Inquisitor 1564: Soft Tube by Schadenfreude

10 comments on “Inquisitor 1564: Soft Tube by Schadenfreude”

1. The usual thanks to Schadenfreude and HG for another enjoyable IQ. ONUS PROBANDI took a long time here too, but the definition suggested “burden of proof” and I eventually thought to look up the Latin translation. Although music is one of my areas of massive ignorance, when GROUND and VELVET came into view — with the interpretation neatly confirmed by the title — a guilty visit to Wikipedia revealed the group members. (Also my own silly mistake, of moving E rather than T from STEALE to the perimeter at right. I’m sure it seemed logical at the time.)

   A not very relevant memory: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld rock novel Soul Music had a lot of real-world allusions, including a band called The Surreptitious Fabric.

2. A theme very much up my street meant that I was able to fill the grid for once without recourse to Google. An enjoyable diversion but not a classic Schadenfreude.

3. I had grid mostly filled, spotted GROUND VELVET then spent the next few minutes with an earworm “ground velvet” to the tune of Blue Velvet. Even after I realised it was VELVET under GROUND, it stayed around for ages.

   Darn thing’s back again, now!

   Thanks to S-er and B-er. #She wore ground velvet …#

4. Most of the grid fill I found to be very, very slow. But then, yes, I noticed GROUND and VELVET appearing in the grid, and that cleared things up very nicely thank you. Prior to that though I’d ground to a halt and was on the verge of throwing in the towel for the first time in a while. So somewhat harder than average for me.

5. I found this a real struggle, with progress very slow indeed. Terrier and I teamed up at the end of the week to swap answers and were fortunate in that we had managed to solve all but one of the clues between us. There is no way that I would have completed this without doing so. Yet even with a full grid, I still found the endgame difficult and wrestled with trying to make anything meaningful around the perimeter. I started guessing STEALING MORRISON along the bottom, which was obviously not quite right but it did allow me to spot LOU REED along the top. From there, I was away and then, finally, spotted what was lurking in the centre.

   Thanks to Schadenfreude for a very tricky challenge and to HG for the blog.

6. I’m sure I’m getting dimmer, as I found this yet another trickier than average IQ – makes about 10 in a row, or feels like it, so can’t help but feel it might be my IQ that’s the one changing.

   I was making very slow progress and this was another one where knowing the answer didn’t always help hugely with getting any crossing clues, so each clue solved was only ever an incremental step. I wonder if had I thought to look for the 12-letter cryptic representation of the perimeter earlier I would have saved a lot of time, but when I did finally despair of finding anything obvious from the disjointed perimeter letters and glanced at the centre, there it was, almost complete and an instant, exhilarating PDM. Moe Tucker was my first thought (which I’m quite proud of!) and though it took me a few minutes to recall Sterling Morrison, like Bingybing I particularly enjoyed not having to resort to Google here (unlike my knowledge of Parisian suburbs, for example).

   Sunday Morning is drowning out any other earworms for me, and I’m quite happy with that.

7. A second fail in a row for me; though unlike last week, I really didn’t want to give up on this, as it seemed to want to be solved. It just didn’t occur to me that 1A would be in Latin (both ‘prison’ and ‘bound’ are in the letters).

   Thanks to Schadenfreude for an appealing challenge and HolyGhost for the solution.

8. My first post as an Inquisitor convert. I find the newsprint it’s on unattractive and a disincentive, but I buy the i weekend anyway – addicted to Sudokarrow quite apart from the journalism. I enjoyed this one very much: it took about the right length of time for a tough barred puzzle as far as I am concerned: two or three concentrated sessions of an hour or two each. I had no prior knowledge of The Velvet Underground, but the rebus appeared quite easily and then the perimeter gave way. There is only a certain number of hours in the week, even when retired and only working as a hobby. Some prioritising is necessary. I’ve decided to make Inquisitor my default Saturday tough one, and always to sneak a look at the Times Listener before deciding if I buy it or not: round ones and codes yes, no bars no, others ad lib. but generally no. I can’t stand the tone of most of that newspaper any more. …Oh yes, and of course I forgot to send it in.

9. Another non-starter for thus solver – 7 clues solved, only three of them correctly – no idea how to begin filling in the grid.Some very obscure clues and answers, and there really is a limit to how much research into Scottish dialect words I want to do each week! Abbreviations like “A” for Australian escape me – I’d have expected “au” or “oz” – so, all in all, as usual, Schadenfreude as setter signalled an undoable puzzle for me. But that’s not a complaint! I thought I’d post though for the sake of other head-scratchers who may also have felt a little inadequate faced with this!

10. I ground out the clues out over several days, a real slog.  Right at the end I noticed LOU REED and then “Soft Tubes” led to me to look for VELVET UNDERGROUND in Wikipedia and I filled in the rest of the themed entries from there.  A nice PDM when it arrived but it was really hard work to get there!

    Thanks HG and Schadenfreude.

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