Inquisitor 1441: St IV by Triton

21 comments on “Inquisitor 1441: St IV by Triton”

1. Bravo Duncan. I was completely mystified what St IV could be about. I’m not normally that keen on Inquisitor puzzles where the endgame is the main part of the puzzle, but in this case I can see that it is a good one. It is a shame that my vocabulary was not up the the task, the special meanings of CONCH, DIVES and CANTER were all unfamiliar to me. Thanks to Triton too.

2. One where the grid fill was straightforward enough, but the end game took an absolute age. Even after getting some of the unclued entries, it was a mystery for far too long as to what linked them. More than a fair degree of lateral thinking required there…

3. A bit of a toughie this one for me. I spent quite a while hunting for Intransitive Verbs, for some reason convincing myself that the IV referred to this, coupled with JH’s Chambers recommendation. After realising I was chasing wild geese, I changed tack and things started to fall. Finding the fourteen consecutive clues wasn’t a doddle and after a lot of head scratching thing fell into place. After deliberating over STARS or START, I plumped for the former for the same reasoning as Duncan.

   A clever way to play with the wording of the well known rhyme, many thanks Triton. Another great blog thank you Duncan. I couldn’t parse GANNET, but now I see it – not sure now why that caused me so many problems.

4. er…come again??

5. Relatively generous clueing fooled me into imagining this would be an easy solv e. I vey much liked the device of burying the definitions and letters in amidst otherwise normal clues: I don’t recall seeing that before. And still a challenge to find them even when you knew what you were looking for. As for the endgame, even with six of the seven unclued entries: I never got close (it didn’t occur to me that the mention of Chambers was a hint).

6. I enjoyed this. Made good initial progress in the coffee shop writing in the answers (in pen, for a change). I thought the setter did very well to incorporate the letter mixtures and definitions without making the clues appear forced. It took a long time to find them by gradually homing in on the affected clues. It took me a similarly long time then to twig the theme, but I got it via DIVES – the only plural, so I looked for a singular meaning in Chambers.

7. Hmm… enjoyed this one up to a point.

   I just couldn’t make the quantum leap from Tinker, Tailor, etc. to St IV. The preamble mentioned the “eighth” unclued answer which I took to mean THIEF. I ground to a halt and never attempted a restart.

   I felt that there was just some information missing, though now that I see Duncan’s blog I remember counting my prune “stones” to that rhyme but I certainly used the rhyme for other things too. Maybe some other cryptic reference to stones would have helped.

8. Got the grid filled in probably record time (barring two NW unclueds), but had no idea about the meaning of the end game. A bit of a stretch for me requiring knowledge about cherry counting as well as many obscure definitions.

9. I think I’ll have to chalk this one up as a FAIL. I had 6 of the 7 unclued entries (not CANTER) but couldn’t connect them despite spotting SNIP as Tailor, GRUNT as Soldier, and DIVES as a Rich man – just couldn’t put it together so googled those + POTTER, CONCH & NICKER. Consequentially stumbled across the theme as someone had (un)helpfully posted them on a website, destroying any satisfying PDM for me. Well done to those that did.

   Any more moaning from me would be sour grapes. I’ll put it down to experience.

10. Like others, I found the end game a far tougher proposition than the grid fill. I had no idea what “St IV” was supposed to denote.

    I also suffered as a result of having STARE as a mixed letter word (from 6D) linked to PEER from 20A. And there are two adjacent potential mixed letter versions of SNIP, in 30A and 2D. All placed deliberately by Triton to lead us atray ? Whatever, I found this a real grind to get the full mixed letters and definitions of the missing words (and I still had real doubts about GRUNT =POWER ?).

    I only got the rhyme through DIVES, a rich man and NICKER, a thief, and pieced it together from there with the help of Mr Google, as I couldn’t actually recall the full rhyme itself or the link to cherry/plum/prune stones. I did have a genuine PDM with TAR (Stone four) so I guess I have to say I enjoyed this one on the whole despite my travails with the mixed letters. Thanks to Triton and to Duncan.

11. Another failure for me, too … I was totally baffled by St IV, and ended up by trying to justify START as follows. IV = fourth in game sequence = TAR. IV could also = 4a CHANGE, Thus St + anag TAR = START … which, at 1d at the top l.h. of the grid, was “just where one would expect it” !

    I’m afraid this, for me, was another example of the insidious “Only Connect” setting device, where solvers have to identify increasingly obscure linked sets. In this case it was even harder, as we had to find the set through synonyms of its members. Doubtless there are already puzzles in the pipeline where we will be required to identify sets via ANAGRAMS of SYNONYMS of MEMBERS, and all probably in a carte blanche that displays no symmetry ???

    As I’ve said before, my solving days are nearly over, but I am grateful to have lived through what, for me, was a Golden Age of Listeners and Inquisitors. I totally acknowledge that today’s new generation of solvers will probably look back on today’s puzzles as their Golden Age ! Tempora mutantur etc.

12. Like HolyGhost@9 we have to admit to failing at the last hurdle despite having all the unclued entries. Like others, we solved the puzzle quite quickly but we never did reach the PDM until after a google search.

    Congratulations to those that sorted out the connection!

    Thanks Duncan and Triton.

13. Another confession of failure here: a clever one that was a bit too clever for me. I had a full grid except (of course) for the last letter of 1D, but never got to the counting rhyme.

14. The delay between submitting puzzles for series such as IQ and them being published means that this puzzle was created quite a while ago, when I was only a few months into my setting ‘career’ and had not had the (considerable) benefit of seeing comments from solvers on any of my puzzles. If I were setting it now, I think I would either have put the unchecked letter in STARS in the middle or (more likely) simply gone with an unclued word that could mean sailor (‘Triton’ being the one with the most obvious appeal – to me, anyway!). I understand that the ‘connection’ aspect of the endgame is not to everyone’s taste, and if I use the device now I do tend to support it with some secondary guidance to the solver. That said, I was a little surprised how many solvers had clearly been denied the pleasure of school prunes and pink-tinged custard with free ‘career counselling’ thrown in…had I anticipated this, I suspect I would have provided a little assistance by ascribing human characteristics to StIV in the preamble.

    Thanks to Duncan for the excellent blog, to all who attempted/stuck with/completed the puzzle, and to those who have commented (whether in complimentary terms or otherwise!) – your feedback is much appreciated.

15. Thanks for the info Triton. Personally I think it was a fair game and you just pulled one over on us this time!

16. Thanks Triton we’re looking forward to the next one!

17. After filling the grid, apart from the unclueds, in the first half hour of a 2-hour A-Level maths exam (I was an invigilator, not a candidate!) with no access to a dictionary, I thought I was well on course for a personal best, but I then spent the next 90 minutes staring at the clues and grid (and occasionally at the students) and getting nowhere. That was on the Monday after publication and it took Mrs T and me the rest of the week, off and on, to piece it all together and we wouldn’t have done that without a hint about the rhyme, with which we are both very familiar. We managed to get there eventually, but without ever understanding “StIV”. The most obvious meaning to me is “Fourth Street”, so much time was wasted poring over Dylan lyrics, and we also briefly considered the only British Pope, Adrian IV, until discovering that he was never canonised. Thanks Triton, for your comments, and we look forward to your next challenge.

18. #17 by Terrier – nothing to do with the crossword, but doing that during the exam might fall foul of guidelines where other tasks are not supposed to be carried out by the invigilator.

19. You’ve got me bang to rights, nmsindy, but with a very small group (6, I think) there is very little invigilating to do and with maths there isn’t even a need to give out extra paper. I trust you won’t shop me 🙂

20. You’re safe there, Terrier. The exams I remember would have had three figure numbers of candidates rather than six.

21. We have those too (e.g. GCSE maths and English) and there is no scope for extra-curricular activities!

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