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We were aked to identify a quotation round the perimeter which denied the existence of three unclued entries. Its source was indicated in the grid – clearly involving the barred off central square.

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The preamble told us that in each column, one letter from the first answer is displaced to the top row of the grid, and one from the second answer to the bottom row, to form a thematic item (two words) at 1 across (top row) and two thematic items at 42 across (bottom row).  Four possible causes of such movement (though not the latest) are symmetrically placed in the grid and must be highlighted.  We were also told that two answers were abbreviations.

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I have to confess to being stumped by the final step of this puzzle. The instructions tell us that:

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Surely this is not the same Nimrod that was active on the Listener in the 1940′s?
 
This was pretty hard: clues in alphabetical order of answers, to be entered in the grid in jigsaw-fashion; any occurrence of the (different) letters in a to-be-discovered five-letter word overlooked in the wordplay. This five-letter thematic word leads to the completion of the otherwise unclued perimeter.

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This was pretty much the opposite experience of the Raich puzzle with the World Cup theme. The thematic content was a ‘anagram and one letter change’ 7-letter word chain, the first and last words of which came from extra letters in across clue wordplay, and the rest from unclued answers. The chain turned out to be: STEPHEN, PESANTE, PEASANT, NAMASTE, AMENTAL, MATINAL, MATILDA. Apart from Stephen and Matilda being names, this sequence didn’t suggest much. Google searches after completing the grid revealed that England’s only King Stephen came to the throne in 1135 (the puzzle number). He was married to one Matilda, and replaced another Matilda as monarch – my guess is that the Matilda of this puzzle is his wife, as the natural word ladder treatment of the other seems to be a change from MATILDA to STEPHEN rather than the other way. The note from Mike Laws below tells me that with more careful research I’d have discovered that the Empress Matilda from whom he took the throne replaced him (at least briefly) in 1141 (1135 plus 6), so the puzzle’s title is about more than the word chain, and the order of the word chain DOES relate to the theme. Over the next 17 years or so, I guess we can expect to see more puzzles based on this kind of theme, though I’d expect the thematic treatment in some to be more closely related to the theme – here, the only link I can see is the match in length of the names STEPHEN and MATILDA. I finished up a bit unhappy with the puzzle because (with my incomplete research) there was no real penny-drop moment, though I can see that for people with better historical knowledge, there could have been one.

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We were asked to find and rearrange eight unclued answers before entering them in the grid. I had ???MN?Y for one and A?ILR? for another quite quickly. This led inevitably to thoughts of GERMANY and BRAZIL and . . . World Cup football again. The unclued eight instantly suggested either the seven previous winners and the current one (which won’t be known until the day after the crossword comes out) or the eight quarter-finalists with one (the winner) to be highlighted.

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The preamble told us that single extra letters indicated by wordplay in 25 clues spell out part of a quotation whose missing ingredients are exemplified in the 10 thematic answers.  In the prevailing spirit of harmony, clues for the thematic items were mixed, comprising a definition of one thematic answer and wordplay for another.  Solvers had to highlight the one unclued entry which describes the quotation.

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After the relatively gentle strolls (or canters) of the last few weeks, this puzzle proved rather a stiffer challenge (or maybe I just wasn’t really in the mood).
 
Two of the first clues I solved were those whose answers had to be treated before entry, and with another couple I couldn’t immediately figure out the wordplay, so I was getting nowhere fast.

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Probably my quickest Inquisitor ever, I had it done-and-dusted in less than an hour.

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For me, the theme of this puzzle was very easy to guess.

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I found this pretty challenging (=difficult), though really interesting, and certainly would not have finished it without computer aids! (My favourite is a little program I’ve had for many years called “Puzzlex”.)

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I usually enjoy Phi’s offerings and this was no exception.

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My fastest Inquisitor ever. About an hour to solve all the clues. Quick shufti in Google to find the quotation attribution. Short pause to mow the lawn, then search for “directions”. Find them, remember my Shakespeare and search in a NNW direction. Done!

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Pretty easy going at first. I had the grid (with the exception of the four thematics) filled in about an hour. The thematics, however, proved a little troublesome until the penny dropped.

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Solving time: about 1 hour

In this puzzle, which “depicts an historic event”, the gimmick is that “When the clue answers have been entered, some squares will be empty. In the final grid (in which all entries are real words) a different equal number of squares will be empty. Solvers must highlight what was dispatched and by what (12 squares in all)”.

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As Hihoba is on holiday for a few weeks, I’m blogging this one, and he’ll do mine later in May.
 
A frustratingly slow start on this one …
  … but with about 40% of the clues solved (mainly in the lower half), the thematic question popped into my mind, shortly followed by the unclued central entry.

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Raich is a setter with an increasing output.  To my knowledge, he has set Independent blocked crosswords, Listeners, Inquisitors and has a blocked crossword in the latest Magpie.  I have acted as a test solver for Raich on a couple of occasions, but not for this puzzle.

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Not that tough a crossword – many normal clues could be solved cold on the first pass through, and the theme yielded fairly quickly. But enjoyable for all that. (Was the puzzle number – double-1 double-2 – a veiled hint?)
 
Some clues, 22 in all, have no length indications, and have to be entered with one or two elements of a set omitted. The answer to one normal clue representing the final element must be highlighted.

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Well, this one put up a fight but I won through in the end. I guess it must have taken me about 5 hours over about 4 days.

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This was a pretty straightforward puzzle except for locating the last piece of thematic material to highlight in the grid – I’d guess that two thirds of the clues could be solved quite happily by a broadsheet daily cryptic solver without Chambers.

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I found this difficult to start, but easy to finish (the opposite of my last blog!). I spent hours finding my first three down answers and was feeling pretty despondent until I found that my first few across answers were one letter too long. I entered them without their last letter on a guess. I then discovered 30D to be D?AT?. The rubric had flagged a pretty obvious musical theme, so “DEATH and the MAIDEN” by FRANZ SCHUBERT appeared pretty easily (I played the string quartet with friends last week. The manuscript is pictured below.). 

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A pleasant puzzle from Charybdis – nothing too taxing.  I finished this in one sitting on the Saturday evening of publication.

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Each across answer produces a single clash with a down answer, the latter being the grid entry. The unentered letters are one definition of 7d, which itself cryptically indicates one item in each column, to be highlighted (63 cells).
 
Initially, pencilled-in answers don’t necessarily help that much with intersecting answers … but lots of clues could be solved cold, so once a clash has been identified, the remaining across letters are known to be part of the finished grid; and, when all but one of the letters in an across answer are confirmed, the remaining letter is known to give no additional help with the intersecting down answer.

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Once a year, on average, two like-minded friends (I and
A) and myself (K) meet for an
IKA weekend of crosswords and beer. This year we chose to meet
in my home town, Edinburgh and, coincidentally, it was my week to blog the
Inquisitor. Allowing for diversions, like “whose round is it?” and long,
rambling anecdotes, we polished off IQ1116 in just over an hour. Perhaps
I and A will find time to add their comments
later.

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