Inquisitor 1427: Fulfilment by Kruger

14 comments on “Inquisitor 1427: Fulfilment by Kruger”

1. A really tough workout I thought. So tough that I managed to complete it only about 24 hours ago.

   Ludicrously, even though I had NERGAL, NERTHUS and NECHTAN entered in the grid, I simply assumed they were random non-word anagrams and didn’t bother looking them up. The key was finally deducing that Voltaire was the origin of the quote.

2. Tough one but I enjoyed it in the end.

   For what it’s worth I parsed the preamble wordplays like this –

   What man stops foreign article about : EH + CAT in (LE)<
   old woman conceals Berlin's real : ECHT in NAN
   students preserving non-adult body : (EARTH – A) in NUS
   CID's final press answer : D + URG(e) + A
   In short fool (local female : NER(d) + GAL
   author crossing Irish channel : RTE in AMIS
   died before noon in ocean : (D + N) in SEA
   You read out then left information : 'U' + L + GEN
   to wrap corpse special : CERE + S
   thanks expressed in tavern : TA in PH

3. One of those where there was a point I thought I’d never finish it – just too much going on, no clue was quite what it seemed and even when corrected few were easy. But as ever, perseverance pays off and I did get there in the end, albeit at a slow crawl. I had SEDNA and CERES as my first two thematic clues, so spent a while looking for astronomical bodies before getting back on track.

   I assume the extra cryptic indications were there for anyone who felt there wasn’t enough challenge and wanted to complete it without any aids – surely many of these gods are too obscure for anyone to know them all? My eternal admiration goes to anyone who did complete this without a quick google at some point.

   I did have a few question marks still at the end. I wasn’t at all sure about the cluing for 41A and I still don’t think the clue for HYAENA at 3d works – the NA isn’t contained in the HEAY (savage presumably being an anagram indicator rather than an adjective describing hyenas). I suppose the whole thing can be an anagram of NA in HEAY, but that seems a bit clumsy.

   However, these slight uncertainties aside a highly satisfying puzzle in the end, so thanks to Kruger and to kenmac for a markedly thorough ‘brief’ blog.

4. Beautifully complex puzzle, brilliantly blogged.
   I didn’t quite get to the end. After a lot of frustration with the clashes I eventually got that they were anags.
   But the first three I worked out – NERTHUS, SEDNA, CERES – are all minor planets, so I assumed the others would be too.
   This lead me to ARTEMIS, and that was as far as I got

5. My eternal admiration goes to anyone who completed this with or without the aid of google. The complexities were sufficiently obscure to quite defeat me. Thanks to setter and, heroically, blogger.

6. I’d made a resolution to submit the last few Inquisitors in a desperate bid to win a bottle of prosecco before the opportunity is lost at the end of this month. Unfortunately I started this quest with this puzzle and nearly failed, partly because I couldn’t believe that some of the thematic entries which emerged were real words. It was only when I realised that the wordplay for EHECATL could also support EHLCATE (EL being a “foreign article” as well as LE) that I thought to check on Google to find that it was, indeed, a god as the quote would imply.

   A tough start to my mission, but thanks to Kruger anyway and to kenmac for the blog.

   I do so hope that the Inquisitor continues, with or without the prosecco, but at least I’ve found that the new app for the iPad is a good alternative to the print edition for news and comment, and has a much better solver for the daily cryptic crossword than that available from the website. The latter is so slow and clunky that it is unusable with my slow broadband.

7. My two cents then. UNNETTED and SEDAN suggested a clash and crossing letters in NERGAL and the fact that the original had to be ANGLER suggested anagrams. I couldn’t find NERGAL in the paragraph but did find SEDNA and hence was away. Couple more established they were all gods.

   Didn’t get the quote although enough to identify it wasn’t English. Enjoyed it nonetheless though.

8. As others have said – a tough challenge.

   We struggled with the parsing for 41ac but got there in the end.

   It wan’t until Bert noticed that there was the possibility of VOLTAIRE as the originator and we googled quotations by him that things fell into place.

   Thanks to Kruger and kenmac. Fingers crossed for many more IQ challenges in the future.

9. “Rather hard” I noted. No time to start at the weekend, and midweek evenings seemed short. But got there in the end. (The extra wordplays in the preamble were no help, just something extra to check – for completeness. Agree with BF’s parsing @2.) What made solving hard were quite a number of clues such as 43a where “curtailed short break” leads to PAS = PAUS(e) minus the extra U, so 5 letters down to 3.)

   It took a while (after the party was over) to check that there were equal numbers of extra/missing/misprinted letters – kenmac’s count in not right, but acknowledged & forgivable. (31a is particularly wonky: “northern” isn’t part of the definition, and the T is ‘missing’, not a ‘misprint.)

   OPatrick @3: HYAENA … I think that “overcome by” in the clue simply means that [HEA(v)Y]* is above (‘comes over’) N(y)A(l)¬A(s).

   Thanks, & congratulations, go to Kruger for digging out 10 (mainly very/extremely rare) gods’ names whose anagrams make sense. Toughest of the YTD.

   It was interesting to read views of what Voltaire actually meant – e.g. the existence of, or belief in, God is necessary for society to function. (Discuss.)

10. Agree with others that this was the toughest of the year so far. Really hard in some cases to decide which of the three options (missing or extra letter or misprint) to go for in some cases and I did make the wrong choices for a few.And some of the definitions were obscure, for me at least (a Hunter Watch for example. I managed it all in the end after a couple of lengthy sessions.

    Unlike others though, I found the paragraph useful in sorting out the final construction of at least two of the gods’ names. Most of the names were hard to track down even with Google so if anyone did manage to get this done sans Google, “Chapeaux !” as Voltaire would have said…incidentally, I actually knew the quote which is more than can be said for some of the English quotations so far this year….

    Having completed it, with a mix of relief and satisfaction, this is a definitely a close contender for POTY so far but I will need to calm down my overactive synapses and glue my hair back on now ! Thanks Kruger and to kenmac, great blog for what little time you had.

11. Agree with some of the others that this was the toughest of the year. Some tricky clues, the SE corner was a struggle for me. My lead in was enchant/nechtan (German for real jumping out of the subsidiary clues here) followed by nerthus and sedna. The others slowly revealed themselves, with more use of Google necessary than usual, given the obscurity of most of the Gods’ names.

    Regarding the quotation, the first three letters in had me thinking of various Sidneys. It was spotting the string ‘faudra….’ which alerted the Francophile side of me.

    Last two Gods in were Ptah and Ulden. I then spent a while reverse engineering the missing/correct letters and bar one or two all tie up with the blogger’s.

    A toughie indeed but very enjoyable. Amongst my faves of the year so far.

    My thanks to Kruger and kenmac.

12. Having peaked in my Inquisitor career by winning the one with the cube around Christmas, I only managed three answers in this one. I just found most of the clues impenetrable!

13. I am so relieved that most solvers also found this puzzle tough. Definitely one of those Saturdays when one wonders whether it’s actually that difficult or whether senile decay has set in with a vengeance. Happily, SCREE/CERES and ANGLER/NERGAL* set me on the right track, and I uttered a fervent “Bloody hell!” when the inferred NECHTAN actually turned out (thank you, Wikipedia) to exist. The usual thanks all around.

    *remembered from a misspent youth reviewing sf and fantasy for a games magazine.

14. My thanks to Kenmac and all who have contributed to this thread.

    I wanted all ten gods to relate to different religions and, since they also had to be anagrams of more common words, this inevitably meant that some were rather obscure. However, 8 of the 10 are referenced in Brewer and/or Bradford and the wordplay paragraph was added later to act as a cross-check to the anagrams to perhaps avoid the need to use Google.

    I sincerely hope that IQ will continue in some form after this month and that Kenmac gets the chance to blog another of my puzzles in the future – though he may think differently, of course!

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