Inquisitor 1565: Keep Trying by Radler

17 comments on “Inquisitor 1565: Keep Trying by Radler”

1. Great puzzle, comprehensive blog…thx.
   In the title, surely ‘keep’=’castle’?

2. An excellent puzzle, thanks Radler. It looked pretty daunting from the preamble but as things gradually started to fall into place it was a very satisfying solve. I had real difficulty with the perimeter for a long time, however, and went up a blind alley for a while. I assumed that TEMPTATION was on the left hand side and googling that led me to Vaclav Havel and time spent trying to crowbar his works (including ‘Motomorphosis’) into the available space. Fortunately I decided to look elsewhere and finally came across Kafka.

   Thanks to Duncan for the blog.

3. Much enjoyed — thanks all round. The title must have planted the idea of Kafka without my consciously noticing it: a sudden realization that Amerika and The Metamorphosis made up nearly half the perimeter led directly to The Trial and poor doomed K. Happily I remembered the German titles from past edits to Kafka’s SF Encyclopedia entry, and had a satisfying leap from “Wouldn’t it be neat if …?” to “Oh gosh it is!” No memory of Contemplation or The Judgement though, so research was still needed.

4. I picked up this puzzle a couple of days after publication after hearing from another solver how good it was, and being further encouraged after reading the preamble and looking at the design.  Echoing the comments above, I thought it was excellent.

   I managed to complete the grid, except of course for the unchecked cells in the perimeter. The endgame was in effect a fresh puzzle, and it was an absolute joy to solve. The word JUDGEMENT that Duncan saw was also my first promising guess round the perimeter (fortunately I didn’t notice that ‘temptation’ could go down the left), and it led successfully to Kafka and the other three titles. The message that came from letters in the clues led to The Trial.

   The precise wording in the preamble (‘original titles’) led to DER PROCESS, as Kafka wrote it – not Der Prozess, which was the title of the posthumous ‘first edition’. I wanted the final title to be The Castle because the German DAS SCHLOSS had 10 letters, making 20 in all. It duly appeared, and the big K thus amazingly revealed confirmed that character from The Castle in favour of Josef K from the Trial. (Before that, I assumed the ‘K’ cell in the right-hand column of the grid would have some significance.)

   It was good to experience yet another variation of the idea of manipulating single letters in clues. When implemented as well as this it spices up the clue-solving process without impeding it.  Some of the insertions and deletions were particularly well done and well-disguised.  The title was very neat too – I didn’t spot the full connection until ‘keep’ was pointed out here.

   Many thanks to Radler and to Duncan for the blog (which I haven’t had time to study in full yet).

5. Thoroughly enjoyed, though it took me a while to get the hang of what we had to do with the letter pairs. I spotted JUDGEMENT and enough of AMERIKA to guess the rest of what we were looking for, and, well, two of Kafka’s most famous works were missing from that perimeter so no prizes for guessing what we’d be looking for, or what shape they’d be in. Unless you won the chocolates, of course. 🙂

   Apparently much of the subtlety of Kafka’s works is lost in translation, but I’m afraid my German is never likely to be up to reading in the original language.

6. I thought this was excellent. It was also quite tough, and like others I struggled at first to get to grips with the letter pairs. I’m familiar with some of Kafka’s works but didn’t know THE JUDGEMENT, which was the first of the perimeter entries to reveal itself, so it was some time before I tumbled to the theme.

   I spent some time trying to work out the significance of TOUGH, TENSE and MAMMOTH in relation to TRIAL. As far as I remember Josef K never gets his day in court so there were no long-drawn out and suspenseful courtroom scenes, and in the end reluctantly concluded that only TRIAL had a bearing on the themeand the others were there merely as a hint to filling the perimeter.

   Incidentally the opening line of Metamorphosis my favourite opening line in  literature: As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

7. Daunting at the start but all the clues were very sound. Some very impressive muddling of spacing and punctuation and I particularly liked “Ida’s staff worker” @33D. Like others, I had half guessed the theme from the title and finding TRIAL from the transposed letters and spotting METAMORPHOSIS in the perimeter confirmed this. I needed the web to find all the titles, especially the original ones. LOI was BILLY-OH after I had the H in the perimeter. A most enjoyable solve, demanding enough for me to feel pleased to complete it.

   Thanks to Duncan for the comprehensive blog and to Radler, who I was pleased to be able to congratulate personally during the excellent bash at York on Saturday.

8. Probably my favourite of the year: one of those ‘sticky’ ones that keeps drawing you back. Really ingenious and enjoyable. Didn’t think I would succeed on the endgame, but then, for some reason, Amerika disclosed itself.

   Thanks to Duncan for sorting out a couple of niggles, and to Radnor for giving us a chance.

9. Duncan

   I had different interpretations of the wordplay in two of the clues:

   In 12a LIES. I thought ‘first point’ (= N) referred to the first of the three points that appear in the word LINES: N, E and S.

   In 5d PRETEXT I put the M in a different place: SMS (not MSS) meaning ‘text’.

10. Thanks Duncan for such a detailed blog. We agree with Alan B about SMS though.

    A tricky, satisfy solve in our opinion. We searched for JUDGEMENT which we guessed from checking letters but were not convinced until we had more of the puzzle completed. Not being familiar with any of the works, we were pleased that K was not too difficult to locate.

    Thanks Radnor for the challenge.

11. Looks like Radler has changed his name!

12. Sorry about that. Joyce should have scrolled further up to check the setter’s name.

    Sincere apologies to Radler!

13. A highly enjoyable puzzle. Some cleverly disguised clues provided many moments of pleasure, which more than made up for a somewhat convoluted solving experience. I needed the extra letters to work out Contemplation, which I hadn’t read, or indeed heard of, but I was slightly miffed at having to resort to Google to identify the original German titles of The Castle and The Trial. Even with my virtually non-existent German I probably should have been able to work it out for myself, with a bit more resilience.

14. Great crossword, thank you for the blog. I initially put it aside, as it looked at first reading like another impenetrable Inquisitor – third week running for me – then on Thursday I picked it up, clawed my way into a few clues, and finished solving it last night-all except billyoh which was impossible to solve as I had Iran for ?lan… I’d Googled Eshkeri and the first thing that came up was that it’s a village of 16 people (from 4 families) in Iran. Memo to self – look further down the search page next time! It was a pleasure to identify all the Kafka works. All in all, a really enjoyable puzzle, thank you Radler.

15. In my top 5 for the year, but maybe more to do with the satisfaction of arriving rather than the enjoyment of the journey. A couple of little niggles – either APT or PAT seems to fit the clue at 31a, and AIM for “plan” at 38d felt a bit of a stretch. It was a toss-up between whether to enter VERDE or VERDI for 33d – I chose incorrectly, and amended it when I sorted out the perimeter. I had a rubbish wordplay for 12a LIES (“rows” = “plies” then drop the first Point) so thank you to Duncan for something better, and to Alan B @9 for something better still. (And I agree with SMS for ‘text’ in 5d.)

    Radler – don’t let this sole minor dissenting voice detract from the appreciation we all have for this puzzle. I look forward to your next one.

    BTW, for what it’s worth, I found THE METAMORPHOSIS surprising and memorable, THE TRIAL rather good, THE CASTLE very difficult to get along with, and AMERIKA somewhat nondescript – haven’t read the others.

16. HolyGhost @15

    In 5d PRETEXT I think SMS for text is probably what the setter intended, but in 12a LIES it’s hard to guess which of the two routes to ‘N’ (the omitted letter) was intended: ‘N’ is the first of N/E/S in LINES, but it is also the first point when you box the 32 points of the compass!

17. Another tough one: I’m still trying to catch up on my IQ backlog after missing a few weeks on holiday an this isn’t helping!  As other have said, another super puzzle.  I got it all but needed help from Wikipedia to fill in a few of the details, the German names of the books etc.  This is how it should be, the PDM moment is accessible from general knowledge and then dip in to Wikipedia to fill in the details if one is not an expert on the subject.

    Thanks to all.

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