The Riddle of the Sphinx (Inside No. 9)

(Julie Andrews) and Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) in My Fair Lady. The relationship between Nina and Squires mirrors that of Doolittle and Higgins, while the episode references both the musical and the play on which it is based, Shaw's Pygmalion. On a stormy night, Nina lets herself in to a University of Cambridge room, where she is found by Professor Nigel Squires. He is holding a gun, but it is not loaded. Nina's boyfriend Simon is a fan of cryptic crosswords, she explains, but she is never able to help him. She has come to the rooms of Squires—a classicist who sets crosswords for Varsity as the Sphinx—to seek the answers to the next day's crossword. Squires sets about teaching Nina: "I teach wild creature without hospital building" results in ARCHITECTURE, which Simon studies. They turn to the clues for the next day, beginning to fill a large grid. Squires uses the name of the Sphinx because she would asphyxiate and consume those who failed to answer her riddle: she was, he says, "devious and deadly". Squires makes tea, as Nina looks at his trophies. A picture of Squires with his late wife draws her attention, and they discuss the cut-throat world of competitive crosswording. Nina has answered DOWNANDOUT and WRAP; Squires answers DESI and helps with TRENT. Squires asks about Simon, but catches Nina in a lie; her excuse is that she only wants to learn. Together, they deduce SWAMPLANDS, meaning "bog". Nina, though, suggests that it should be bogs, otherwise Squires would be cheating. Suddenly spluttering, Squires takes a seat, as Nina begins on the next clue. She now displays clear proficiency, answering ASPHYXIATION. Squires drops his cup, as Nina continues to fill in the crossword, including SOWERBERRY and KNOWITALL. Squires is apparently paralysed in his chair, watching. Nina is a marine biologist, and has acquired tetrodotoxin from a pufferfish, which causes paralysis and asphyxiation. Simon was actually Nina's brother, and is visible on the photo of Squires and his wife. Simon had reached a crosswording final only to be beaten by Squires after the latter challenged that a u looked more like a v. Depressed by the defeat, Simon had killed himself. Squires, to Nina's shock, is unharmed. He leaps up to fill out NEUN and ASPS, revealing the nina ISWAPPEDCUPS within the crossword. As Nina induces vomiting, Squires makes a phone call. He had been warned by Dr Jacob Tyler, an old friend and Nina's supervisor. Squires places Nina—for whom paralysis is setting in—on a chair, and goes back to the crossword, filling out UNDERSLIP; asking about the underwear young women wear, he slides his hand up Nina's skirt and kisses her on the mouth. Nina is left alone until Tyler enters. He tells Charlotte—"Nina"—to hang on, before turning to the crossword. With Squires, he works out MYSTERYGUEST. Tyler reveals that he has no antidote for Charlotte, and will not call the emergency services. Instead, he wants Squires to eat Charlotte, as the Sphinx would. Tyler tells Squires that he cannot call the police, as the crossword displays premeditation: the KNOWITALL received a MYSTERYGUEST at number NEUN, resulting in ASPHYXIATION. Tyler reveals PUFFERFISH, predicting, with reference to crossword answers, that a DOWN AND OUT will find Charlotte wrapped in her UNDERSLIP in SWAMPLANDS, incriminating Squires. This is, Tyler says, his revenge. Tyler cuts from Charlotte's buttocks, frying a strip of her flesh on a stove. Squires tells of how he began an affair with Monica, Tyler's wife and mother of his twin children, destroying Tyler's career. Tyler hands Squires the flesh; he eats, fearing Charlotte will die. Tyler reveals that he hates cryptic crosswords, and how his son entered the Cambridge Crossword Competition, attempting to beat his mother's new husband: Squires. Squires realises that Charlotte is Tyler's daughter. Charlotte and Tyler sought revenge on Squires, but Tyler changed plans so Squires would include clues in the crossword. However, Simon's autopsy—Tyler explains—revealed that Simon and Charlotte were actually Squires's children, meaning Monica and Squires's relationship began earlier than he previously thought. Charlotte is past saving, and Tyler places a bullet on Squires's desk, reminding Squires of the principle of Chekhov's gun. Squires confirms that his middle name is Hector as he weeps over Charlotte, and Tyler circles something on the crossword. Charlotte is dead, and Squires loads the gun, placing it in his mouth. Blood splatters over the crossword and a second nina: RIPNHS. ==Production==

(pictured, 2003) co-wrote "The Riddle of the Sphinx" and stars as Dr Jacob Tyler The third series of Inside No. 9 was announced in October 2015, and heavily publicised in January 2016, at which time Alexandra Roach was named as a guest star in the series. The series began with the Christmas special "The Devil of Christmas" (December 2016) and continued with "The Bill" (February 2017), the latter of which was the first of a run of five episodes, of which "The Riddle of the Sphinx" was the second. The episode was first aired on 28 February 2017. It was shown on BBC Two at 10:00pm, clashing with first episode of the third series of Catastrophe, the acclaimed Channel 4 comedy. "The Riddle of the Sphinx" was written in the summer of 2015, one of the last of the series, and was filmed in December that year. Most of the episode was filmed in Langleybury, a country house in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, which had previous been used for the Inside No. 9 episodes "The Harrowing" and "Séance Time", as well as the house of Oscar Lomax in the Shearsmith and Pemberton television series Psychoville. The opening exterior shot was filmed in a court of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. "The Riddle of the Sphinx" was characterised by Pemberton as a thriller in the style of Anthony Shaffer's 1970 play Sleuth, Roach and Shearsmith had previously collaborated on the television programme Hunderby. Two doubles were used in the episode in place of Roach. One was used in the exterior shot at the start of the episode; a second was a "bottom double" seen towards the episode's close. Pemberton, again writing as Sphinx, went on to publish further cryptic crosswords in The Guardian. One appeared in 2018, during the airing of the fourth series of Inside No. 9. The puzzle worked independently of any references to Inside No. 9, but included "an extra layer for [Inside No. 9] viewers". A crossword written for a brief appearance in the BBC's Dracula was published in 2020, and Pemberton also published a crossword featuring a nina requesting points from Greg Davies as part of his appearance on series 17 of Taskmaster in 2023. (This was published months before the episode aired, allowing, in Pemberton's words, "some very clever people" to guess that he was appearing on the programme before it was officially announced.) A 2024 puzzle marked the end of Inside No. 9. ==Analysis==

with the three ninas highlighted: ISWAPPEDCUPS (red), RIPNHS (blue) and ONELEPUS (yellow) "The Riddle of the Sphinx" is less comedic than many episodes of Inside No. 9, According to Pemberton, "Because each episode is so wildly different there was nothing really linking them other than the fact they were all inside a Number Nine, I just thought it would be nice to have an object that you could hide and just have there on every set." ==Reception==

Critics responded very positively to "The Riddle of the Sphinx", which was variously called a "brilliant episode" of Inside No. 9, The episode was widely noted as both very dark, and very clever. Dessau characterised it as the cleverest episode of Inside No. 9, and the freelance journalist Dan Owen described it as "undoubtedly the most complex and surprising instalment of [Inside No. 9], favouring attention to detail and narrative precision"; similarly, Mellor called it "the most complicated tale Inside No. 9 has ever spun". The plot offered "much to admire" for crossword fans, but viewers' enjoyment, it was suggested, may depend on how much they enjoy crosswords. The latter half of the episode introduced a very wide array of twists; Owen speculated that the episode could lose viewers at the end due to its "minimal hand-holding", suggesting that there may have been too many twists. "If you missed just one line of dialogue", he explained, "it would've left you scrambling to understand exactly what's going on between the three characters". Nonetheless, the episode was, for Owen, "a writing masterclass", created with considerable skill, and with a plot that held together even when scrutinised. Mellor, similarly, praised the intelligence of the plot, provided one takes "on faith the unlikely notion that a mother and her new husband would have no contact with her children from a previous marriage, not even recognising them as adults". "From the lightning flashes that punctuate hints and story shifts to the wordplay and in-jokes peppered through the script", Mellor said, the episode is highly precise. Butler called the episode's ending one of Inside No. 9 darkest and most bizarre. Some, he suggested, "may have found it a bit too unpalatable", though he added that the plot and ironic humour suggested that viewers "can perhaps avoid taking it too seriously". Morales received particular praise for his attention to detail and foreshadowing of future events in the episode, with Mellor explaining that he and the writers continually draw our attention to the key props of the gun and the teacups. The camera follows Squires' gun to his desk drawer and we're kept aware of its presence thanks to Nina and Squires' "If I’d shot you, here in the dark/With an empty gun? Good luck" exchange. Nina is shown drinking from the poisoned cup one of two times she admiringly calls Squires "devious" (a hint at her true feelings about him) and once again when she emphasises the word "plan". While Squires is telling the story of the Sphinx and she seems to be gazing at the statue of it, she's actually looking at the photograph of her brother on display directly below. The actors' performances were also commended, with particular praise for Roach, who was characterised as "funny, likeable and endearingly crude as Nina, then captivating and clever when the charade drops". Patrick Mulkern, writing for RadioTimes.com, also praised the "zingy funny lines" in the earlier part of the episode, and Butler commended the "smart, gentle humour" offered by the contrast between Nina and Squires. ==References==