Looking at the Inquisitor index, I see that this is Ploy’s sixth puzzle in the Inquisitor series.  I have been blogging Inquisitors about once a month since November 2007 but I haven’t blogged any of Ploy’s previous five.  I have also come across Ploy in the Magpie.  The Crossword Who’s Who on the Best for Puzzles website tells me that Ploy also sets for The Listener and Enigmatic Variations.  I will have solved Ploy’s puzzzles in The istener but Enigmatic Variations is not a series I have looked at.

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A fairly painless puzzle this week. The route from 1 to 38 [unclued] may be deduced from the letters that are ignored in the wordplay to 12 clues together with the other unclued across entries [28a and 37a]. A further companion is also unclued [10d]. The full title should be highlighted.
 
A mild ambiguity in the preamble: “letters that are ignored in the wordplay …” – is that letters that have been ignored by the setter, or should be ignored by the solver? But that is soon resolved (in favour of the former) as soon as one of the irregular clues has been solved. And I make it there are eleven such clues, in one of which two letters have been ignored – I coped.

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A reasonably straightforward rubric for a change: Two unclued entries must be thematically modified to give two others, and an appropriate word in a dozen down clues must be treated likewise before the clue can be solved. Twentyseven cells in the completed grid must be highlighted, to reveal a thinker plus two dates marking the start and finish of something with which he was famously associated.

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Struggled with this one Nimrod. Bit of a quiz if you ask me!

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A 2.5 km walk in the rain, back along the Rochdale Canal, to get the papers, and 4 km to rejoin the narrow boat – dedication. (I’m filling in for Duncan this week, and he’ll reciprocate in late July.)
 
Answers to six clues need two or more letters removing before entry (a real word); the rest have a misprinted definition. The removals spell out one erroneous version of a statement, the corrections spell out another. The unclued phrase across the middle describes the group associated with the correct version of the statement, and is cryptically indicated by the group’s common name.

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Not so hard this week, but enjoyable for all that. And a deft handling of the thematic elements, so thanks to Charybdis for this puzzle.
 
The entry at 25a & a jumbling of 1a together lead to the other unclued entries. A commercial association with 13d is illustrated by 7 letters to be highlighted. (I noted the minor asymmetry produced by the unclued 27d and 37d splitting the 6 cells that didn’t quite match 2d.)

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Wow, what a long, convoluted preamble:

This puzzle features eight pairs. Six thematic entries are anagrams of a pair member; six others are possible associations of the other member. Clues to these comprise a definition of one pair and a definition of a member of a different pair together with its association. Corrected single-letter definition misprints in 17 other clues spell out a 7th pair which cryptically suggests one member of the final pair, whose partner is the 13th thematic entry. This final pair is defined by a normally clued across answer which should be highlighted.

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Baffling rubric until the penny eventually dropped after four days of cogitation. This difficult crossword concerned a “meeting” between A Crosse and D Owen.

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This puzzle had a fairly long preamble: "In every clue but one, a letter must be removed from the definition part before solving.  In clue order, these spell out the beginning of a quotation by an author whose three initials appear regularly spaced in row nine.  Solvers must illustrate the remainder by

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Quite a lot going here, and a grade 4 workout. Five works by x to be discovered …
 
Original letters in down misprinted definitions {novel} spell out the first. Replacing x‘s initials with other letters (leaving real words) leads to the next two – to be highlighted. A continuous line drawn through a symbol in the grid cryptically indicates the fourth; and the unclued entries are loosely defined by the fifth. Phew!

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The rubric reads: In several cases the answers to across and down clues clash as to the presence or absence of a letter – lengths in brackets refer to the number of spaces in the grid. Solvers should choose one of two overall options for the final grid (even the theme can’t be in two places at once); either way every entry (allowing for spaces) is a real word or a proper noun. Most clues contain a word not needed for solving; initial and final letters of these words form a pair – in clue order, one letter in each pair contributes to something that isn’t a question, while the other identifies the theme. (No, you won’t need 1 across; trust me…)

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A relatively straightforward offering by Samuel, whose last puzzle in this series was on Christmas Eve 2011.

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This puzzle had quite a long preamble, as follows: ‘Initially the filled grid will contain seven consecutive empty cells.  One letter must be removed from the answers to 20 clues and the residue used to form a word or proper nouns for grid entry, in seven cases without rearrangement.  The removed letters provide an instruction.  All entries in the final grid are real words or names or phrases, including a well-known brand name.  Those experiencing difficulty may be rescued by 21 down’.

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Augeas’s second Inquisitor puzzle, so an appropriate title? And forgive me if I’m brief – on a week’s break for Easter, just outside Hay-on-Wye.
 
Four items have something in common, three of them being the unclued entries in the top, middle, and bottom rows; the remaining item is an anagram of (some of) the letters in shaded cells, the rest providing what is needed to complete the grid appropriately. All fairly clear, except for the slightly mysterious last part. (The final bit of the rubric was slightly garbled, but the paraphrase above is what was meant.)

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There’s a misprint in the definition in all clues. In clue order, they spell out a two part instruction, which will help us to identify a “running joke.” Once the grid’s complete, we have to transform the rows into background noise, in a suitably repetitious manner. Finally, we’ll find several instances of one particular letter already in place.

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