By my reckoning, Inquisitor 1431 will appear on Easter Saturday in the final print edition of the Independent – kenmac is scheduled to do the honours with the blog. To support the case for our crossword to continue in some accessible form, please make sure you sign the petition Dave Tilley started.
Meanwhile, back to the puzzle in hand …
I am developing a fondness for Shark and was looking forward to a stiffer challenge than in recent weeks.
Preamble: Corrected misprints from 16 definitions spell out two sources (5 with 20 and 20 with 2). A change implied by the first must be executed in the grid, revealing an individual mentioned in the second. The nine cells that relate to the individual must be highlighted. Finally, 10 cells (over two rows) must be highlighted to identify a thematic place mentioned elsewhere in the second source and directly related to the first.
After one time through the clues, the top half was quite well populated with answers but the bottom half was distinctly sparse. And not that many of the misprints detected yet. As to the “5 with 20 and 20 with 2” in the preamble, that obviously doesn’t refer to 5d 20a (OASES UNGLUE) and 20a 2d (UNGLUE LINGALA) – so still a mystery.
Having teased out a fair number of additional answers I was still having a tough time, but that’s OK. A little later, I reviewed the preamble: “10 cells (over two rows) must be highlighted …” and spotted ARMAGEDDON fairly central in the grid. So, a biblical theme? 
Yet more time passed and I wrote out the corrections I’d found, interspersed with gaps for clues I hadn’t solved:
I?AI???HR?VELA???O?.
With four or five clues still unsolved, I focused on what the two sources could be. ARMAGEDDON suggested that the second source was REVELATION leaving ISAIAH for the first source. Looking (in the ODQ, not in a bible) for Revelation ch.20, v.2 I found:
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.
And somewhat encouraged I looked at Isaiah ch.5, v.20 to find:
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; …
So … we exchange GOOD and EVIL from/to the middle of the top/bottom rows; DEVIL now appears in the top row, and the (short) hunt is on for the remaining nine cells to be highlighted – we see 1000 YEARS ‘bounding’ him.
Wow! I’m impressed.
(All real words left, etc, etc – EENS at 4d must be the plural of the poetic “e’en”, not “een” which is already plural. And the nice touch that one source was from misprints in across clues, and the other from misprints in down clues.) 
ARMAGEDDON is mentioned in REVELATION ch.16, v.16; I’m not clear about which of the prophecies in ISAIAH are directly related to it. And I nearly forgot – the title, Dickens, is what I believe is termed a minced oath for the devil.
A most enjoyable good few hours, so thank you Shark. V.neat grid construction.
One little quibble: I always find “corrected misprints” unfortunately ambiguous; if the setter means “corrections to misprints” then please say so – if CAR is to be corrected to CAN, I’d like it to be clear that I should choose the correction N rather than the misprint R.
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Answer | Correction | Wordplay | |
| 1 | OLID | I | stinking | SOLID (substantial) − S(pecial) |
| 7 | DOUGH | S | brass | homophone: DOE (female beast) |
| 12 | PIOYE | PI (confusion) O(ver) YE (the, archaic) | ||
| 13 | ARSON | ARS (letters) ON (exactly) | ||
| 14 | INCENSE | double definition | ||
| 15 | FLIER | FLOOR (platform) with IE (that is) replacing (p)OO(l) | ||
| 17 | SEMI-OPAL | [LIME + SOAP]* | ||
| 19 | TAINOS | TAI (fish) + SON< (descendant) | ||
| 20 | UNGLUE | A | remove paste | UN (one, dialect) + [LUGE]* |
| 21 | ELOGIUMS | [I MUSE]* around LOG (fine) | ||
| 26 | ARMAGNAC | I | alcoholic drink | MAGNUM (four pints) − UM (hesitation) in A CAR< (vehicle) |
| 29 | OMENED | MEN (piece) in OED (dictionary) | ||
| 30 | DONARY | DIARY (record) with I(ndependent) replaced by ON (in advance) | ||
| 31 | ÉCRASEUR | RASE (scrape) in [CURE]* | ||
| 34 | TERNE | TERN (three) E(utectoids) | ||
| 35 | LOAMIER | LOR(d) (master) around AMIE (mistress) | ||
| 36 | OGHAM | GO< (run) + HAM (overacting) | ||
| 37 | IAMBI | I AM BI (compiler is ambidextrous) | ||
| 38 | STRAE | A | halm there | AE (one, Scot) after STR (steamer) |
| 39 | EYAS | H | immature hawk | EY(e) (gaze at) AS (seeing that) |
| Down | ||||
| No. | Answer | Correction | Wordplay | |
| 1 | OPIATE | (t)OPI(c) (matter) ATE (upset) | ||
| 2 | LINGALA | LING(uistics) À LA (according to) | ||
| 3 | DYEING | E (base) in DYING (final) | ||
| 4 | GENS | GE(rma)NS (Europeans) | ||
| 5 | OASES | R | rest places | OAS (on active service) (ar)E (oversea)S |
| 6 | ORE | E | ware | MORE (again) − M (Frenchman) |
| 8 | OOLOGY | V | study of ova | OO (two rings) + LOG (trunk) + Y(ard) |
| 9 | UNIPLANAR | [A RUN-IN LAP]* | ||
| 10 | GAEA | E | earth | (V)A(d)E(r) (h)A(n)G(s) all< |
| 11 | HURLEY | L | game from Louth | HEY (expression of joy) around URL (internet site) |
| 16 | BIOTERROR | BIT (act) around O(rdinary) ERROR (mistake) | ||
| 18 | MUMM | MUMM(y) (mother) | ||
| 22 | URDÉ | (m)URDE(r) (kill) | ||
| 23 | ZAREEBA | A | camp | ZA (South Africa) + A(bsent) BEER (export?) both< |
| 24 | FOETUS | OF< US (America) around ET (alien) | ||
| 25 | INANGA | [AGAIN]* around N(orway) | ||
| 27 | GNOMAE | T | mots | AMONG< (in) E(arth) |
| 28 | CYPRIS | CYPRUS (island) with U (acceptable) replaced by I(sle) | ||
| 30 | DUOMI | DUO (two) M(insters) + I(taly) &lit. | ||
| 32 | CERT | I | snip | (v)ERT (greenery) after C(old) |
| 33 | RAIL | O | scoff | double definition |
| 35 | LAV | N | can | LAV(a) (slag) |
|
|
||||
Click here for petition
I thought this was utterly fiendish. I really struggled and although I very nearly completed it all correctly I had lots of doubts and questions remaining.
I didn’t have the faintest inkling of the parsings for OPIATE or DONARY, only decided on LAV over LAT by virtue of evil and had failed to get FOETUS at 24D – my best guess being NOETUS, which I seem to remember (I’ve lost my copy now so can’t check the clue – possibly used as a firelighter – how am I going to keep warm when the Independent stops publishing?) fitted the clue more or less but obviously didn’t make sense of the definition. Had I had more confidence that I’d be able to make sense of all the clues I might have worked harder to have sorted this one out.
Maybe I just wasn’t on the right wavelength, but I found that there weren’t many ah! moments – I had to batter myself into acceptance that I’d got the right parsing or found the correct misprints. Even the endgame came to me grudgingly – for a while I was wondering if it were just the 9 cells containing DEVIL and GOOD that should be shaded, but that seemed too lame. I gradually came to the conclusion that YEARS was too obvious to be chance and finally realised that the IO and OO could form the 1000. Seems obvious now and I don’t know why it didn’t strike me as a revelation at the time.
I do like the more challenging grids and I suspect my views on this one are going to mellow with time (though if anyone spots me putting this in my top 3 at the end of the year perhaps they could gently remind me of this comment), so thanks to Shark for a very thorough work out. Thanks also, and congratulations, to HolyGhost for sorting out all the details.
Regarding the fate of crosswords in printed newspapers, this old Matt cartoon sums it up for me: http://bit.ly/1Wr9PCi
I spotted the biblical and verse references fairly quickly and got there in the end with this one. I also eventually worked out all the parsings, several after the grid was full. Took me a while to spot the 1000 though even after I saw YEARS running across the grid.
It didn’t help with the final changes that I had LAD for 35D for a long time (something to with “compact car” = LAD(-A), I recall). It’s amazing how, with some puzzles, like this, your mind wanders down lots of different neural avenues and you end up convincing yourself that what you have is right even though you know patently that it’s wrong !
Given there’s been an awful lot of recent media attention on the brain (the current BBC 4 series and the news today), and on mental health and wellbeing generally, it seems opportune to use this current to support the campaign to retain the Indy’s crosswords in printed form…as several petitioners have already done.
Many thanks Shark, this is one of my top three so far and to HG for the blog.
I managed to fill the top right corner but failed to make much progress beyond that and my recent good run (including a prosecco win – hurrah!) came to an end. For 7a I was fooled by the multiple ways of pronouncing ‘-ough’: I entered SOUGH, which I wasn’t entirely happy with but figured that SOW must be the female beast being referred to. I also entered MUTE at 18d which didn’t help.
Much enjoyed – good for Shark. This was slowish going for a long while, and at the bottom left corner I needed the extra help of guessing EVIL in the middle to counterbalance GOOD at the top. The 1000 YEARS “bound” was very neat; that took a while too, even after looking up the indicated Bible verses. (Which of course Lord Peter Wimsey, or failing him his manservant, would have known by heart to great time-saving effect.)
Have now found my copy and seen the full clue for 24D – and what a great clue it is. I’m kicking myself for not pushing to make full sense of this – on its own that could have tipped my opinion of the whole puzzle from frustration to admiration.
Toughest one so far this year, we thought, with testing clues and misprints hard to spot. Almost identical experience to HG (an appropriate blogger) with ARMAGEDDON jumping out first and suggesting a Biblical theme, after which the sources became apparent from the 10 (or so) misprints we had by then identified. Not convinced about the layout of 1000 YEARS and surprised nobody so far has commented on the strange construction “5 with 20 and 20 with 2” in the preamble. Once we knew we were to look in the Bible it was pretty obvious this was pointing us to chapter and verse, but surely “5 in 20” or “5 of 20” would have been more accurate?
Thanks HG and Shark. A great puzzle which I got most of the way through after an epic struggle. I spotted GOOD and EVIL but did not spot ARMAGEDDON or 1000 YEARS.
I had no idea what to look for in ISAIAH and REVELATION. I was exceedingly dim in failing to realise that 5 20 and 20 2 were chapter and verse numbers. Having had a totally secular upbringing and never having been to church except for a couple of weddings isn’t really an excuse.
I was ill around Christmas time and got behind on solving the Inquisitor. Until this puzzle I was making good progress catching up but Shark has set me right back in arrears again.