Inquisitor 1340: Strange Hobby by Schadenfreude

24 comments on “Inquisitor 1340: Strange Hobby by Schadenfreude”

1. Bert thought of Arnold Layne when we had some of the bottom row filled in – in fact if you said Arnold to him he thinks of the track straight away. However he thought it wouldn’t fit as he didn’t know that the second word required a Y!

   Thanks HolyGhost. It took us a lot longer to sort out the theme – it required a google search looking for words to go with ARNOLD. We then found out the relevance to the puzzle and the rest fell into place relatively easily!

   Quite a clever puzzle overall so thanks to Schadenfreude – we always look forward to your offerings!

2. Ah, dear Schadenfreude. How does he do it?

   This, for me, was one of those puzzles where you finish it, stand back and admire it as a work of art, with smug satisfaction and then feel a twinge of disappointment as you want more.

   As usual, I solved this one with elmac and when she suggested ARNOLD LAYNE, with no conviction, I sat up and shouted PINK FLOYD. At this point, she looked at me as if she thought I’d finally flipped. Ah, the youth of today … !

   P T Barnum, allegedly, said, “always leave your audience wanting more” and Schadenfreude certainly does. Roll on the next one.

   PS H___G____ I hope you get over your grumpiness in time for your next blog 😉

3. I found this a toughie, with some obscure words and cluing, but all the better for that.

   I had to resort to little bit of independent research (cheating?) – most significantly I searched for an (I thought improbable) native American transvestite and finding BERDACHES made life a lot easier. I was also rather fortunate in checking if GEO was a valid anagram of ego for 35D discovering that it meant a Scottish gully – what are the chances?

   I didn’t know the song, but I had enough to google Arnold and washing line – it’s always a nice moment when everything starts coming together.

   Each week though it seems I need to make things unnecessarily harder for myself – this week it was by, for no obvious reason, deciding that NIGHTIE had to be plural. I had to work hard at it, but eventually I managed to convince myself that MORO was an acceptable alternative spelling of MORRO and that the MObiles-Sicherheits-ROboter-System (MOSRO) wasn’t too obscure, really.

4. Well, we got there in the end but also made things difficult for ourselves.
   Initial thought was that the theme would be something to do with subbuteo however in one of those strange quirks the old iPod in shuffle mode started playing Arnold Layne while we were pondering.
   Spent far too long trying to convince ourselves that the self-pollinatory shenanigans of the beeorchis (single-word variant spelling of bee orchid apparently) might qualify it as a ‘Native American Transvestite’. Yeah, I know …
   Also managed to convince myself (Mrs BF tried in vain to point out that I was wrong) that only across clues could be a few letters short and tried to shoehorn Braise into 5D to get a fish and a bra even though it was obviously wrong. Everything sorted itself out though so many thanks to Schadenfreude for a fun puzzle and to HolyGhost for the (slightly grumpy) blog.

5. So much for IQ being the easiest of the three main outlets. I solved the NA transvestite clue and that was basically it…

6. Here’s a question – I couldn’t work out how Inquisitor number 105 only appeared less than 6 years ago so I looked back in the archive – why did the number jump one week from 157 to 1107?

7. OPatrick @6: As it says in the opening para. of the Inquisitor Index …

   “The series of crosswords, now known as Inquisitor, began in 1988, headed simply Crossword. It has since appeared every Saturday, except on Christmas Days and with one accidental omission. Changes in presentation have occurred, but the team of contributors has continued to develop naturally, as has the style. Today’s crossword is number 1106 in the series. In future, Inquisitor will be numbered accordingly.”
   Mike Laws, Crossword Editor, Boxing Day 2009.

8. Well I am with Jaguar I found this impenetrable and only solved one clue-I guess I don’t have the nous for these but it is difficult without someone to bounce ideas off

9. Thanks HG. I just realised I must have been doing some of the early pre-Inquisitor Inquisitors then – probably starting in 1990. I’m sure they were easier in them days.

   Also just listened to Arnold Layne for the first time, and turns out I did know the song too. Never paid attention to the words though.

10. Gordon Fisher @ 8
    You can bounce ideas off people at various sites.

    Just google ‘ Inquisitor (number)’ and you will get sites such as The Answer Bank, or Crossword Solver.
    At each of these, people ask for help or float possibilities for other people to respond to. So can you.
    (It might be a few hours or a few days after the crossword appears before you find any postings, so you have to keep googling)

    I am not sure whether the purists frown on this, but so what?
    I always enjoy trying to crack the puzzle on my own – but also enjoy the sharing, like doing it with a few friends in the pub.
    (Other social venues/interchanges are available.)

    Going back to year dot, I would never have understood how to approach cryptic crosswords without serving a long apprenticeship. I thought I would never achieve the wisdom of the elders. In fact I still have a very long way to go, and don’t expect to get there.

    But a lot of it is down to very learnable tricks, just like any trade. Which is why Fifteensquared is so brilliant. The bloggers are very human and are always happy to say where they struggled or went wrong – and always explain the solutions far better than the setters are able to do in a tiny paragraph in the paper.

    Keep going. I often think a puzzle is completely impenetrable. But then one answer, two answers . . .
    I’m not exactly sure it’s fun. I suffer badly and chronically from migraines. That feeling when the pain stops is beautiful.

11. I bought the original ‘Relics’ album back in 1972, I think it was, so ‘Arnold Layne’ came eventually to mind once the -AYNE was in place in the bottom SE and after I’d discounted various Waynes, Maynes and Redmaynes. I’d forgotten the song was about a women’s clothese fetishist though but a quick Google yielded the PDM and it was a case then of guessing what the clothes items on the line would be, not too difficult.

    I appreciate what other bloggers are saying but I didn’t find this as tough as some of recent IQs. Being from the West Riding I especially liked the ILKLEY clue although, ironically, it was one of the last to go in…a genuine “D’oh” followed.

    Thanks for the blog HG, hope your grumpiness passes (I’m one of the original GOM) and of course to Schadenfreude, for a really enjoyable solve.

12. I never get pop allusions (utterly unmusical all my life) and had to resort to Googling for Arnold and his … wishing ring? Clearly I’ve reviewed too much fantasy over the years; fortunately washing line was my second guess. Slow tough going as always with Schadenfreude, but with hindsight the clues were all fair though sometimes fiendish. Very satisfying when complete.

13. It’s not that I find crosswords like this impenetrable necessarily — I’m currently only one down in the Listener year (that I know of), and that was when I had U instead of O in TUCUTUCO. Maybe it’s just that I don’t give the IQ enough time, usually coming to it after I’ve done the Listener and EV, so maybe I’m “crossworded out” by the time I get to it.

    Perhaps it’s also just reflective of the recent couple of crosswords IQ has released, too, because both this one and the Ferret to be blogged about next week (that I’ve also failed to solve and it’s going to stay that way) appeared to have a number of clues where clue answer and grid entry length didn’t correspond in a way that wasn’t essentially obvious. I suppose the point is that I have a weakness of relying on being able to “trust” a majority of the given information. If too much is misleading — in particular, in a way where I don’t know how it’s misleading — then I find it hard to get started, and impossible to finish.

    I’m still a relative beginner to thematic crosswords, so over time I’ll hopefully get better at being able to cope with such problems. But this time, no dice.

14. @10 jonsurdy

    Two heads are better than one – that’s undoubtedly true. My daughter elmac (does the L stand for learner?) is sometimes invaluable as she asks me to prove why such and such an answer can’t be right and I then go on to discover that it is.

    Sites like The Answer Bank can be good if people stick to subtle hints but all too often you’ll see things like, “I’m stuck on 5 across: Sick feline (3) and I have C _ T what could it be?” (OK, that may be an exaggeration). Answers such as “it must be CAT but I can’t think why” are actually less useful than “think of it as a double definition, try to find a word that can define both words in the clue.”

    To me asking a direct question and being given the answer without having to apply any brain power is tantamount to cheating. People who expect that treatment should just ask someone to supply their completed grid and enter the competition in expectation of free booze or book token or dictionary or pen or whatever. But then the question is, who are they cheating?

    I can’t speak for my fellow bloggers but I, for one, am always willing to help anyone complete one of these infernal puzzles. I’m no expert, I don’t always do them in my head, I’m quite happy to use electronic dictionary searches when necessary.

15. As a Floyd fan of 40 years standing I’m ashamed of myself for not getting this — like a couple of your other contributors I made very little headway with this, which disappoints me. I did solve a double handful of clues but not enough for me to twig the theme.

    Fair play to the setter; vomit and toilets (although first time I’ve seen “rear” I reckon it will now crop up over and over again, like the alternative spelling of “etwee” has just done) indeed, and I suppose for “sex” one can say: the entire theme?

    Now he’s thought a nasty sort of person.

16. Jaguar, it’s that extra element of trying to work out the trick to entering the misfitting answers that I most enjoy about these puzzles. It adds an extra dimension.

    Matt Westwood: “I reckon it will now crop up over and over again”. I reckon you might be right.

17. Yes, perhaps I’ll feel that way too, but I’m not there yet I guess. It’s also put me off Schadenfreude’s recent CAM puzzle, what with two separate devices (thankfully at least both indicated up to misprints) and some clue answers to be entered in reverse making for a very difficult job of starting the thing off. Still, it’s coming up to only my third anniversary of starting to solve these sorts of puzzle so I’ve still got plenty of learning to do!

18. I thank you for your encouragement-regrettably family do not seem interested and there is no pub within 10 miles-I have tried at the golf club but failed to generate any enthusiasm-internet is intermittent which means research can be very time consuming and for some reason I cannot access Answerbank to input questions but this was not a problem in the past-will wait for son-in-law to visit to correct this problem-I have been looking at these for over 10 years and have only ever finished 2 but they do appear to becoming more difficult

19. Classic Schadenfreude, very difficult, especially with the shorter than expected answers, no hint of which is given in the preamble. I got there in the end, but I only had about 5 entries until Wednesday!

    Regarding the use of ‘help’ from other sites or electronic aids, it seems to me that the entire purpose of these puzzles is to have fun, so any method of completion is valid as long one enjoys it.

    That’s the second Pink Floyd themed IQ of the year…surely it must be possible to compile one on ‘The wall’?

    Thanks to S & B

20. As for that “Scale of Hardness” discussion that’s going on: I suggest it be called the “D’oh scale” for apparent reasons …

21. … but delightful though the crossword in the Saturday magazine is, I’m afraid I’m not going to be contributing again. I just got round to reading the editorial in yesterday’s edition of the newspaper, and quite frankly it appalled me to the point where I have decided I no longer want to be associated with such a government-toadying piece of trash ever again.

    Sorry and all that — I may well encounter you guys in connection with another crossword series in the future.

22. Don’t think you have to sacrifice the IQ though, I’m sure that if you got in touch with someone they would forward a copy of it on to you and you’d not have to worry about buying the paper — just enjoy the crossword bit!

23. Well, I guessed “Strange Hobby” was the Floyd song. Apart from that it was another epic Inquisitor failure.

24. @19 Dan

    IQ setters seem to be keen on Floyd. Apart from the late Jambezi’s Dark Side theme, there was also Kruger’s IQ1169 on Syd and Wish You Were Here. I think there has been at least one more but I cannot trace it.

    I am sure this will only be read by the site editor at this late stage. We have been busy holidaying and I am now catching up – a slow but enjoyable task after the two stinkers from Nimrod and Dysart. Like some of you above, I spotted the theme fairly quickly – about 4 letters in each of the top and bottom rows and it jumped out at me. So, from then on, a relatively easy one for a Schadenfreude.

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