Inquisitor 1475: 13-1 by eXtent

16 comments on “Inquisitor 1475: 13-1 by eXtent”

1. I rather enjoyed this, though frustratingly I couldn’t quite work out the Latin, or the last couple of states, without resource to Google. I thought the gridful off I-less acrosses was quite impressive.

   In 14A, I assumed the ON was given by by, perhaps as in place names: …-on-the-sea = …-by-the-sea.

2. Kenmac, you mentioned the title. I thought it was just 13 to 1, written as it is in betting odds. (Leicester are 13-1 on to beat Arsenal).

3. Many thanks to eXtent, I really enjoyed this. Some very neat clues (I remember enjoying CHARD and MAG[I]C[I]AN when I worked those out) and, for me, plenty of learning about American history too. I had to read up on the 13 states once I guessed the bottom message and spotted Rhode Island in the clashes.

   @2 Caran – that was my take on the title as well.

4. Sorting out the thirteen states enabled us to complete the last couple of clues.

   Our take on the title was the same as Carab and Kippax – in fact we didn’t even think of the possibility of 13 minus 1. Maybe that’s because we often don’t look at the title until we are part way through the puzzle!

   Thanks to eXtent for the very enjoyable solve and impressive grid construction.

   Thanks also to kenmac.

5. I thought the title meant that the thirteen states had become one country, hence 13 to 1.

   I had a similar problem with 6D – i.e. understood it last, but was very impressed with the clue!

   I thought this was a most amazing grid construction. How eXtent had got the motto, the “dropped” letters to form U.S AND the 13 clashes to form the state abbreviations was quite stunning.

   Thanks eXtent and Kemnac.

6. Another fun, old-style, IQ. Thanks to setter and blogger.

   My reading of 14a was “affected” = CAMP, “by” = ON (by is one of the Ch. defs for on) inc. H = “winning hearts”.

   New words to me, WATAP and ENCARPUS !

7. Good stuff. I enjoyed this one.

   My thought was that eXtent = eXternal + Serpent…?!

8. Thoroughly enjoyable, perhaps on the easier side as far as the IQ goes. Needed to google the central phrase, but the end game then was straightforward enough.

9. Many thanks for the excellent blog and appreciative comments.

   I can confirm Gila’s suggestion @7 is correct: eXtent = eXt(ernal) + (Serp)ent; Murray @6 has correctly identified the intended parsing of 14a; and the title is indeed intended to suggest 13 (merging) to 1.

   Cheers

   Jason

10. I interpreted “in a way consistent with the theme” to mean that, for example, DE had to be replaced by 1
    as it was the first State to ratify (or whatever they did) the new Constitution. It will be interesting
    to discover whether this was a subtlety too far.

11. Very much liked this one; especially as identifying the theme helped one to finish off (almost all) the harder clues.

    One that defeated me is 16a; but I think the anagram indicator must be ‘originally’.

12. I enjoyed this but in the end had to give up with the puzzle not quite finished. I got most of the way there but ran out of time. I as still making progress even at the end but the mean time between solutions was getting longer and longer.

    The number of different ways the clues and answers had to be treated made it hard as I could not always remember which variation I should be using. Very confusing. I guessed the centre line would be a vaguely remembered phrase something like “e pluribus unum” but I couldn’t remember how to spell it, and more crucially I could not remember how it started so I could not look it up in the dictionary. I also guessed United States very early on but did not know the connection between them.

    Thanks kenmac and eXtent.

13. Absolutely loved this one. Nothing much to add to the comments above. The end game took me longer than it should until the glorious PDM which raised a large smile. Many thanks to blogger and setters.

14. Like Mike @10, I assumed that an appropriate way was to enter the number of the state.

15. Thought this was really neat, generating the two-letter abbreviations of those 13 original colonies from clashes – all with the first letter from the across entry and the second from the down – so thanks go to eXt(ernalSerp)ent. And thanks to kenmac for CHARD: the best I had come up with was that they grow a lot of cider apples in & around Chard, Somerset.

16. Enjoyed! For a while I was fixated on some variant spelling of EPPUR SI MUOVE across the middle, which opened up all sorts of exciting wrong possibilities. But seeing the proper motto and then the states was a happy moment – somewhat delayed because I’d neatly entered the clashing pairs in alphabetical order, and DM, IR, AV etc failed to be inspirational. With all else done, it still took me ages to justify 6D.

    After looking up the order-of-ratification numbers just out of curiosity as to whether the states appeared in that order (which would have been a heroic feat and too much to ask of our setter), I’ll certainly be kicking myself if it turns out that we were supposed to replace the states with those numbers.

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