Inquisitor 1414: Breakthrough by Schadenfreude

14 comments on “Inquisitor 1414: Breakthrough by Schadenfreude”

1. I found this, in terms of clues at least, to be at the easier end of the Schadenfreude spectrum, but no less enjoyable for that. I also thought that leaving most of a column blank without mentioning it was a lovely touch that added to the enjoyment of puzzling out the end game (although realising that 6D was just EL took me a lot longer than it should have). Finally, keeping a submerged tunnel in the grid and revealing the termini was the final PDM in a puzzle that entertained me from start to finish.

   Lovely stuff.

   Thanks to setter and blogger.

2. I’m with Hi. I completed most of the first 4 columns relatively quickly but then ground to a halt attempting to fit answers across the middle. I’m not advanced enough a solver to realise that there might be gaps involved and need more precise instructions! I battled with 24a for ages having TINTE?? and guessed that ADIE might be the TV reporter. On the right hand side I incorrectly entered DOAN at 13a and then got no further.

   Thanks to blogger and setter.

3. Fine puzzle, but I was also in two minds about whether or not to fill in the cells between the E and the L … after all, no definitions or wordplay had been mentioned, and that part of the tunnel is indeed invisible under both SEA and sea bed. What prompted me to send entry in with FILLED cells, was indeed the preamble starting “AFTER FILLING THE GRID”. Otherwise it would only have been partly filled.

   I remember being foxed by a previous Schadenfreude IQ preamble, and wrongly highlighting SUB instead of a diagonal TORPEDO !

4. I must say that I had no real difficulty with this puzzle, and found it remarkably easy for a Schadenfreude. I got 24a TINTER straight away & thought TINTERN, then 10a LACUNA & thought LACUNATE. Having solved EL at 6d, entering 12a ADIEE quickly led me to EUROTUNNEL, with a fair amount of the right-hand side still to go.

   Reading the missing letters in clue order made no sense (obviously, and rather stupid), but finding the instruction in the grid helped with the last couple of clues (34a SINS was the final one I think).

   Thanks for the blog – and for alerting us to the anniversary (which is something I often fail to notice of late: it seems we all overlooked the anniversary of Mae West’s death in the previous puzzle). Good fun though – was the appearance of SEA LANES in the top row coincidental?

5. That should of course have read “12a ADIEU“. (My excuse is that ‘Preview comment’ no longer works on my desktop PC, and so little errors can – & do – creep in.)

6. I enjoyed this and liked the tunnel down the middle. No need to spell it out in the instructions, one could spell it out for oneself in the grid.

   The instructions say the grid must be filled, it does not tell you how you have to do it. You have to figure that out for yourself.

   I thought the clues were bloody hard. I would not have finished the SE corner at all without the extra help from predicting CALAIS and EUROTUNNEL.

   Thanks Schadenfrude, super puzzle.

7. Well I suppose that simply failing to properly interpret the now quite clear instruction about how to read the missing letters from the wordplay has to go down as a particularly stupid error. If I had identified all 13 of the missing letters correctly (Liker Hi I had two wrong, the A in SANS was one of them) I could have got it from the anagram of the thirteen letters. As it was I never did get the final instruction about which 9 cells to alter which made for a particularly frustrating end to my efforts. The shorter solutions in the across clues to provide the space for EUROTUNNEL however came relatively easily.

8. This was my first attempt at an Inquisitor (for which I have to thank Gaufrid). I confess to failing to understand the instructions and was left with many more than 13 missing letters after inserting Eurotunnel (nothing else would fit). I worked out what then needed to be done without ever completing the instructions, but I got 34 wrong, so just as well that I didn’t submit my entry. It’s all good learning for me and I found the blog, particularly the animated grid, really helpful.

9. We enjoyed the puzzle. For some reason or other which neither of us can remember, we had REVEAL EROINA at some point and were looking at it being EURO something or other – using a U perhaps in 23ac. Once we had parsed some of the answers more clearly we realised our early mistake but this may have helped us in identifying EUROTUNNEL more quickly.

   Thanks Hihoba – excellent blog as always and Schadenfreude for a great puzzle.

10. I enjoyed this without being enthralled by it. For a while I was looking for something like a rat in a drainpipe, having guessed at ‘reveal vermin’ (and seemingly having lost my ability to count), but got to the final answer eventually, albeit slowly.

    I’ve been scratching my head over the film title, but have just noticed KES in the grid above (and have also now noticed that Hi has already hilighted this) – the writing on my own grid is none too clear. And thanks to Murray Glover @3 for pointing out that the Eurotunnel goes under the SEA – surely not coincidental.

11. Like HG@4 I got off to a flyer- I guessed TINTER(N), (O)CREATE and LACUNA(T)E so EUROTUNNEL followed quickly. However, like PeeDee@6 I struggled with the SE corner for a while before getting ONCOME. And I had to talk myself through the instruction to read the missing letters top to bottom left to right !

    And ah….KES, brought back memories, esp. of Colin Welland who sadly passed away recently.

    I thought this was a nice ‘construction’ so many thanks to Schadenfreude and Hihoba.

12. No complaints here — I always enjoy the warm glow of smugness at finishing a Schadenfreude puzzle (albeit not one of this setter’s toughest). It seemed clear from early on that there would be blank spaces, and the tempting symmetry of having them all in the same column happily turned out to be the right guess.

    My personal red herring was the suspicion that we were being asked to REVEAL HEROINE. A wide wide field of fruitless speculation …

13. I wonder how much RONSEAL was used in the tunnel construction?

14. I thought this was pretty straightforward, especially for Schadenfreude. I found many of the clues quite easy, so my grid filled quickly, though identifying the unclued letter in some of the more tricky wordplay slowed me down. I couldn’t see anything wrong with the preamble. It was pretty obvious from the last sentence that some answers were not the same length as entries, and a couple of examples soon suggested where an addition might be made to form a new word. I appreciate that this might not be so obvious to someone only just starting to tackle IQ.

    Since the preamble said that numbers in brackets give lengths of final grid entries it’s pretty clear that UROTUNNE should not be submerged.

    All in all, I’d say it’s a very well-balanced puzzle, and certainly very enjoyable.

Comments are closed.