29 comments on “Inquisitor 1563: Just in Time by Poat”

1. In 8 D, I think it’s just Cen for central, otherwise we have two Ts?

   Kenmac, thanks for the blog -especially as there was so much involved in this great puzzle!

2. This was too hard for me, I’m afraid, so many thanks for the blog.

   AT 2d I had TAISCH for the original answer, which seems to fit the definition rather better.

3. A mind-boggling tour-de-force of grid construction/denouement, indeed. Thanks to S & B.
   I suspect my knowledge of the Doctor’s activities is sketchy as Kenmac’s – although you didn’t actually need to know what ‘Change, my dear’ meant to complete/submit the puzzle?
   Mr Go-ogle led me to the quotation ‘Change, my dear. And it seems not a moment too soon…’, as Colin Baker patronisingly man-splained in 1984 to yet another pert/impish/gamine female ‘assistant’…as he gained a long scarf and a foot in height, and lost about 20 years in age…
   Given the timing, this is presumably a reference that it was apparently ‘about time’ that we had a female Dr Who – and I presume the new Doctor has a suitably pert/impish/gamine young male assistant?…
   I understand the Beeb are already planning the next reincarnation as ‘Dr Hu’, with Star Trek’s George Takei coming out of retirement to tick the BAME, LGBQT and Saga boxes on their PC bingo card (;+>)

4. From some early across answers (ENUMERATION, GRANITE, ENTAILS and a few others) I made a good guess as to the way they should be ‘treated’, which turned out to be right, but I had the considerable task of filling the draft grid before I could think any more about an endgame!

   After getting most of the answers in three of the four quarters of the grid (all except the SE), I set about reconstructing what I had into the new grid, starting with the SW quarter. Tackling this extra dimension to the puzzle was an absolute delight, and right up my street. Unfortunately, however, completing that quarter was the only joy I managed to get from the endgame.

   As with my completed quarter, the process of forcing the right combination of valid words into the NW and NE quarters of the new grid was a moderately challenging task, but I knew how to do it and got quite a long way – until it proved to be ‘impossible’. I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere, but I didn’t know where, and I had not the time or the inclination to go back.

   Naturally, there was no point in looking for the TV quote – which wasn’t needed anyway except for colouring in.

   In spite of my unexpected and unexplained lack of success in the endgame, I thought the setter’s execution of the theme was an amazing achievement. I normally prefer shorter endgames than this, like Ifor’s the week before, but I would have persevered with this one if I’d had better luck.

   Thanks to Poat, and to kenmac for his blog.

   This is my third partially completed puzzle in the last four after a run of 11 consecutive completions or near-completions. I think I’m losing the knack!  It’s more the manner of these failures than the mere fact of them that has prompted me to take a rest from these puzzles and their associated blogs for a while, starting with the puzzle following this one.

5. 8d and 2d now fixed as per comments @1 and @2. A bit of blogger’s droop??

6. All good fun, and more solvable than it seemed at first after reading the preamble. I’m a bit of a Who fan, so recognised the quote straight off, and what it was getting at. The title and preamble had led to a nagging suspicion throughout that we were referencing the good Doctor, and so it was, much to my delight.

   @3 mc_rapper67 It was Tom Baker who had the scarf, not Colin. 🙂 He was lumbered with the most extraordinarily garish outfit ever. Very, very 80’s, let’s just say.

7. Thanks, Jon at #6 – I’ll get my (long, flowing) coat (and scarf) and go back hiding behind the sofa!…

8. Another impressive Inquisitor to follow last week’s but one I didn’t enjoy nearly as much. Partly this was due to the jumbling of the down clues which meant solving the across ones without much help from cross-checkers. Despite this the bottom half fell fairly quickly followed, after a bit more of a struggle, by the NW quadrant. The NE quadrant remained stubbornly unfilled before a I started the reconstruction in the kindly supplied extra grid – what luxury as the first grid was now a smudge of pencilled entries and rubbings out. I never did solve the original entry for 6d but it hardly mattered as it was clearly an anagram or “reallots”. No complaints about the cluing though as they were all fair and some of those in the stubborn NE were, in hindsight, easier than elsewhere.

   There were a few niggles though. I wasn’t sure I had completed the final grid correctly as the answers to 23d and 25d were, as far as I could see, a proper name and a surname. I thought this should have been indicated in the preamble. The “apposite TV quote” was indeed apposite, but it took a search on Google to find it and even then could be considered a bit obscure. I only found the one referenced by mc_rapper67 @3. It didn’t really matter though as it was fairly clear what was required although it was necessary to understand the relevance of the title. You may have guessed that I’m not particularly knowledgeable about Dr Who, not having watched it since our children were young over 30 years ago.

   Thanks to Poat for the challenge and to Kenmac for the blog and confirming that I did indeed have the correct solution at the end.

9. The mention of jumbles in a preamble has much the same effect on me as being told I need a tooth filled, and the toothache was exacerbated by some of the jumbled entries having ambiguities at the unchecked letters in the original grid. It all came together after stumbling upon RECONSTRUCT, and with extensive use of an anagram finder and wordsearch program I was able to complete the grid and find the quotation (which I had to look up as I had no idea what it meant).

   This is one of those puzzles where one can only admire the brilliance of construction. It must have taken hours, days or even weeks to find suitable anagrams that fitted together in such a way as to ensure that there were enough unique anagrams in the final grid to avoid ambiguity. It was very satisfying to fill in the last few entries of the final grid, and hats off to Poat for going the extra mile.

   My one reservation about this puzzle was that the theme seemed rather trivial after Ifor’s celebration of one of the greatest human achievements, especially considering the effort that the setter had put in. No doubt I’d better hire a bodyguard to protect myself from outraged Whovians!

   @4 Alan, please don’t give up. We’ve had some real toughies recently and if I understand correctly, you have only recently started doing these puzzles. In that light a run of 11 completions is very admirable and you shouldn’t be deterred by a few defeats. It  can happen to us all!

10. Alan B @4 (who may have already gone)

    I believe that the editor ranks the puzzles from Mary’s Little Lamb* to The Big Bad Wolf* with Miss Muffet’s Spider* and The Billy Goats’ Troll* in between; and tries to ensure that there is one “lamb”, one “wolf” and one or two “spiders” and one or two “trolls” in a five-week cycle. I’d say 1562 was a “troll” and 1563 was a “wolf”. It follows then that 1564 was, probably, a “lamb”. (but please – don’t discuss it here)
    So don’t be disheartened. I’ve enjoyed your commentary and would prefer to see it continue.

    *I think that the editor actually uses less glamorous rankings like 1, 2, 3, 4 but I prefer to stay in my world of fantasy – at least until they come to take me away!

11. cruciverbophile @9

    Regarding the ‘trivial’ theme of this crossword, of course I know exactly what you mean, but the choice of theme didn’t detract at all from my view of the quality of this puzzle. Ifor happened to choose a real-life theme that I much admired, as I and others reported at the time, and he also produced an excellent design around it, whereas in this puzzle the theme is purely incidental, existing only to make the quote relevant, and the ‘brilliant construction’ is indeed what one has to admire. It made for an unusually long and potentially rewarding endgame.

    Thank you for your sentiment, too. This is the puzzle I was most frustrated with (I nearly used another phrase) because it was eminently solvable and played to my strengths. I should have seen it through. I expect to be back before too long.

12. Howard @8

    I too had a minor quibble about the lack of indication of proper names.  As well as the two you identified, there is Integra (being in Chambers does not make it not a proper name!).

13. kenmac @10

    I appreciated your breakdown of what I suppose I should call puzzle strengths.  I prefer your textual descriptions to the editor’s numerical ones (if he indeed does use them!)

    Thank you for your other comment too.  I mustn’t now monopolise this thread, having just made two other responses, so I’m off!

14. I’m with cruciverbophile@9 on the jumbled entries. I have solved one or two in the past, but this one was too hard for me.

    There are some very tough puzzles which somehow keep forcing you to return to them; this wasn’t one of them – I found it rather easy to quit. Thanks for the blog as it was clearly an amazing piece of construction.

15. Incidentally, I have often wondered, when the answer is to be jumbled, what the point is of ‘solving’ a clue that is clearly an anagram (6d).

16. I’m afraid that the instruction to ‘”deduce how to treat the across entries” without any other help was far too close to “please read my mind” for me and I quit it.

17. I hasten to add that I had completed the first grid in fairly short time but once I’d spent just as long thinking about what i was supposed to deduce without any other help it was time to head to the recycling bin. Sorry.

18. bingy@16and 17.

    I feel a lot better after your post(s)

19. Before I say any more, I will firstly note what an astonishing grid construction this was, and worth the effort on its own just to appreciate that.

    However … if I’m honest I really didn’t enjoy the process of solving this one, and only kept at it out of bloody mindedness. I’m amazed at how casually kenmac and others talk about solving the down answers, which I found really frustrating, and spotting the unclued RECONSTRUCT. I thought some of the clues were unnecessarily difficult, given how little help there was from the crossing letters. Why not just clue 6d with the recognisable reallots, rather than the almost untraceable rostella? And I thought I’d checked every possible combination of THISCA in Chambers – must have read the definition of scaith about 10 times hoping I’d missed some subtle Scottish ghost reference. (The fact that ghaist is a Scottish word for ghost made me even less certain). Does rum really ‘brace’ frump? Sa sa? … Even after I’d ground out every last clue, I still couldn’t find any obvious word across the top and resorted to creating a spreadsheet which gave different random combinations for the possible letters, hoping I’d spot the word. I did eventually hit on reconstruct as a possibility, but even then it didn’t immediately leap out as an obvious PDM. I’d certainly considered anagrams as a likely way of treating the across answers, but it didn’t seem particularly obvious that they would all be anagramable (I just looked back at last week’s grid and would say that at a glance the number of anagrams that stand out is about the same) and was expecting to find something less opaque indicating what to do. Then the process of finding the anagrams came down to an exercise in using on-line anagram solvers and  word-finders, which I hate to do. Oh, and the quote at the end wasn’t even one I recognised and whilst no obsessive, I’ve certainly watched a fair bit of Dr Who in my time.

    But I will lastly note what an astonishing grid construction this was, and worth the effort on its own just to appreciate that!

20. Loved it. Another cracking IQ, with another grid construction which left me amazed. Although this one may have divided opinion a little, for me, the IQ sets a very high standard indeed. It is true that I enjoy some more than others, but it’s all relative. They are all great fun.

    The initial grid fill wasn’t too tricky, the SE corner being the most stubborn for me. My penny drop moment of what was going on was linking 1A with 36A when I twigged enumeration was an anagram of mountaineer. Thus started the endgame. I had reentered 1A in the new grid as constructer which sent my NE corner into a bit of a meltdown. After I spotted my mistake that corner started to fill. It also helped when I realised that the down answers’ unches remained unchanged, particularly useful on the tricky 6D.

    A great blog thanks kenmac and thanks to Poat for the challenge, the construction and not a hare in sight….

21. I’m more with OPatrick @19 on this one than many of the other commenters seem to be, though not so near his end of the spectrum. Yes – amazing grid construction, but no great spark for me.

    As kenmac said, 14a desperately wanted to be AYIN; unfortunately for me, I succumbed. So there I was merrily making anagrams of the across entries (working from the bottom up) until I hit AYIN – nothing doing there so I tried another approach: taking the instruction as being to RECONSTRUCT ENUMERATION, I spent ages trying to reorder the across answers and find intersecting down entries to fit – hopeless. After a couple of days I reverted to the anagrams (having ditched AYIN) and finished the puzzle off. My fault. But even had I not blundered, I don’t think I’d have found it quite that enjoyable. But thanks anyway, Poat.

    ken, 22a has a defn + double wordplay: ATONE = “Make up”, A TONE = “a character” + AT ONE = “around
    lunchtime” (as you say). Thanks for the blog.

22. Another good puzzle. Like an earlier commenter, I sort of guessed we’d be making anagrams of acrosses. Ironically it was Pasteurr/Pasture that made me think of anagrams and indeed the stubborn insistence this would be the case slowed me down at the end. I eventually scrapped it and started anew in the bottom left and, with some hairy words that turned out to be real I quite quickly had the whole bottom half and hence the My Dear on the diagonal. I had constructer (again wrong!!) in – 1A and Hose in for the other one so guessed the message and confirmed it was a quote. I did not go on to finish but it is all perfectly reasonable imho.

23. Clearly a ‘marmite’ puzzle.

    I was reminded of the programme today and that I’d meant to ask if anyone else had gone down the road of Only Fools and Horses for a while? There was half a Del Boy, half a Rodney, just over half a Grandad and, in my case, having penciled in A BAS (or rather BSAA) at 30d, half an (Uncle) Albert. Certainly wasn’t an obvious direction to go in, but seemed just slightly more than pure coincidence, given how little else I was seeing.

24. As O’Patrick @19 says – an amazing grid construction. However, the solve was not as enjoyable as we had hoped and the ‘end game’ fell a little flat as far as we were concerned – just too many anagrams!

    Thanks kenmac and Poat.

25. I was just thinking it’s a while since I had a chocolate delivery.

26. I might be missing something since I didn’t quite manage to finalise the grid, but 6dn seemed wilfully frustrating. It’s clear from the clue that it’s an anagram of REALLOTS, which gives you the letters so there’s no point at all actually finding the answer, which is an obscure non-Chambers word anyway. Why not just have a clue for REALLOTS in the first place?

27. Following Paul @26 – Rostella doesn’t even seem to be a unique answer to 6d. Talleros are old Eritrean money (according to Wikipedia) though possibly not paper money. I haven’t got a copy of Collins to check whether it is defined there. I also assumed the answer to be an anagram of reallots and left it at that.

28. I found this to be a tough yet enjoyable challenge, thanks Poat. It was a very satisfying feeling to see ‘CHANGE MY DEAR’ emerge after working through anagrams upwards from the bottom of the grid (although I must confess that the quote didn’t actually mean anything to me without looking it up).

    Anyone else wonder if the setter had attempted to fit ‘REGENERATE’ across the top? Or would that have been too much of a clue?

29. A mind blowing puzzle, in more ways than one. I finished this over two days (apart from SCHMEAR which I didn’t find in my dictionary) and after I put the puzzle down I felt as though I had been mentally beaten up.  I think I enjoyed it but at the moment I am still to mentally numbed to think anything!

    The construction of the grid is a wonder to behold.  A fabulous achievement and worth all the hard work to uncover.

    There is a Doctor Who poster on the bus stop near us showing the new female Doctor and the caption “Doctor Who – it’s about time”.  Fabulous!

    Thanks to kenmac and Poat.

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