Inquisitor 1347: Soprano by Pointer

26 comments on “Inquisitor 1347: Soprano by Pointer”

1. This is the most elaborate red herring puzzle I have ever come across.
   It’s not ‘Trilby’, it’s ‘Fedora’.
   The descriptive 8 letter entry is ‘princess’.
   The pianist is ‘Lazinski’.
   The three characters running across the grid are:
   ‘Loris’ in top row
   ‘De Seriex’ in fourth row
   ‘Olga’ in bottom row.

2. Hihoba,
   many thanks for explaining 26A. Never ever would I have got anything that subtle.
   And I agree that 29A is a bit weak because it’s not the middle.

3. I really struggled with this puzzle and was also convinced it was ‘Trilby’ but couldn’t find the three characters.
   It was only after finishing last weekend’s fairly easy one quite quickly that I came back to ‘Soprano’.
   Having a break from it worked, but I only got it yesterday. (Well, what else do you do on a cold and wet BH?)

4. Ha!

   I was going to say some slightly grumpy things about this, but have now read jonsurdy’s first comment and am just gaping in awe. I don’t care now that I didn’t quite finish it off, I’m just marvelling at the way the parallels have been used – and indeed at their existence in the first place.

   I suspect that Pointer will be very pleased indeed with your blog, Hi. A puzzle that deserved to have caught someone. I’m only sorry that I didn’t put in that extra effort to have taken that last step and fallen into its trap myself.

5. The lesson I have to keep learning again and again is that EVERY part of the preamble is very significant.
   The reference to three of the characters running across the grid was a bit throwaway and didn’t seem important as we weren’t asked to highlight them or anything.
   But they were crucial. I have noticed this before in puzzles over the last month or so. A sort of ‘by the way’ thing that is actually the key.
   Same with the Title quite often.

6. OK, brilliant from johnsurdy! I agree that we (all three of HiHoBa) were had. BUT the Lazinski letters, while making a Fedora do not follow the correct path for the Fedora/Trilby hat, while Svengali’s do and I think it is fair to say that the opera in question is SO obscure that only the most ardent opera fan would ever have heard of it! An amazing misdirection nevertheless! It also explains the Paris STUDIO/SALON that was mentioned in the blog.

   Too much for me Pointer. Well done. Glad I don’t send them in any more. I buy my Prosecco now!

7. Speechless!

   You are right jonsurdy about checking all the details but we did look repeatedly at the preamble. We were completely fixated on SVENGALI and having googled him we found TRILBY which also fitted with HYPNOTEE. We had never heard of LAZINSKI but are amaxed that Pointer managed to get both characters going in opposite direction around the TRILBY/FEDORA.

   We were also puzzled though because finding the three characters didn’t seem necessary once you’d completed the grid. All is now revealed.

   Our admiration has no bounds.

   Thanks To Pointer and Hihoba.

8. I too was completely misled by this one, but I don’t feel too disheartened given that I seem to be far from alone. My only contribution is to suggest that in 29a the correct parsing is deleting U, the middle bit of BRUSH, from USABLE.

   Thanks to Hihoba and jonsurdy@1, but especially to Pointer for such a masterpiece of misdirection

9. I think we were all mesmerised by Svengali.

10. If things had followed their normal course, this would have been mine to blog. I got as far as TRILBY and then pretty much gave up. I suspected that the alternate letters might spell something but seeing a Z and a K just put me off. I daresay that if I had been blogging, I might have gone further due to the dissatisfaction of not finding the three characters – but who can say.

    Well done to jonsurdy for spotting that!

    Many thanks to Pointer for the puzzle of the year, so far. And thanks to Hi – anytime you want to swap a Pointer for a Schadenfreude, feel free! 😉

11. Like everyone else, I followed the TRILBY/SVENGALI path but the missing three characters in the grid gnawed away at me. I had quickly seen OLGA in the bottom row and became convinced by the Fri. after a couple of days away that she was one of the three, although not a chacracter in TRILBY.

    I did a Google search “List of plays 1890s”, only to find nothing, then “List of Operas 1890s”, and lo and behold, there was FEDORA…..with OLGA, LORIS and DE SIRIEX. And then LAZINSKI the piano-player falling out of the clashing letters.

    That feeling of ‘being had’ was accompanied by much head-shaking and wonderment at the frankly, staggering sophistication of this puzzle.

    I suppose I got there in the end through sheer persistence but please Pointer, not too many of these, they’re not good for the little grey cells. Thank you though for the most diverting puzzle in years and of course, to Hi, of course for the blog, it certainly cleared up some of my questions about wordplay.

12. Well, well, well. I am something of an opera fan and briefly thought of Fedora at one point and then dismissed the notion as being far less likely than the ‘obvious’ answer of Trilby. Couldn’t find the Trilby characters and just assumed I was being a bit of a numpty and didn’t revisit it.
    Many thanks to Hihoba for the blog, jonsurdy for the explanation and to Pointer for an absolutely spectacular piece of misdirection. I have never been happier to be so completely wrong !

13. Similar to Rob H @12, some mix of obstinacy & persistence wouldn’t let me stop without resolving the three characters running across the grid.

    I had tried LAZINSKI as an alternative to SVENGAIL to no avail, and after what seemed like countless other failures I typed PRINCESS OLGA LAZINSKI into Google and struck gold when FEDORA appeared as the first hit – what a relief.

    Absolutely stunning puzzle from Pointer. All those coincidences – two 6-letter hats, both named after sopranos and so similar in shape, two 8-letter pianists, two dramas set in Paris and first staged in the 1890s, … Wide-eyed with amazement at this one! What superb misdirection.

14. I didn’t quite finish this but I did get the theme because I spotted Olga in the grid and Google helped me with the rest – I’d never get a simple opera reference unaided never mind one that I gather is on the obscure side.

    As I only had three of the clashing cells the Svengali red herring didn’t occur to me and I ran out of time/energy to finish it off. Sounds like had I done so I would have been in with a very good chance.

    Oh well. Such is life.

15. In my enthusiasm @13, I forgot to thank Hihoba for the blog.

    I parsed 29a as STABLE (fit for purpose) minus T (“its” middle bit), but Howard L‘s suggestion @8 works better.

    As for 26a (CHIPPER becoming CHIRPER with an extra stroke), I’ve seen a reference to this sort of thing once before, but I can’t remember where: it involved the interchange of EUROPE and FURORE by moving the lowest horizontal stroke from the initial E (becoming F) to the P (becoming R). Does this ring any bells?

    And BTW, this is Pointer‘s second Inquisitor – see #1247 from a couple of years ago about Clochemerle.

16. This is the second time in recent months I’ve regretted not making the effort to complete a puzzle and so failing to discover for myself an outstanding piece of composition (the previous one being eXternal’s Clue Two). Perhaps we could have a secret mark somewhere to indicate ‘keep trying on this one, it’ll be worth it’?

17. HolyGhost@15

    >> Does this ring any bells?

    See comments 4 and five on this page http://www.fifteensquared.net/2013/04/27/independent-8273-by-bannsider/

18. HG @#15, I looked on the Index page, and saw 1247, but misread is as 1347! Odd that Pointer’s offerings should be exactly 100 apart.

    Thanks for all the comments. I’m glad to see that we were not alone in failing to spot Pointer’s amazing misdirection.

19. This is the most devious crossword I’ve ever tackled. I opted for Svengali but kept checking the various answer forums hoping someone would point out the ‘missing’ characters. When I was eventually tipped off that Trilby was not the work in question it took me less than 20 minutes to track down the right one – I’m still annoyed with myself for being too lazy [or too blinkered] to tie up the loose ends unaided. Then again, who would have imagined such a perfect marriage of themes? Effectively the setter crammed two sets of thematic material into a standard grid, even to the point of nearly giving us the three characters from Trilby! An amazing piece of work, thank you Pointer.

20. On reflection, I think I have done Pointer an injustice by suggesting that the Trilby material was just ‘spectacular misdirection’. If I’d had my wits about me I would have been sitting looking at Svengali/Trilby on the one hand and Lazinski/Ferdora on the other and wondering which was the correct choice and finally realizing only one works’ characters appear in the grid. Still , more than happy to admit that this defeated me in the nicest possible way. Congratulations to all of you who puzzled though to the end.

21. I am yet another person who thought it was Trilby, and was proud of myself for almost finishing the puzzle. I didn’t have all the clashes sorted, but had enough to assume that Svengali was the piano player. Didn’t find any characters from the play, but thought nothing more of it.

    I am slightly disappointed to find out that I was barking up the wrong tree all along. Had never heard of Fedora, though 🙂

22. I’m gobsmacked!

23. Personally found this one thoroughly annoying and chucked it away without sending it in (well, it’s only Prosecco these days isn’t it). Even once completed, there was no completely unambiguous way to decide which hat we were after, even if you had googled the thing senseless and actually found the hopelessly obscure play-within-opera-within-play references.

    I don’t question that the whole thing was oh-so achingly clever, but it wasn’t remotely satisfying, and it doesn’t sound like many finished it at all, let alone correctly.

24. Simon @23:
    The preamble states that “Three of the scene’s characters run across the grid.” This gives an unambiguous way of deciding that FEDORA/LAZINSKI is what we’re after, and TRILBY/SVENGALI is a red herring.

25. Astonishing ~ Perhaps the cleverest puzzle I have seen in over fifty years of solving!

26. I remembered your name Pointer – this time I did the work myself.
    Another brilliant double-themed crossword for Christmas Eve 2016. I didn’t think you could possibly manage it again, but [barring that unfortunate accent] I think you have.
    Happy Christmas to you.

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