Inquisitor 1342: Omen by Nutmeg

18 comments on “Inquisitor 1342: Omen by Nutmeg”

1. Very clever puzzle. And yes, there’s a ‘but’ coming.

   For each woman to ‘need’ a man, I wanted their names to intersect in some way. Or to put it another way, so they couldn’t be completed without entering the men’s names first, if you know what I mean. Ditto fish and bicycles.
   This would have been ” in accordance with (but against the spirit of) the quotation.”

   Great blog Hihoba, thank you.

   Just by the way, I don’t stay up late so I can be first to comment. My normal working hours are till about 2 or 3. Work better when the world around me has gone quiet.

2. Good fun, and personally I found it relatively straightforward. Being a (slightly lapsed) U2 fan, I spotted the ‘bicycle’ quote fairly quickly, and the rest of the man-hating theme all slotted into place (and it was nice of Nutmeg, who I assume is female, to point out that she (he?) didn’t agree with the sentiment).

   I did have a minor gripe with ‘quad’ not being a BI-cycle, but overall an excellent puzzle IMHO.

   Thanks

3. I found this on the easier side – but only relatively so – at least until the final unclued entries. I had the F, I and H of fish on the bottom row early on and recognised the quote quickly from that. With so many letters suddenly in place this rather changed the nature of the challenge and most of the rest filled in ‘rapidly’. But I wasn’t fully confident of the final four entries. TANDEM seemed definite and there was little option for NIGEL and ANDRE. I obviously count as one of the pedantic among us though on QUAD and I wasn’t fully sure of WOLFIAN and ALMA, so there was an uncertainty still in my mind. Perhaps we needed the unchecked letters of these four answers rather than those from the perimeter – but then you try making an anagram of L, Q, N, D and R.

   An enjoyable puzzle nonetheless and thanks for the blog as ever.

4. Oh, and thanks for explaining the title – doh!

5. An enjoyable puzzle which took a little while to get into. Joyce noticed the BRA connection but it was Bert who knew the saying.

   We were quite happy about QUAD being a ‘bicycle’ especially given that Chambers has an entry for Quad bike.

   Many thanks to Nutmeg and Hihoba.

6. I found this one much easier than recent IQs – thank goodness!

   The actual saying (as per ODQ) is “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle” attributed to Gloria Steinem – so I don’t know what Nutmeg’s source was. However it was straightforward enough to complete the perimeter with what was expected.

7. I actually completed this one, which makes a change. IQs usually end up either being beyond me or just falling by the wayside. Anyway, a very nice puzzle, although with two IQs in three weeks with a vaguely underwear-related theme, I am getting seriously concerned that the setters have a lingerie fetish…

8. As per Dan@2 it was the U2 connection which quickly gave me the heads-up and the consequential very helpful chain of letters around the perimeter.

   Saying that I managed to enter some of them in the wrong order (I entered one N ending woman and needs to mess things up). And I was foolishly not using a photocopy and/or pencil. Oh well. Not sure how the entry reviewers view slightly spoiled entries.

   Thanks to hihoba for the great blog and of course nutmeg for the fun.

9. Great crossword; excellent blog. Caused myself ages of delay by getting 10A as CADGE (can taken back be read both ways?). The two missing bra’s were a serious sticking point as well; even for a while after getting the slogan. RE comment 6 by Chelsey surely Nutmeg covered this off by saying that the quotation was in its usual form.

10. Re MANG @ 9 – perhaps I’m missing something here. What does “usual form” mean? In my experience ODQ has always been THE reference for quotations/sayings.

    But let’s be clear – I’m not complaining. Great puzzle!

11. MANG, I remember now that I had the same problem with CADGE for CAGED. I had that niggling feeling that the ‘back’ was in there for a reason and I should by now know better than to reason away a word in tightly written clues like these.

12. Once again a very enjoyable puzzle so many thanks to Nutmeg and to Hihoba for the blog.

    mang@9 OPatrick@11
    Here’s another one that initially had ‘Cadge’ instead of ‘Caged’ which held us up for some time in the NW corner.
    I spent a stupid amount of time googling Tour de France Riders that might have names that started with ‘Nigge’ (I strongly advise that you do not try this yourselves ).

    chelsea@6 mang@9
    We certainly remember the quotation in the form given in the ODS as the ‘usual form’ although it didn’t take long to work out what was required.

    Like jonsurdy@1 we would have preferred if the final grid actually had men intersecting with women or fish ‘riding’ bicycles. Nonetheless we found the puzzle to be hugely enjoyable.

13. Oops! ODQ, not ODS.

14. As soon as I saw that BRAUNITE had to be entered without the BRA, I guessed the slogan, and the quotation quickly followed – even though I had only 5 or 6 checking letters. So, like OPatrick, I had a completed perimeter to help me with the remaining large number of clues, which detracted from my enjoyment of the puzzle. (Hence, in my opinion not the best creation in Nutmeg‘s excellent portfolio – she’s one of my favourite setters.)

    And I’m with jonsurdy @1 regarding ‘need’ – in only the very weak sense of the puzzle having no definitions for the woman & fish, and no clues for the men & bikes was this incorporated.

    However, my biggest problem by some margin is with AND?E – this could be either ANDIE or ANDRE. How to decide? Well, I checked in Chambers, and ANDIE is listed but ANDRE is not – so I went with the former.

    Thanks to Hihoba for the blog.

15. Re HG at 14… I don’t have Chambers and entered Andre without any hesitation, grrr. Are ‘Helen’ and ‘Nigel’ in the Chambers too? (I know ‘Alma’ will be as it has other meanings, not just as a name.)

16. Caren @ 15.

    In the ‘Some first names’ section of my Chambers 2006 edition, ANDRE HELEN and NIGEL are all listed. But not ANDIE.

    At the risk of sounding patronising (and I know that means I will) you really do need Chambers.

    I did these sort of crosswords for quite a few years relying , wrongly, on concise/shorter versions of the ODE. Then somebody enlightened me. Massive difference.
    In fact, I think once upon a time in the preamble to the IQ it used to say something like ” . . . Chambers recommended . . .”

    For all the online help available, the red book has to be at hand as first resort.
    I have slowly learned that working out the wordplay in a clue sometimes gives a word that is hard to believe exists.
    But, there it is in Chambers.

17. I’m convinced that Chambers was written by crossword setters: “Oh man, this puzzle would work great if only SNEESH/ DJEBEL/ VOR were real words. Oh I know, let’s pretend that they are…” And so Chambers was born.

18. Jaguar, you’ve convinced me.

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