14 comments on “Inquisitor 1735: Gold by Karla”

1. Another debutante, delivering a lovely puzzle. Sitting at the easier end of the difficulty spectrum from my point of view, as a very rapid finish was recorded here, with all answers parsed successfully. I spotted both BLONDIE and ANGEL EYES as I went along, so immediately went looking for TUCO. As a result, the endgame turned out to be nice and straightforward – by chance TGTBATU happens to be one of my favourite films.

   Many thanks, as always, to both setter (a fine debut) and blogger.

2. As soon as I twigged it I played the end with the music turned up
   Great score and direction and nice tribute to the film
   Thanks all(I saw ANGEL EYES first)

3. As noted in the blog & comment, a puzzle a little easier than average, but still with a few challenges. Yes, I’ve seen the film (and the others in the “Dollars” trilogy) but no way did I remember the names of the characters; however, I found BLONDIE & ANGEL EYES and that was enough of a way in. (And then I had to hunt for the final Bad – “mouth” in 26d as is happens.)
   Good fun from Karla, thanks, and to Ken for the blog. (I think you mean “truel” not “thuel”.)

4. A great puzzle, on the subject of one of my favourite films (I’ve sat through an Italian language version, as it was the only way at the time to catch the 45 minutes missing from the English language release). Consequently I spotted the theme pretty quickly after completing what was already a fast grid solve, and only paused briefly to hunt the grid for the final duel. A fine debut, and a welcome change of pace.

5. H___G____ @3
   Oops!
   Corrected
   Thanks

6. I stumbled over the ‘description of the finale’ – ‘Mexican Standoff’ was clearly out; ‘operatic’ was too short; ‘over-egged’ almost but not quite there, so I must admit I stopped looking. It would have been nice if the names had been sited in the grid to imitate the trio in the movie, but it was an enjoyable stroll down memory lane, and I liked the hints towards the title. ‘Once Upon a Time in The West’, a greater film, next?

   Thanks to Karla and kenmac.

7. I enjoyed filling the grid with its generous helping of longer words and a mixture of normal and special clues. I had collected ten of the twelve extra words and readily found the two missing ones on revisiting the clues.

   I tried and failed to sort the twelve words into three sets or find any thematic association. My way into the theme was to spot BLONDIE in the grid, and I remembered an old Western involving gold and a character with that nickname. I also remembered there were two other leading characters, whose names I could not recall. It took two or three online searches to find the connection, the name of the Western and the two other nicknames.

   Having accounted for 20 of the letters I had nine more to account for with the ‘finale’. Seeing nothing obvious in any single line (at any angle), I guessed it could be longer than 9 letters, crossing one or more of the three names, and it was the word DUEL that led me to the THREE-WAY DUEL (described also as a ‘Mexican standoff’ in the source I used – as Neil @6 also noted.

   For my own satisfaction I linked each of the twelve words with ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘ugly’ as appropriate, forming three equal-sized sets.

   Thanks to Karla for the puzzle and to kenmac for the interesting blog.

8. Lovely puzzle and my family certainly appreciated me being done with the Inqusitor by Saturday afternoon for a change!

9. Lovely puzzle. I have seen TGTB&TU but that was long enough ago to have forgotten the characters’ names, which meant I spent a lot of time looking up Blondie hits and trying to match them to the extra words. (You get some interesting results if you google butt and plug together…) Eventually I found myself on the right path and it all fell together nicely. Clever implementation of the theme and it’s always nice to put the finished puzzle aside without any doubts about the endgame. I hope we shall see more from Karla.

10. A welcome relief after last week. Easy grid fill, but, like kenmac, I went down the singer/song blind alley for a while, and only sorted out the final superfluous word after googling “Blondie Angeleyes” and finding the film (I’ve never seen it and had never heard of Tuco!). Very nice final pdm. Great Debut Karla, and thanks for the blog Ken.

11. We had watched Fist Full of Dollars the day before tackling the IQ. When we realised that GOOD and BAD could be linked to the extra words, UGLY was a natural progression.

    We had not remembered any of the characters so we had to search online before locating them in the grid.

    Thanks to Karla and Kenmac.

12. Much enjoyed — many thanks to Karla and Kenmac. Like others, I spotted BLONDIE first and then ANGEL EYES, vaguely assumed it was something musical (related to a gold disc maybe?), and was wafted by Google to the film. All became clear except the THREE WAY DUEL description, which took a bit longer.

13. Very enjoyable thanks to Karla. I’ve never seen the movie, but have obviously heard of it. Thus I didn’t know of any of the names in the endgame. I deduced the G, B and U from the extra words and that sent me to the Internet for the film’s synopsis. I’m not always the most proficient at endgames involving word searches but this one fell rather nicely.

    Congrats to Karla on the fine debut and thanks once again to kenmac for the blog.

14. Welcome, Karla. A delightful debut. You can come again!

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