Inquisitor 1343: Partly Connected by Lato

19 comments on “Inquisitor 1343: Partly Connected by Lato”

1. Thanks for the blog, Kenmac. While this puzzle was not as difficult as some by Lato, it took me very much longer than you to find the last step. I think ‘part’ may refer to theatrical role.

2. I got there in the end with this, but it wasn’t my favourite puzzle of recent times. I found the cluing too obscure in places (never did parse UNPROSPEROUS or LIAM)and with the uncertainty of extra letters I often didn’t get that feeling of answers being obviously right once I’d seen them. I found it perked up a bit once I’d seen the Shakespeare connection and got to filling in the thematic clues, but I had to grind out the last few – particularly the South West corner, which put up firm resistance for a day or two.

   I was toying with ERIC for a while at 14A – something along the lines of E-RICH, minus the H – but did eventually settle for EUAN, though with an additional Y in it, from gravy train. This then had me heading off in the wrong direction looking for a connection with Meera Syal, as I now had SYAL from the extra letters, and trying to find out if she’d played any other Shakespearean characters than Beatrice.

   As ever though these are only minor complaints and overall the quality and challenge of these Inquisitors, this one included, remain consistently high and much appreciated.

   Thanks to Lato and Kenmac for the blog.

3. I meant to add that boy-meets-girl seems to be a direct synonym for ‘romantic’ – and rather a nice anagram, I thought.

4. Lato has compiled some of my favourite IQs, but I didn’t get the usual amount of pleasure from this one. As with OPatrick@2, I really struggled with the clueing…so many of the words/definitions used were just so obscure that I had to basically guess answers then trawl through the dictionary to confirm them (and even then I couldn’t parse several of them). There were hardly any clues where I got the nice little self contained PDM that (for me) makes doing crosswords enjoyable. It would appear that the IQ is getting harder (or maybe it’s just a temporary blip), but it seems as if the difficulty is sometimes artificially applied. It almost feels like somebody has gone over the clues afterwards and ensured that there is no easy way in, and that any semi-common word is removed and replaced by ‘dictionary words’, but without those occasional ‘easy ways in’, it becomes (for me) more of a research exercise than an enjoyable game. To sum up it up, I think it is much more interesting when the difficulty factor is incorporated into the theme (for example using a postcode to represent the location of a murder!), rather than each individual clue. But then I appreciate that that is a very difficult thing to do, and perhaps my vocab is just too small?

   Having said all that, I did enjoy it, and I liked the typically Lato style of lots of thematic material presented in different ways.

   Thanks to setter and blogger, and I would stress that the above is only ‘relative’ criticism…I really appreciate the efforts of the compilers.

5. My mistake, I misremembered ‘Post Mortem’ as having been compiled by Lato, but I find it was by Ifor. Apologies to both. Let me use a different example of Lato incorporating the difficulty into the theme…’Swingers’. A great puzzle, with a really tricky end game.

6. I do agree with Dan on the clue content.

   Can I also query 20a-shouldn’t the good initially and like be the other way round-as the clue stands the answer appears to be ‘geg’

   Whilst I am permanently unsuccessful at these puzzles is there a danger of them becoming a clique for the devotees and how do you attract new participants-I suppose the numbers submitting solutions might be revealing

7. Gordon @6, G is the abbreviation for Good, initially is a positional indicator here, indicating eg should precede G.

   I had a similar experience to kenmac. I saw Stratford emerging, which helped with the rest of the partial-thematics fall. I noticed the hidden characters within the answers, the cryptic representation of Shakespeare also helped me work out PARSEE which I hadn’t previously solved. Never bothered working out the extra three words or their anagrams. As kenmac says, that wasn’t necessary to complete the puzzle, unless you needed to confirm RECAST, which was pretty obvious.

   Thanks, Lato. Always love the puzzles, although agree Swingers is the best of the three in 2014 so far. Thanks for the blog, kenmac.

8. I got only about a dozen answers in this and only two of the theme words, but I was amused by 11ac. I knew OTAKU only because it appeared it appeared in Beelzebub a few weeks ago (where unintentionally missing words in the clue made it impossible to parse).

9. It looks like we enjoyed this puzzle rather more than some others.
   We are new to the world of Inquisitor/EV/Listener puzzles so perhaps it is just a case of the novelty not yet having worn off, but for me part of the pleasure resides in staring at an apparently intractable grid and then finding the tiniest of threads that provides a way in. If that means regular visits to the BRB then so be it (although I confess to a certain amount of despair when yet another clue is clearly an anagram leading to the Latin plural of a genus of plant that I have never heard of – I also wonder if Haldane’s Gods’ ‘inordinate fondness for beetles’ was based on a need to provide sufficient fodder for future crossword setters).
   I suspect that if this had been the umpteenth Shakespeare themed puzzle that we had attempted we may have greeted it with less enthusiasm, but it was our first so many thanks to Lato for the workout and to kenmac for the blog.

10. kenmac, how about this for UNPROSPEROUS?
    UN (one) + PRO (backing) + SS (ship) containing PER (a, see per^1 in Chambers) + OU (man from East London, that being a city on the southeast coast of South Africa)

11. H___G____ @10: Yes that definitely works better.

    But at this point I demand a stewards’ enquiry. EUAN Blair and East London are hardly in most peoples’ standard armoury.

    Perhaps a question mark or a “maybe” in the clue for UNPROSPEROUS would have worked better.

    I’ll change the blog to reflect your suggestion.

12. kenmac: I tend to be with you on EUAN. If you use the ‘Site Search’ facility (just below the calendar, top right) then you’ll find that it has been used wrt to Blair in the Guardian daily, but IEUAN has been clued as ~”Welsh boy’s name” in the IQ series & EV – fair game. For references to people, my personal criterion is whether they are in Chambers Biographical Dictionary or not.

13. I found this a bit of a curate’s egg to be honest. I really liked the thematic clues – like kenmac, I found them pretty unyielding for ages, then they fell once I had an inkling of the theme.

    However, I didn’t like the ‘postscript’ of working out the three remaining names. LIG threw me for a while (I had LIE too). Perhaps solvers should have been asked to write the names under the grid ?

    Still don’t get the link between ‘PEROU’ and East London though, both kenmac and HG@10’s explanations seem far too obscure for me (according to Wiki, Ralph Perou (who he anyway ?) was born in East Sussex).

    On balance, I did enjoy the challenge but like Dan@4 struggled a bit with the obscurantism in places.

    Many thanks to Lato and kenmac.

14. Rob @13, HG’s parsing of UNPROSPEROUS is exactly how I parsed it and I am sure it is correct. The East London device does come up now and again, I have certainly seen it in another puzzle very recently, either IQ or Listener. It’s one of those things you pick up, like Victorian meaning Australian, SA meaning South America or South Africa, from Perth meaning Australian or Scottish. A recent Listener had NI to indicate a New Zealand connection, short for North Island, rather than a Northern Irish connection as you might first think. It’s all just typical deceptive setting.

    The rest of the parsing for the word is all fairly standard barred stuff.

15. Many thanks eXternal. I’m convinced now.

    Never come across “ou” before and yes, I like the East London diversion- should have guessed the South African connection from the way it was written out in full. Apologies to HG for any aspersions cast !

16. ou as a South African slang term for man is definitely one to squirrel away for the future – I’ve warmed a little more towards this puzzle now. I’m not sure if it was fortunate or unfortunate for kenmac to have found Ralph Perou, particularly as his Wiki entry has this: “In 2012, Perou with a team of supportive volunteers, started renovating a dilapidated warehouse in Bow, East London. In 2013 it was launched as ‘Bow Bunker’, which is a flexible place for photography, film and very special events.” Close enough to a man from East London to stop one looking elsewhere without being good enough to be satisfied with it.

17. Thanks to kenmac for the blog and all others for their comments. Think a difficult clue for ‘unprosperous’ was fair enough – he’s a major character and his name was a big part of the answer. Like kenmac (and everyone else, I’m sure) I’d never heard of Mr Perou!

18. Count us as another one (or two in our case) who had LIE to start with in 27ac which caused some problems in sorting out the various characters. We felt much the same as kenmac about the final denoument but we did perservere even though we didn’t have to!

    Thanks to Lato and kenmac

19. Thanks kenmac for the great blog. I enjoyed this a lot, as I do all Lato/Tyrus puzzles. I thought it was very clever. My favourite clue was “Newspaper containing English FA’s plans” which I think is superb. I also thought the inclusion of “Ferdinand” was clever. I too struggled to parse UNPROSPEROUS.

    Thanks Lato.

    ps I wish I had time to tackle more IQs — I’ve never done one yet that hasn’t been great. Thanks to Nimrod and his team.

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