Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

"The Listener, IQ, and Azed assume solvers have a copy of Chambers."

I don't know what the Listener and Azed assume, but there is nothing printed in the i newspaper to say that Inquisitor solvers are expected to have a copy of Chambers. How are readers expected to know? I certainly didn't until I started asking about it on Fifteensquared and this forum.

And it's not like entering a Scrabble tournament. When you enter something like that you're given a copy of the competition rules. The Inquisitor is published in the i newspaper every Saturday, which anyone can pick up from their local newsagent. You don't have to submit an application or qualify for it.

I've managed to complete ten Inquisitors without a copy of Chambers, so it clearly can't be essential. Everything in Chambers is - or should be - available in some other reference work. If compilers are sourcing material from Chambers that isn't available in any other reference work, that can only be because either Chambers is in error, or they've misunderstood what it says. Which appears to be the case here.

The text that I quoted about Chambers/ODE was published alongside an Inquisitor puzzle; similar reminders are periodically issued. Listener, EV, Azed and Mephisto puzzles all explicitly state either that Chambers is recommended or that it is the primary reference. A dictionary isn't essential, of course, but if you're going to use one then Chambers generally makes for a more satisfying solve because (inter alia) the wording in clues will often precisely match that given in Chambers, the abbreviations that appear in the above puzzles are drawn from Chambers, and if the word or phrase you're looking for isn't in Chambers then you know that you've gone wrong.

For the record, I certainly don't consider that 'cloudy' is a valid indication of 'cirrate', and personally I would have investigated the word further before writing a clue for it - a dictionary is not a work from which inferences can safely be drawn. However, I don't see it as a cause for outrage, rather a 'shrug and move on' response. There are (in my view) many more basic and frequently-repeated types of clueing error that could be targeted for extirpation. I'll shut up now.

I agree Spoffy. Life's too short!