laos, 1/100 of a kip}).

6. I thought this was a good, classic IQ – an inventive though not overpowering theme, good level of challenge, fair clues, plenty going on and interest sustained to the end. It took me several goes to get it finished, but I didn’t have big blocks of time last week and I was delayed by an extra D from AXED rather than AXE at 19D (I had spotted that PUDDDIN’ wasn’t right, though!), which convinced me that MAR, from dram rev., wasn’t going to be the start of 11D.

   41 across seems a bit close to the bone, but I’m sure Charles would have seen the funny side.

7. Thanks Gaufrid @5. I’ll change the blog accordingly!

8. FAGGOT was the first undefined breakthrough here, but I was confused as to the true nature of the faggot – my mother always used the word for non-offal items more usually known as rissoles. “Horrible thing,” my wife said, “like a mini-haggis.” Me: “… Is it Burns Night?”

   It helped that I’d been reminded of CHITTERLING by an old Nero Wolfe detective story just a few days earlier, and remembered DRISHEEN from my first encounter with it in the sausagey IQ 1451.

   Thanks all round. A fine excuse for a large glass of Scotch (no haggis, thanks).

9. Thanks eXternal. I managed to guess what the theme was fairly early on, but this was still a tricky one to complete.

   Thanks Hihoba for the explanations, particularly with the extra letters. I wasn’t previously aware that the Uzi was an Israeli weapon.

   OPatrick @6: good point re: 41a. That completely passed me by – I just assumed it referred to JFK and thought no more of it.

   David Langford @8. Thanks for the reminder about DRISHEEN. I knew that I had come across that word somewhere!

10. Once again my solving experience on this seems to be a pick-&-mix of the above.

    Despite seeing DRISHEEN almost straightaway (yes – from the Fawlty Towers puzzle a bit ago), and then CHITTERLING and UMBLE-PIE, I tumbled to the theme rather late, not realising that Burns Night was coming up. Up until then I found that all the Scots references had become rather irritating.

    I had “pudden'” for a long since time R(E)P also means “disreputable person” (23d), and I chased alternative renditions of the quote for different spellings until I finally looked in Chambers for RIP.

    And I too thought that 41a referred to JFK.

    So, not too easy or too difficult a puzzle for me, but a slower solve than some others seem to have found it.

    Thanks for setting it and blogging it.

11. Let me say from the outset that I enjoyed this puzzle which I though was cleverly put together with the many Scottish references in the clues being very relevant. I guessed the theme fairly early on and it was pretty plain sailing after that.

    However, two comments (both of which are my opinion only and, I admit, will not be agreed by all) :

    a) Why the almost universal reverence of Burns? Why is he so celebrated throughout the world whereas Keats, Byron etc etc are not?

    b I tried haggis once and found it to be quite unsavoury. So I find the quotation hard to agree with!

    As to Murray @1, the surest way for Scotland to gain independence is to allow a UK-wide vote on it.

12. I’ll admit that I’d also assumed it was JFK until I read the blog – I’m not even sure that I’d consciously noticed there was a Scottish theme until then, though it’s hard to think how I could have missed it.

13. UK-wide vote, brilliant idea, lesarby, that should do it ! When 90% of cars are electric in five years time, Scotland’s oil-based economy will no longer make them the devolved power house they aspired to be. Certainly not abune them a’ .

    And don’t let’s forget that other great Scottish poet, McGonagall ?

    Apologies for going off-thread.

14. Murray Glover @13: check out IQ97 from November 2008 …

15. Thanks. HG, I enjoyed looking back at this puzzle, and am pretty sure I completed it … with the old setters’ favourite AO DAI prompting the feeling. ( I keep small digital photos of my IQ entries, but only started with 1Q 114) I had always thought, (wrongly I now find,) that McGonagall was also responsible for the famous lines, referring to the medical condition of a member of the royal family … “Down the wires the electric message came, he is not better, he is much the same.”

    But I see he did write these equally stirring lines, in his ode on Victoria’s Jubilee Year :

    “And as this is her first Jubilee Year
    And will be her last I rather fear,
    Therefore sound drums and trumpets cheerfully
    Until the echoes are heard o’er land and sea,”

    I am also a huge admirer of that great Scottish philosopher Rab. C. Nesbitt.

16. I enjoyed this, and another 100% complete with just a dictionary for help.

    I moved to Scotland from England 10 years ago. Until I moved here I never used to understand the Scottish desire for independence but now I do get it. I’m not in favour of independence myself, but one only needs to read the somewhat patronising comments right here on this blog to understand why some are in favour.

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