Inquisitor 1554: Wings It by Schadenfreude

15 comments on “Inquisitor 1554: Wings It by Schadenfreude”

1. Spotted The Bostonians and Vanessa Redgrave but didn’t have enough missing letters to get the other films. Can’t believe I never spotted Michael and The Dambusters? I must dig out the puzzle and see if I had any errors in the grid.

2. I really liked the way the ‘dual theme’ was woven into this puzzle, resolved only by the jumbled film title. It was a better experience than my first Schadenfreude a few weeks ago, in which I couldn’t understand some of the clues. There were a couple this time that I solved but didn’t fully parse, but all in all this was an excellent puzzle, with one of the best thematic endgames among the 13 Inquisitors I have tackled to date.

   In a nearly completed grid I saw both the films (one of which obviously had to give way to the other) and both the Redgraves, and I had Behind the Mask from the clues, but I got temporarily stuck with ABELIA and the six letters that had to make up the other film title. All was soon resolved in favour of Vanessa.

   It’s not often that I make sense of a puzzle’s title (or even spend time on it), but this time it came to me very quickly after establishing which Redgrave was the right one. A neat touch.

   Many thanks to Schadenfreude and Hihoba.

3. I   sort of filled the grid (probably had SLAM) and saw The Dam Busters and Michael Redgrave but I was too lazy to do any more.

   My confusion is that the surname has appeared in three out of four films there.

   Never any good on instructions.

   Thanks for blog. Rather you than me.

4. I thought this was a fabulous puzzle.  The end-game was cunning but not contrived.  Also, whilst specialist knowledge was required to complete the end-game this was not ridiculously obscure.  The film references were common enough to get anyone with a reasonable general knowledge pointed in the right direction.  I think this is key to a good IQ: Wikipedia is used to confirm the details following the PDM.  In my opinion the weak end-games are the ones where a non-specialist is left trawling Google at random in the hope of a search matching some words form the puzzle to get a way in.

   The only  gripe I have is with ABEAR.  As Hihoba mentions the useage is dialectical not archaic, so I opted for ABORE instead which in the past tense made some sense of the clue.  This lead me initially to chose the emerging DAM BUSTERS over the now impossible THE BOSTONIANS.  Having to go back and rework the grid for what seemed like an error in the clue took the shine off what would otherwise have been a perfectly crafted IQ.

   Thank you Hihoba and Schadenfreude.

5. Also – impressive to see a symmetrical grid and the two options for the solution almost symmetrically placed too.

6. Terrific puzzle. False endings should have at least one clear obstacle to it being the correct solution, and once the real ending comes to light, it should unambiguously be the real ending. That was the case here. I spotted THE DAM BUSTERS and MICHAEL quite quickly (as the setter intended no doubt, given their more prominent position), but no matter how many film websites I looked at, I couldn’t find MR in Blow-up so knew I had to rethink. I am not a film buff but I’d vaguely heard of THE BOSTONIANS and it didn’t take much searching to discover that VR appeared in all three films.

   For once the title made sense to me as a confirmation of the solution, rather than being another loose end. I would call this a perfect puzzle in every sense.

7. I’m not really one for leaving comments (I let them get ever-so wordy…), but I can’t pass up on this puzzle given how far it led me up the garden path! Got off to a good start in the bottom left and worked up to the top left corner, missing HELOISE and not really getting the wordplay (and hence the overlooked letter) for ABELIA. Given the blocked-off central cell I was keeping an eye on the NW-SE diagonal, so when THE DAM emerged there the title “clicked” and THE DAM [B]USTERS went straight in. And what are my other letters at this point? WLBHINTEMAS… so there’s a THE in there, the word after it has to start MAS, and the word before could be IN maybe… I’m staring at the grid whilst pondering this and suddenly MICHAEL leaps out at me, with RED just above it – aha! Yep, 6a is GRAVES, bingo, and that’ll be BEHIND THE MASK that I was trying to tease out – notable for being Vanessa Redgrave’s film debut, okay, fair enough. But that leaves only six letters for the other film, two of which are WL? And it’s jumbled, for some reason? Oh, hello, courtesy Wiki, how about LAW AND DISORDER? Or, well, LAWAND, jumbled? Does that really mesh with the phrasing of the preamble? Don’t see why not (and there’s my mistake!), so let’s just jot it down real quick…

   …the very next clue I solved was [U]SENET…

   …so yeah, that’s how I came to be very confused for the next two lunchtimes as the bottom right stuttered along unhelpfully, most notably without the grid’s sole and precious V in KVASS, until eventually some subconscious part of me twigged THE in the very corner I’d started in. I’ve only really been tackling the Inquisitor consistently for a year or so, but I’ve read about the trilby/fedora puzzle here and had thought that I’d learnt a valuable lesson in vigilance from that write-up… not so, apparently, as I was left kicking myself all the way to completion! Hats off to Schadenfreude – you made me a model victim in your well-laid trap…

8. From the top of the garden path…

   Obviously now kicking myself for having failed, DamBusters having been spotted, to look at the other diagonal. With several letters still unfound from several non-understood or unsolved clues (including, crucially, Kvass), I gave up on Michael Redgrave’s career, and this Inquisitor.

   Strange mixture, incidentally, of very easy and very hard clueing. I had no idea the eccentricity of 16d could yield an ‘e’; nor that the ‘we’ of 11a (which looked very integral to the wordplay, though I couldn’t quite see how) could in fact be ‘I’. Plus I naturally had ‘slam’ like many others.

   Brilliant work, however; many thanks to Schadenfreude and Hihoba.

9. As always, a good puzzle from Schadenfreude, this time with an added twist which fooled me initially until I resorted to Wiki and all became clear. I agree pretty much with all the above positive comments and solving details so I won’t repeat them.

   I whole-heartedly agree with PeeDee @4’s comments on getting the right balance on the amount of internet research that might be needed. I must admit that if it is too much, I just content myself with a completed grid (hopefully) and retire to do something more interesting.

   BTW, was the S at the end of REDGRAVE part of Sch..’s cunning plan or was it serendipity?

   Thanks to Sch and Hi.

10. Another superb Schadenfreude creation, trilby doffed. I managed to fill without too much difficulty for this setter and had no problem with the overlooked letters. As such I established I was looking for VR. Highlighting completed and puzzle finished without actually realising there was an alternative red herring solution until reading this blog. I must be blind…how did I miss that? What a great idea by Schadenfreude and expertly executed.

    Thanks as ever to blogger and setter.

11. Great puzzle – Bert loved the reference to Blow-Up and knew Vanessa Redgrave was in it. Michael was spotted later. We needed a search though to find BOSTONIANS.

    We could not work out the title though so thanks Hihoba for the explanation.

    Thanks Schadenfreude for another IQ our crossword highlight of the week.

12. A novel solving experience for us as we were on holiday in France and only able to get the puzzle via a WhatsApp image kindly supplied by Kippax, but we didn’t want to miss a Schadenfreude. I drew the grid on a sheet of paper and we solved the clues as we read them from my phone’s screen. We make our own fun!

    Like Phil R@10 we didn’t realise there was a red herring for a long time, as after spotting most of THE BOSTONIANS in one diagonal, quickly followed by VANESSA and REDGRAVE, it never occurred to us to check the other one. It was only when we compared notes with Kippax by text in the later stages that we discovered how much more there was to this puzzle.

    Another gem from the Guv’nor.

13. A cracking puzzle! Spotted the dam busters first but only when researching the cast did it begin to dawn that there was more going on. As noted above, it’s always neat to be required to solve every aspect to be confident of the endgame.

14. All rather good indeed. After an easy grid-fill, I sat there with Michael Redgrave & The Dambusters for quite a while until I finally got all 6 letters for the jumbled film title and then smiled at the red herrings.

    I noted, as others have done, the “obsolete” v. “dialect” problem with the clue for ABEAR at 32d. And as for office in the clue for REARS at 42a – just how many synonyms for “lavatory” does Schadenfreude have in his vocabulary?!

    I’m in Bertandjoyce‘s company in not having figured out the title, so thanks to Hihoba for clearing that up.

15. Coming late to the party (I forgot to visit Fifteensquared last week): this was hugely enjoyable and I was grateful as usual to the ever-reliable Schadenfreude for a tasty challenge. I spent a long time with The Dam Busters pencilled in, but light eventually dawned. Am I only imagining that the clues yielding Blow-Up included some of the trickiest and most elusive missing letters?

    Thanks also to Hihoba.

Comments are closed.