Inquisitor 1490: Clue Two III: Hide and Seek by eXternal

14 comments on “Inquisitor 1490: Clue Two III: Hide and Seek by eXternal”

1. Not a quick solve for me, but much enjoyed. Lots of thanks to eXternal and Hihoba. I’d forgotten that the first Clue Two was also a maze — jolly sporting of our setter to hint with “maze-like” in the preamble. Lucky guess here when the missing letters seemed to start ROSE OF … wasn’t the Fair Rosamund, Rose of the World, a royal mistress in some kind of maze? Henry and Eleanor came clear later, and I liked the little flourish of ending the “odd” message with FAIR joining on to ROSAMUND.

2. I never did make head nor tail of the title, but pleased to get the rest, in particular the ‘oddly worded’ message. Thoroughly enjoyable, and something learnt along the way.

3. Delightful, in much the same way as I and II were. A lovely paced (just right) solve with my only hold up in the NW corner as I initially solved 1A as Glades with the ‘G’ being an extra letter. Loved the end game which required some thought but without hours of grid staring – perfect. Many thanks to Hihoba for the blog and eXternal for the inventive grid as well as introducing me to something new.

4. Most entertaining and enjoyable. Not as difficult as the first Clue Two nor as multi-layered as Clue Two II but a pleasure nonetheless.
   Thanks to eXternal for the maze and to Hihoba for revealing the way through it.

   As for 12d: OF = ‘aged’ (as in “Two children – a boy of 5 & a girl of 3”) + LAG = ‘person put away’.

5. Great puzzle; I obstinately kept ‘frey’ as ‘fley’, thus giving me the baffling ‘lose of the world’, which is where I stayed stumped. Nor could I quite see where the ‘way to’ could finish.

   Thanks to eXternal and Hihoba

6. Clue Two II was my second favourite IQ of 2016 so I was excited at seeing this one in the paper. Another great puzzle and, like others – I learned something too.

   Lovely stuff, thanks eXterna and Hihoba.

7. Hard – but previous experience meant there wasn’t a shred of doubt that I was going to work through it to the end and the rewards fully lived up to expectations. Perhaps a shame that only half the maze got a look-in, but that is a tiny negative in another superb and imaginative puzzle.

   Can anyone explain why Edna is particularly delightful, though – is this a Dame Edna reference?

   The removal of the O from 24D was a tad unfortunate – I wonder if it influenced the composition of the clue?

8. OPatrick @7
   “Can anyone explain why Edna is particularly delightful, though …”

   I can as it was my mother’s name. From Chambers: Edna an anglicized form of Irish Eithna or (Heb) pleasure, delight.

9. Once again I’m left with one clue I still don’t quite get – can somebody please explain the lamb reference in 15a? The only (online) definition I can find for ‘fusc’ is dark/dusky brown…why’s that lamb’s brown?

10. Ryaaan @9
    “… can somebody please explain the lamb reference in 15a? …”

    From Chambers:

    “fuscous adjective (also (Lamb) fusc)
    1. Brown
    2. Dingy

    I am assuming Charles Lamb.

11. Thanks for the comments. I’m away sailing in France with somewhat intermittent internet connection. Thanks to HG and Gaufrid for answering questions. Glad you found it as much fun as I did.

12. Coming rather late to the party, can I add that I found this more difficult than the previous week’s puzzle and failed at the antepenultimate hurdle. I filled the grid accurately enough but got it in my head that the hider and seeker was Henry II England (which makes precious little historical sense). Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find all the misprints. At 10 down I persuaded myself that beNt of arms made as much sense as beLt of arms, reinforcing my view that the word was England. And at 34 down I thought “bay” and “rail” were close enough so did not see the misprint.

    I made matters worse by shading in the wrong F in CUFFLINK, leaving me with a very long path to the R of Rosamund, and giving me no chance of finding the hidden message.

    But what an ingenious puzzle! Many congratulations to the setter (and to the blogger for explaining it).

13. Easier than the previous Clue Two puzzles, but no pushover. We made a start in the SE corner and spotted ROSAMUND very early, which seemed certain to be relevant. Getting “Henr” from the early across misprints enabled a Google search which revealed the theme. I was pretty sure that 34d would have to be altered from LIAR to RIAF (probably not a real word) to give FAIROSAMUND in contiguous cells, but – like last week – went through the full process and the end result was much more impressive. Thanks to eXternal for another fine puzzle.

14. Very enjoyable and a 100% finish which is always a bonus. I had written WAY TO FORFAIR under the grid with no real idea if it was a recognised phrase or what it meant. I thought Forfair might be a place. I was pleasantly surprised to find I had stumbled on the right solution. Thanks to Hihoba for enlightening me on who or what was The Rose of the World and what part Henry, Eleanor and Rosamund played.

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