Inquisitor 1508: A Big Sell by Gila

43 comments on “Inquisitor 1508: A Big Sell by Gila”

1. Ouch. I totally missed the last step and was left with Norman (naturally) and Soros despite spotting Costanza and then totally ignoring it as a coincidence. Hook, line and sinker! Very clever setter. Very silly solver.

2. I fully agree with your comment on 20d.

   Another DNF from me.

   I guess that, if I did bother entering, I may have teased it out but I got to the point where I was “satisfied” that I had broken its back and didn’t have any more to do.

   I tip my TRILBY FEDORA to Gila.

   Thanks and well done to H___G____.

3. I assumed that there was an episode of Seinfeld called Black Wednesday and left it at that. I’ve never seen the show so Costanza would have meant nothing to me even if I’d spotted it, and I wouldn’t have got the connection even if I’d seen Jerry in the grid. I realised I must be missing something so I’m glad to be put out of my misery!

   A very clever use of red herrings even though the theme was wasted on me.

   (Problems loading this site this morning.)

4. Nice work Gila, I also took the obvious route with this one. There was a slight nagging feeling in relation to the mention of ‘decisive thematic information’ in the Downs message. However, I didn’t manage to work out all of the letters and convinced myself that the ones I did manage appeared to spell ‘about nothing’ which probably was a cryptic clue for SOROS or LAMONT. Doh!

   Well done HG too for spotting that there was more to this than it initially seemed. (I also frowned at the use of ECLOGUE as an answer).

5. Another one here who fell hook, line and sinker for the Lamont / Soros / ERM trap. I didn’t spot any of the Seinfeld references, and I’m not convinced I ever would have. I must admit to not bothering to sort the extra letters from the down clues, though, confident as I was of my solution, so this is a miss entirely of my own making. 🙂

6. Trilby and Fedora are clearly alive and well, as Kenmac says.

   I made a pathetic attempt to justify LAMONT …LAMENT = show (of grief) with O replacing the E.

   I have commented before on how end games are becoming more and more obscure … often involving esoteric knowledge of yesteryear pop groups or TV shows. At the same time this is also happening with so-called “intelligence” TV quizzes, such as Mastermind, University Challenge, and Only Connect.

   I guess that many of our current star setters of ultracryptics, like those who compile questions for the above programmes, spent their formative early years enjoying the music and TV of the 70s and 80s, and assume that most solvers are as steeped in it as they are.

   Some of us though, like myself, would be more familiar with Much Binding in the Marsh and The Grove Family, though fat chance of them cropping up.

   Hats off to those who do finally succeed in making the necessary obscure connections to complete what they deem to be strong contenders for “puzzle of the year”. But, if crosswords are still around in 40 years time, they might like to reflect that the knowledge they have now will be far less useful to them then.

   Sadly we will never know how many CORRECT entries were received for this puzzle, but I should be surprised if there were more than twenty or thirty.

7. @6 – I tend to agree on this occasion. I’ve come to accept – albeit reluctantly – that a certain amount of post-gridfill Googling may be needed for a lot of puzzles these days but this was a step too far. I saw that there was a connection between A SHOW ABOUT NOTHING and Seinfeld (from Google, of course!), but would have then had to spend a ridiculous amount of time researching each episode to see which one could vaguely be related to BLACK WEDNESDAY. The meandering route to the solution was worthy of one of the riddles on 3-2-1.

   There are of course those who will say ‘oh well obviously you should have looked at the episode broadcast on 16 September 1992’, but seeing a connection in retrospect is not the same as it being relatively discoverable for the average solver with little or no knowledge of the theme.

8. I’m wise enough to these Trilbies now to keep a sceptical eye open for them. Even so, it wasn’t until I was halfway through highlighting SOROS that I actually stopped and thought about it properly. I’d already felt that COSTANZA rang a bell somewhere and when I eventually managed to google it as Costanza rather than Constanza everything fell into place. That’s my one reservation about this, though – it did rely so much on google that there was little chance of working it out otherwise. Still brought a smile to my face.

   I couldn’t parse 2D, WAHOO, and I’m still far from convinced. Am I missing something there?

9. On reflection I think I just about accept 2D, but I don’t like either the definition of ‘end of fishing line’ for hook or the use of ‘just about’ to mean, I assume, something like ‘not quite finished’. Or, come to think of it, the vagueness of ‘off’ as a definition for the only half-present ‘away’.

10. bingybing @7: I’d have thought that “… plus a relevant date” in the preamble is a healthy nudge to use Black Wednesday as a date rather than merely something vaguely related to an episode.

    Kippax @4: ECLOGUE at 20d is fine as an answer; it’s the definition I was objecting to.

    OPatrick @8: WAHOO at 2d was the last one I justified. (Clue: “Fish cut off end of fishing line … just about!”) “off” clues AWAY, “cut” means remove the “Y”, “end of fishing line” is HOOK, “just about” means “nearly” so remove the “K”, leaving AWAHOO from the wordplay, and the leading “A” is the redundant letter.
    And I’ve had to use Google a lot more for puzzles other than this one.

    comment @9 came in just before I hit send on this one. I hope I’ve now explained to your satisfaction how we get from “cut off” to WA. (And yes, the definition of HOOK is a bit iffy, but the use of “just about” is OK.)

11. What a sour and joyless response, Murray, to something compiled to amuse and entertain.

    My own education in cryptic crossword was nearly derailed at the first attempt 30 years ago, as I could not get the answer to the final clue in the first puzzle I ever tried … until my mother intervened and sympathised: there was no way a 10 year old in 1985 could know that NIPPY was a 1940s synonym for “waitress” from pre-war J Lyons cafes (whatever they were). Dispirited at the injustice of it, I threw the puzzle in the bin. I’ve never forgotten how cheated I felt.

    The point is: You act as though 1970s/1980s culture creeping into “intelligence” quizzes is a symptom of social malaise. It’s not. It just means you’re getting old. Culture has always been an intrinsic part of cryptic crosswords — to create a cryptic surface, clues will obviously frequently point up a social/cultural touchstone to lead the reader into the wrong territory precisely because those touchstones are deep-rooted in us. It’s just that formerly you wouldn’t have recognised it as “unfair” because it was filled with *your* culture. In fact, you wouldn’t have recognised them specifically as cultural touchstones at all.

    While you’ve been in that halcyon state, in order to complete crosswords I have spent the last 30 years boning up on culture completely outside of my own lifetime, and of no bearing to my continued existence – Arthur Askey, Max Miller, Muffin The Mule, Mrs Miniver, The Golden Shot, the Bright Young Things, the Movable Feast, Tiptoe Through The Tulips, Yellow Rose of Texas, Bilko, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Dragnet, I Love Lucy, Watch With Mother, Hepburn and Tracey, Davis and Crawford, Burton and Taylor, Bogie and Bacall, skiffle bands, wind-up radios, mods and rockers, Play For Today, Long John Baldry, Round the Horne, Cathy Come Home, Tommy Steele, Sunday Night at the London Palladium … The list is endless.

    And for most of that period there was no internet, so it was infinitely harder to track down this information. You’re grumbling somewhat fogeyishly because of a TV programme that actually happened in your lifetime (and running for 10 years, with record audiences), and which is instantly searchable on Google, but which you happen not to know off the top of your head. Well bully for you.

    So yes, of course in 40 years’ time, crosswords will be referencing new things. That’s self-evident. I hope at that point I still have the thirst for learning that you have clearly lost.

    On top of all which, this was a terrific puzzle very cleverly devised around a single date of confluence 25 years ago. Everything the Inquisitor should be. Tip of the hat to Gila who no doubt, like the other setters devising these crosswords, spent an unholy amount of time painstakingly constructing it for our pleasure. I really hope there still are cryptic crosswords in 40 years time. If there are, it will be thanks to people like Gila continuing to be encouraged to do so on our behalf.

12. Thanks HG, yes I’m O with it now – just about OK.

13. If the episode had actually been broadcast HERE on Black Wednesday I might have thought it just about acceptable but as it wasn’t I thought it was rather a pointless twist purely for those with too much time to Google on their hands or lifelong Seinfeld nuts.

    I like difficulty to come from the cluing (this was very much at the easy end)rather than the amount of research demanded.

14. @ Steve Banjo

    The fact that you like puzzles that require a willingness to trawl the net for unknowable facts while others prefer tests of their puzzle solving isn’t a reason to throw insults at them!

    Incidentally it drew anything but ‘record audiences’ in this country where it was basically a cult programme.

15. Mark me down as another DNF so the subtleties of the theme passed me by entirely, I’m afraid. 20 down was my first solve, though, despite the fact that I haven’t been doing the Inqusitor for very long. But not long enough to understand the reference to TRILBY and FEDORA. Can someone please explain?

16. bridgesong @15: see 1347 Soprano by Pointer.

17. I thought this was pretty delightful, even though I didn’t figure out (even remotely) the connection between Black Wednesday and Seinfeld. But I am someone for whom the phrase “A show about nothing” screams Seinfeld, so I was pretty quick to find the second George and Jerry too. As Steve Banjo @11 points out, Seinfeld was hardly a minor cultural phenomenon.

    However I agree with those who found the clue to 20d (Eclogue) very ‘inside baseball’. In fact, I confidently entered ‘locutee’, which would have been a good answer, if it had been a word. It simply never occurred to me to check, until it was obviously getting in the way.

18. @ David Mark Thomas

    Not intending to insult. I just thought it was a curmudgeonly response. The idea that Seinfeld was unknowable, in a crossword in 2017, but Much Binding in The Marsh would hit the mark…

    I did a Guardian puzzle last week with references to a load of modern pop singers I’ve never heard of. But I took that as a sign of my own changing life, not a reason to grumble at setters for inexplicably failing to track the contours of my own changing tastes and viewing habits as I move through life.

    Regardless: where insult was inferred, I apologise.

19. @ Steve Banjo

    Seinfeld is certainly not unresearchable but it was a cult programme watched by less than 10% of the population 25 years ago so no exactly part of the national psyche and to use the US broadcast date of an otherwise unremarkable single episode as the core of a puzzle is bizarre enough to make the response of some here understandable rather than curmugeonly

20. Another DNF from me, but having read the blog I’m not too upset. For me this puzzle was getting a bit too much of an insider’s game, a bit too knowingly obscure. If this had been a US puzzle and Seinfeld, Costanza and A show About Nothing were commonly known then I would have been impressed. But as it was a fine crossword puzzle that degenerated into an exercise in rather pointless Googling. Sorry to be a bit of a wet blanket this time, and thank to all regardless.

21. We were stuck with the extra letters in 2 and 3 down. With a completed grid, we would have googled the phrase from the down clues. As it was, we guessed that the answer could be A + KINEMA missing the last 2 letters (almost) and then missing the E! A bit if a stretch but we were grasping at straws. We had no idea for the missing letter in 1d.

    Anyone who googled the phrase would have hit the link to Seinfeld who has been in the news again recently.

    We were impressed with the misdirection – you really did have to complete the whole puzzle – no guesswork allowed. We had never heard of Constanza but given the answers we did have, we found Norman, Soros and ERM.

    Well done HolyGhost.

    As kenmac says, we’ll doff our TRILBY and FEDORA to Gils!

22. I am duly chastened, and, as Mark Williams used to say in the brilliant “Fast Show”, (which I DID watch !)…

    “I’LL GET ME COAT”.

    It’s been an interesting eleven years.

    Many thanks for all the great blogs and words of wisdom on this forum, and sincere best wishes to the New Kids on the Block.

    Murray.

23. HolyGhost @10. Yes, sorry – I knew what you meant, and I agreed: cliquey clues like that aren’t good. I just didn’t phrase it very well.

24. I’m coming a bit late to this as I was out all day yesterday. However I can’t help making a couple of remarks. Firstly I thought this was a brilliant crossword, partly because I spotted the misdirection and completed it correctly. I thought Gila was very fair in the preamble in that the last sentence hinted strongly at the existence of ambiguity in the theme. Secondly, I don’t mind the need for specialist knowledge in the endgame now we have Google to help us out. I have never seen an episode of Seinfeld, but as B&J @21 pointed out, Googling the phrase revealed from the down clues took me straight there. What I do mind is specialist knowledge needed to solve the clues themselves, particularly when it involves pop music or football!

    Thanks to Gila and HG.

25. Hi all,

    Firstly, many thanks to HG for an excellent write-up. His route to the solution – beautifully detailed above – is pretty much exactly the journey I wanted solvers to go on. Reading his write-up brought a smile to my face.

    And many thanks to everyone who has taken the time to comment and provide feedback, all of which is hugely appreciated.

    Alas, as with my last IQ , I’ve clearly created another Marmite puzzle.

    Truth be told, the genesis of this puzzle was – quite simply and innocently – that I’m a fan of Seinfeld. For as long as I’ve been creating these silly things, I’ve tried to set puzzles about things that interest me, if for no other reason than that it might in turn introduce other people to them and they’ll discover and learn about new and (hopefully) interesting books, concepts, films, words, people, etc. Crossword setters – especially of thematic ones such as these – have taught me a lot over the years, and I’m keen to do the same in my own little way.

    As such, 8 years ago, I wrote my very first IQ puzzle (themed entirely on Seinfeld) and sent it to Mike Laws. Looking back on it now, it was clearly rubbish. Sadly, beyond his initial response telling me it needed work, we never did get the chance to work on amending/improving it and I binned it in favour of better puzzles to send to our current ed.

    My original intention had been to use the phrase ‘a show about nothing’ and, as a fan, I knew that it was a key element of The Pitch, one of the most well-known episodes as it came in the breakthrough 4th season when the programme started pushing all the postmodern/meta buttons. When I read the Wikipedia page for the episode earlier this year, I noted that the 25th anniversary was coming up and that it was a Saturday, so with literally no idea what the puzzle would be, emailed JH to request the date.

    At this point, did I know that the 25th anniversary of Black Wednesday was the same day? No. Did I even know what Black Wednesday was? Vaguely. Did I know who George Soros was/is? Nope. All of this came to light purely by chance when I Googled something along the lines of ‘George September 1992’ in an attempt to work out how I (and solvers) might get to the Seinfeld episode based on some thematic info I could give in the grid/clues. Once I saw the connection between the date, an act of selling and two Georges, I had a way in.

    So it was all purely a happy coincidence that came about as a result of using Google, which for better or worse is now surely the de facto reference point. Pleased though I was to have found the connection, I did honestly consider that it might be too obscure and that it would elicit exactly the kind of comments seen above. Ultimately, if I think a puzzle’s endgame will involve solvers having to ‘trawl’ the Internet – i.e. Google doesn’t return decent/relevant results high up on the first page – I’ll abandon the idea.

    In this instance, I think the endgame is fair. Armed with a completed grid and the thematic messages/clash letters, I believe the solver has more than enough info to reach the correct solution via the relevant Wikipedia articles within just a few clicks/minutes, which seems like a small task compared to having got as far as solving all the clues and filling the grid. At that point, subjective opinions on the relative popularity/viewing figures/country of origin/cult status of the subject matter seem pretty moot.

    Granted, you can’t finish the puzzle without Google, but IQ solvers – me included – have willingly and applaudingly wrestled with some much more complicated endgames and esoteric subject matter than this, not least in Pointer’s excellent and much-mentioned Soprano puzzle, which 3 years down the line is still (quite rightly IMO) the high benchmark against which all ‘red herring’ puzzles seem to be rated.

    As I read the comments, I was reminded of something John H said in his recent i article on crosswords:

    “First, setters who are worth their salt must…regard their undertaking as a battle of wits that they should be prepared to lose!”

    He was talking about specific clues, but the same principle should – I think – apply to thematic cryptics and any relevant ‘endgame’. With that in mind, yeah, it’s pretty dispiriting to read that solvers who lost the battle thought that elements of the puzzle were ‘pointless’, ‘meandering’ or ‘knowingly obscure’. As a setter, I genuinely want to lose the battle fair and square. As an IQ/Listener/EV solver, I very often do lose through a combination of lack of time/understanding/ability, but I rest assured in the knowledge that the battle only exists because the appointed editor/s has/have previously won it and in turn deemed that, all things being equal, the puzzle as published represents a fair fight. For what it’s worth here, editorial amends were made to the last line of the preamble to help stress ambiguity in the theme.

    I do sincerely hope that Murray G doesn’t leave as a result of this discussion though. Murray, your comments were very welcome and, above all, you’ve introduced me to some new comedy which I will now go off and investigate. Who knows, maybe it will inspire a future puzzle.

    Anyway, again, many thanks to everyone for commenting. I really do appreciate it. And if I have succeeded in my original aim and have piqued anyone’s interest in Seinfeld, may I recommend watching The Contest, which you can easily watch as a standalone episode and which is, IMO, about as perfect a 23 mins of TV comedy as has ever been created.

    Til the next battle
    Ali/Gila

    P.S. Duly noted re: the Eclogue clue/definition, but the anagram instantly jumped out and, sometimes, you just want to move onto the next clue as soon as you can!

26. Seconded regarding Murray G, whose comments I always enjoy reading on the Inquisitor threads. Do reconsider.

27. Many thanks to Gila for his post

    I think it’s important that those who were fans of the puzzle understand that (in my case at least) I have no objection at all to having to use Google. My objection is to puzzles where the amount of time looking for a connection on Google ends up being longer than the solve. I can’t speak for anyone else’s search engines but I do take issue with the assertion that finding the reference to the specific episode here and its link to the theme was easy. This is ex post facto rationalising – it only appears easy once you’ve found it! The numbers on here who – whether they liked it or not – freely admit they didn’t finish because they didn’t make that connection does tend to rather support that view…

28. PS – though SteveBanjo has subsequently apologised, I’m rather surprised his frankly insulting comments (which in many other scenarios to MG were allowed to stand. Result? MG effectively hounded off the site. If SB has been given a yellow card I stand corrected but it would be nice to know…

29. Sorry about the typo – I meant to say – which in many other scenarios would be considered unlawful age discrimination

30. bingybing @ 28 – I’m probably being thick here but what’s MG?

31. This thread is increasingly resembling an episode of Seinfeld.

    Bingybing @27: if the puzzle had necessitated unearthing the episode in question, I would agree with you. But, in a much more general way, Seinfeld is (famously, to some) ‘a show about nothing’, as google quickly testifies. I’m grateful to HolyGhost for digging out the details, but personally I was able to solve the puzzle without knowing about the episode, and enjoyed the conjunction of Georges Soros and Costanza.

    chesley @30: MG refers to frequent contributor Murray Glover, and I too would miss his often lyrical contributions. I also hope he will reconsider.

    Thanks to Gila for a really enjoyable challenge, and I will take your advice and watch The Contest.

32. This one defeated us, but we’re not complaining. We filled the grid without much difficulty, got all the Black Wednesday references, sorted the clashes and wrote “Lamont” beneath. It seemed like a run-of-the-mill puzzle (sorry Gila!) following a very tricky one the week before and there didn’t seem much point in working out all the extra letters in Down clues just for the sake of it, when there are other things to do, like the Listener. How wrong can you be? If we’d got the key phrase we wouldn’t have immediately recognized the link to Seinfeld, but we’d soon have found it. I’d like to think we would have then gone on to solve the puzzle completely, but we’ll never know and surely it doesn’t matter?

    I can never understand why some solvers complain about obscure references in puzzles, especially advanced ones like this one and the Listener. If you look at blogs even on routine cryptics, there’s always somebody moaning about obscure answers or an excess of proper nouns/slang/Americanisms, etc, but surely one of the delights of solving crosswords is that you learn new stuff all the time? I’ve been solving for nearly 50 years, having been introduced to the Times cryptic by my Latin teacher (he explained the “rules” far better than he did those of Latin grammar!) and a significant proportion of my vocabulary must have been derived from crosswords.

    I’m much more exercised by the fact the Editor allowed the Eclogue clue, which must have made no sense at all to new or occasional solvers. This is not supposed to be an exclusive club. Thanks to Gila for noting earlier critical comments on that.

    Finally, I too hope that Murray will not leave this forum. I enjoy his contributions whether I agree with them or not.

33. Thank you Gila for that very interesting explanation of the setting of this puzzle and setting for the IQ in general.

    This has crystallised in my mind why this puzzle was a miss for me. The puzzle is a cryptic crossword followed by an “end game” in the style of a radio or TV panel game such as Round Britain Quiz or Only Connect. Contestants are given some items and they have to find what connects them. Reading Gila’s commentary it seems clear that his excitement in composing the puzzle was about the end game, the Sienfeld TV show and how the connections could be obscured using the problems of Sterling in the ERM.

    The cryptic crossword itself seemed an afterthought, just a vehicle to provide the clues for a game of Only Connect.

    For those who love playing such panel games this puzzle is a clear winner. Those for whom the cryptic crossword is the main event then the puzzle does not seem so strong. It is not the Googling per se that is the issue, it is that in this case most of the Googling had little to do with solving the crossword.

    And as a aside, I don’t think those panels games would be interesting either if the panellists had access to Google.

34. Thanks for kind messages of support, I confess that I was feeling very low after those two HYPERultracryptics, from Ifor and Gila.

    I need to clarify my own position a bit, perhaps.

    I am certainly not against obscure references per se, even when they are not in my own sphere … ( for example, I got lucky with that real tennis themed Listener by Mountain Ledges, which actually featured my own local court.) And, as often pointed out, we now have Google to help us sort the trivia wheat from the chaff, rather than, as of yore, having to trudge through the rain to the ill-stocked reference section of the local library.

    On a much more banal level, my own problem is the far greater time it now takes to bulge the net (or not) with today’s ultracryptics. This is largely due to our, more often than not, being required to solve nearly all clues, before we can then try to understand an often obscure thematic end game…(what I think of as the dreaded “additional letters/Only Connect” syndrome.)

    The result is that what used to be a happy two-to-three-hour piece of mental gymnastics on a Saturday,now often lingers over several further days of revisiting difficult clues before any grid knitting can start. And when our bloggers, all expert premier league solvers, sometimes admit to having similar initial problems, it merely confirms my thoughts on the difficulty of this relatively new setting format

    You might think that, as an elderly retiree (since 1986), I can happily spare all that extra time … but, when you add extra Listener time as well, then marital flak increases exponentially (I have never understood what that means, but it sounds good !) as the week goes on. What used to be a joy, is now sometimes a chore.

    Like you all, I too have some favourite setters, including one, of a fairly recent IQ, whose puzzles always ARE a joy. And it is those that keep me coming back for more.

    I would be very interested to know whether anyone else thinks that today’s puzzles are, on average, taking them significantly longer to solve than those of say six years ago ? And if so, to what do they attribute that ?

    If the answer is a resounding no, then I’ll definitely get me coat.

    And thanks again for kind words.

35. Hello Murray, pleased to see you have not left us yet! I am relatively recent convert to the IQ so I cannot say if they are getting more difficult over the years. I’m not even at the stage yet where I can solve all of them in the week, let alone in a single afternoon.

    I don’t mind if I can’t finish, in fact always being able to finish the daily puzzles was the reason I came here in the first place. I do like my crosswords to be still recognisable as crosswords though, not just a starter for another form of puzzle entirely.

36. Murray: did Inquisitor 1496 (Best Friend by Charybdis) count as an “ultracryptic”? – a combination of Lewis Carroll, a song by The Beatles, a poem by Wordsworth, and carrying out a decoded instruction. I seem to remember that you found it tough going, but worth it – no Only Connect moan there.

37. HG, I have looked back on my comment, @ no.3, for IQ 1496, and I certainly described it as a long slog, without specifying it as being of the “extra letters/Only Connect” type, which it was. However, the Carroll/Wordsworth/Beatles connections were reasonably accessible this time.
    So the short answer is, yes ultracryptic, but not hyperultracryptic.

    At around the same time, Chalicea had a delightful Listener based on Carroll’s Owl and the Pussycat, an absolute corker, which, complying with the theme of “What shall we do for a ring”, had not a single letter O anywhere in the puzzle … not in the title, not in the preamble, not in a single clue, and not in any grid entry. You may have correctly infer that she is one of my favourite setters, as is Nutmeg.

38. In answer to Murray’s question @34, I have a daily crossword session after lunch over the week (around half an hour) . Sometimes it’s a four lunch puzzle; sometimes an infinity of lunches would not suffice. But it means I never get too dispirited; there’s always tomorrow. Sometimes they really get under my skin and I can’t let go.

    I really don’t know if they have got harder over the years. They seem to come in waves; a series I can’t finish, and then a series where I might wish them trickier… But I take what comes, and take it for granted that Google will be required.

39. I don’t think the puzzles are getting harder, at least not obviously so. But it’s hard to judge – I’m completing more of them than I used to but I’m definitely getting better at it, so it may be that my improvement is just outstripping the rising difficulty levels. Or I’m becoming more dogged as I age.

    I don’t want to be critical of this puzzle, because I really enjoyed it, but I did want to clarify my slight gripe about having to use google. The problem is not necessarily in the need to use google per se, but rather that it felt as though there was no way to know what was going on until I had googled the phrase (which first brought up the link to Seinfield, although I didn’t recognise this until also googling Costanza). I’m quite happy to use google to search for a specific idea once I’ve identified the theme from the puzzle, but less keen when it is a hopeful google that points me to the theme in the first place.

    On a separate note (and I hope this doesn’t count as discussing current puzzles!) I don’t like the new format of the IQ today. I would far rather have grid and clues on a half page as it always has been so I can fold the whole paper in half and pick it up and put it down more conveniently – as I do an awful lot of picking up and putting down. This has been a minor irritation for me for a while with the standard crossword on Saturdays. Any chance of passing this on to the powers that be?

40. OPatrick @39 – last comment noted. If others have similar views, please would they address them to me via my nimrod1@jetdoc.co.uk address, where they can more easily be collated and forwarded.

    To answer your comment, I made that very point weeks ago, while the new pages were being planned. I myself have stopped buying the Observer (for Azed) and the Sunday Telegraph (for EV) because the puzzles sit across the fold (bigger papers that are already folded anyway and so a bigger problem). To be fair to Stuart (my Production Editor at the i), he did ensure that the grid at least was fully one side of the fold.

    Both Stuart (and Oly, the i Ed) are very good at responding to feedback, and so do please get in touch on my email – I’ll forward it. The new Saturday paper will evolve further, we are promised, on the basis of comments received.

    Thanks, all!

    John H

41. What a fascinating discussion – a pity it became heated (a squabble over an IQ – of mine – two or three years ago nearly ran to a hundred posts and this one is impressive already and shows how effective the IQ thread has become whereas we feel rather neglected on the EV one, though I am fairly sure many lurkers read but never post there).

    Murray, I was so warmed by your approval. The Listener in question received such an abusive slanging on the Answerbank and TSTMNBM (the site that must not be mentioned) that I felt like you and wondered whether to simply give up. My Owl and Pussycat were treated a bit like Steve Banjo’s Muffin the Mule would be (yes, he’s part of my culture too and what a good idea for a crossword, as were so many of that hilarious list – thanks).

    I share that depressed feeling when I haven’t the slightest idea about the media that appears to be the theme of a crossword and that does tend to happen more and more often (age?) but I know that JohnH tries to ring the changes and that, like the Listener, if we have a real stinker, an easier one is likely to follow. (Read the Listener editor, Kea’s blog that will be posted on Listen With Others tomorrow – he makes that point.)

    In a way, I feel that the IQ and the more difficult levels of the Magpie have become the sites for crosswords rich in modern media – but there is still room for Nutmeg’s lovely ones based, for example, on Piglet, and mine that get the label ‘easy’. We love you, too, Murray, and your lively and charismatic comments, so please stay!

    Steve, watch this space for Muffin!

42. Without wanting to reopen wounds, I just wanted to say apologies to Murray. And I feel suitably chastened by the gravity of your reaction that you wanted to walk away from the blog. Everyone values your contributions – I’m glad several people made that point, and very glad you reconsidered.

    I actually intended no insult, believe it or not. My goal was merely to make a point of argumentation – in my head, simply firm and fair – out of frustration at what I perceived to be a reappearance of that most common of complaints on this site (“This puzzle was bad because I didn’t know the theme”) but which, in this case, I felt had been made in a particularly unfair manner. Clearly I got carried away in my response, got increasingly emotional, and then veered into the territory of rudeness. (I particularly regret the “…something you have clearly lost” comment. That was uncalled for, and it turned a considered rebuttal into something that sounded spiteful. It also therefore ultimately devalued the point I was making.)

    So again: I do sincerely apologise. I set out only to dispute your view, not harangue you or insult you, and I failed. And, having read your gracious clarification, I do understand that your point was much more nuanced than I had originally perceived it to be.

    The stupid thing is that I was also trying to make the point that not only have I spent a youth researching things from the 1920s-1970s in order to do cryptics, but also now that I’m in middle age, various modern references pass me by too. Most modern music, for example. (I know the name Taylor Swift but couldn’t name a single one of her songs… That Sheeran bloke seems to be everywhere but I’ve not yet understood why.) But I’ve accepted that as the price of the passing years. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think these things are increasing – they’re just receding into the distance of my own personal experience. (When I said “[you think] it’s a symptom of social malaise. It’s not. It just means you’re getting old.” I was not hitting out. I was speaking about myself too! It was meant with humour.)

    I think the sweet spot for me was about the age of 35 – I was still into most aspects of “modern” music/lit/films/tv, but also a good 20 years into researching the cultural pre-history of my time on earth. Now I definitely feel that ultra-modern culture (the 2017 variety) is rapidly escaping my antennae, so the research on “today’s culture” is only going to increase from here on out …

    But personally, as @Terrier remarks above, I’ve always liked that part of doing crosswords. I had no prior knowledge of the Fred & Ginger musical ‘Swing Time’, but who could have grumbled at having to learn about it to enjoy the brilliance of this puzzle by Ferret in The Times, for example?
    https://listenwithothers.com/2014/11/28/feature-film-by-ferret/

    I do understand your clarification – you’d like a puzzle that is doable without aids, in a few hours, rather than something that becomes like an endless treasure hunt. Fair point. I guess I’d say: Just don’t forget also to enjoy the research, because we all have to do it, all the time – that’s the product of none of us being cultural polymaths. And it’s the nature of crosswords using cultural touchstones (as they always have) as the occluding waters of their surface misdirections.

    Regardless, apologies and I’m glad you reconsidered.

    —

    And thanks @Chalicea, I look forward to a Muffin the Mule puzzle. Although if it relates to anything more than the theme song, I will be stumped, as that’s all I’ve retained!

43. Thanks, SB, for the above … as an old workmate of mine once used to say, “No sooty wings”.

    A happy end to a flak-free weekend !

    All best, and happy researching,

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