Inquisitor 1402: Child’s Play by Ferret

27 comments on “Inquisitor 1402: Child’s Play by Ferret”

1. As you say, Hi, a stunning grid construction. And not the easiest to blog graphically.
   So thank you, and you as well Ferret. One of the best and most enjoyable puzzles in the year so far.

   I’m not usually keen on puzzles where you have to physically do something (like the Zorro puzzle for instance). But couldn’t resist the cutting and folding with this one.

   For me, even having done this, it wasn’t immediately obvious where to look. How far to open the doors?
   And, in the version I remember the last line was:’See the people’.

   But, brilliant.

2. Yes, a very enjoyable puzzle and an ingenious construction.

   I did make the last step rather more frustrating for myself than it should have been – like jonsurdy I remembered the last line of the rhyme differently and was looking for “all the people”, steadfastly ignoring the obvious answer staring us in the face. There are several potential ‘alls’ in the grid and I tried out a number of ingenious folds in an attempt to connect them with the ‘people’ in the middle. At one point I even wondered if there was a particularly cunning twist and I needed to shade in the picture of the crowd of Borussia Dortmund fans on the front of the Sport section, which was revealed when the grid was cut out.

   Thanks to Ferret for a highly satisfying (eventually) solving experience and to Hi for a sterling double shift.

3. I am a fan of Ferret’s puzzles and thought his Listener last year was one of the very best puzzles of the year. This too was excellent and showed again how he is prepared to put a lot of work into his grids. I also appreciated the extra effort he put in to make both misprints and corrections form messages.

   Wonderful, thank you Ferret.

4. After getting stuck with the bottom corners I spotted the rhyme’s second and third lines without cutting and folding and so reverse-engineered the answers.

   A very ingenious puzzle that must have taken the setter some time to put together, without compromising the difficulty of the clues, so well done and thanks, Ferret, Also, many thanks to Hi for the super blog.

   PS OPatrick@2, my German friend would tell me that Borussia Dortmund fans are unpious heathens so not likely to be found in church anyway !

5. One of those weeks where I almost completed the grid but had absolutely no idea what was going on. All four clues I failed to answer were misprint clues and I didn’t help myself by writing down the wrong letters for the misprint at 26ac. I didn’t have enough to work out either the nursery rhyme or the instructions.

6. Superb. After a rapid start across the top I hit a wall and left it for a couple of days. Got going again towards the end of the week and it all began to fall in to place. Of the approx. 15 Inquisitors I have managed to complete over the last couple of years, this is right up there with my favourites (I will always have a soft spot for Jambazi’s Cover Version which was my first complete). I was in awe when I made the folds and the full construction became clear. For the errors and corrected lines to make sentences and coherent clues is very clever indeed. I had to elbow Mrs Kippax awake to tell her about it.

   Thanks Ferret!

7. Great puzzle, without doubt, and ingeniously constructed. I gather that most of you sent in a cut out church. I considered doing that, but was able to fold lines and see preliminary and final parts of rhyme, without needing to cut it out. This then allowed me, as always, in the absence of a name and address section, to write my entrant details above the puzzle.

   Since there was nothing in either preamble or “instruction” that specified that church should be cut out, I hope that my entry, in the extremely unlikely event of its being drawn in the first three today, will not be summarily rejected.

   Did anyone else send in uncut ?

8. RE: Murray Glover @7.

   I did the same – worked from a photocopy and did the origami on that then filled and highlighted a non-creased, uncut version. I assumed that as highlighting was all that was specified then this would be ok. (But I did fall foul of the Zorro one…)

9. This was a superb example of an intricate puzzle that was nevertheless at the easier end of the spectrum. I managed to solve it fairly quickly, but there was much to admire on the way. The clues were as smooth as silk, and I liked the device of misprints giving two messages. I embarked on the endgame with 30d and 40a unsolved, so it was rather pleasing that the answers thereby duly emerged.
   My first guess at the rhyme when I started the puzzle was ‘The House that Jack Built’.
   I haven’t been tackling Inquisitors lately, having been on holiday; this was a delightful one to come back to. Thanks Ferret.

10. Absolutely brilliant. The construction was amazing and we would like to say a warm thank you to Ferret for the fun we had solving it. The PDM when we realised what was necessary at the end and the remainder of the rhyme was revealed, raised big smiles.

    It took a little while to deduce the ‘nursery rhyme’ because we’d never thought of it in this way. It was more a game of dexterity!

    Thanks (again) to Hi for the excellent blog. We really do appreciate all your efforts.

11. I thought this was an absolute gem – really great construction and idea. Also misprint and correction in definition giving two separate messages would have been tricky to achieve. I also sent my entry in uncut – as there was no instruction to cut the grid out surely those who did should be marked wrong 😉

12. Well, if this isn’t somewhere near the top of the ‘Best of 2015’ pile, I’ll eat my trilby/fedora!

    Brilliant stuff

13. To submit cut out or not (comments 7,8 and 11)? I doubt if it matters. I cut out a photocopy for the purposes of the blog, but as I have stopped sending the puzzles in (I buy my Prosecco – cheaper than large numbers of stamps – and I solve for the pleasure not for the competitive element), I didn’t have the dilemma to solve.

    Perhaps we could have a comment from our editor?

14. Encouraging to hear from other non-cutouters ! Thanks.

    But didn’t expect to get salt rubbed in those already painful old wounds … Yes, Kippax @8, I drew lines for Zorro instead of making scalpel slits, and yes, Gila @ 12, I put Trilby instead of Fedora.

    Vae victis, etc.

15. Hihoba @13 You are very sensible to buy your prosecco … I have been keeping details of Inquisitor winners since December 2009, and since then there have been no less than ten occasions when the same person was drawn as one of the three winners in consecutive puzzles, the last time being C Dardart of Ealing in both 1400 and 1401, (although mis-spelt as C Dardent of Ealing in 1401.)

    There were also three occasions when the same three names, IN THE SAME ORDER, came up as champagne winners in puzzles fairly close to each other..

    M.Grocott, H Martin,M Young in both 1124 and 1133
    A Ward, P Sansun, D&J Ward, in both 1138 and 1147
    DC Jones, A Keegan, D Caldicott in both 1150 and 1163

    I would welcome comments from some of our statistically competent solvers on these occurrences. As far as I am aware nothing like this has ever happened with Listener winners, where weekly entry postbag sizes can not be too dissimilar ?

16. Nothing too say other than to agree with other posters. Superb puzzle without being brain-9numbingly difficult. I love puzzles that involve some manipulation of the grid and this one ticked all the boxes

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

17. I loved this from start to finish, and was so impressed with the folding that I demonstrated it to my husband and children! Have just realised that I forgot to highlight “here are the people” in the puzzle I submitted *face palm*. It’s all about the joy of solving, rather than the winning anyway!

18. Wonderful puzzle. A real joy from start to finish.

    Murray @15 – statistically it is difficult to say much about the result of the prosecco raffle in retrospect. The problem is that having made a hypothesis by examining some evidence you can’t really use that same evidence to test if your hypotheses is true.

    Doing this you will always find evidence to support your hypothesis about a pattern in the data precisely because the hypothesis was chosen because that pattern was already there.

    Having chosen your hypothesis (winners appear in pairs for example) you need to examine the results of the next few Inquisitors and see if the pattern continues.

19. A charming puzzle – absolutely delightful!

    Had the valley folds & mountain folds slightly wrong at first, so missed the second & third lines of the rhyme initially, but a reread of the rubric set me on the right track.

    Two crackers from Ferret since the last vote – great stuff, and thanks as ever to Hi for the blog. (Haven’t heard much of …ba recently – everything OK?)

20. Hi @13 and others…

    While this Saturday’s solution gives both the steeple-shaped “end-view” and the “front” solution grid, it is only the latter that is required as a solution with the 16 central squares highlighted.

    Folded versions were not necessary!

    Cheers,

    John

21. Thanks PeeDee @18. I don’t think I am “making a hypothesis that winners appear in pairs”, simply commenting that, given an approximate weekly correct entry of 300, one might expect to be drawn about once in every hundred puzzles, and thus that twice in two is quite surprising.

    As for examining the results to see if patterns continue, I have been doing that for nearly 300 puzzles now … the consecutive winners were in : 1108/09, 1120/21, 1152/53, 1169/70 (the same person also won in 1335/37) 1304/05 (the same person also won in 1233/35), 1293/94, 1323/24, 1334/35, 1388/89, and 1400/01.

    Of course the same three names coming up, in the same order, not once, but three times, as I showed above, is way beyond any statistical likelihood ? It happened three times in 40 weeks over four and a half years ago, but never again since.

22. Hi Murray,

    I just chose “winners in pairs” as an example of something one might notice in the data, not a criticism of your comment.

    In a fair draw any outcome is equally likely. One should be equally staggered that any list of names comes up, as that list of names is very unlikely indeed, whatever it is. Of course some result trigger suspicion in peoples mind, intuitively some results feel more surprising than others. Statistical test are there to determine if there is indeed something going on or if this is just cognitive bias of the observer.

    From a statistical perspective it does not make much sense to talk about the likelihood of a particular outcome that has already been observed. It has already happened, so the chance of it happening is 1, a certainty. One can talk about the likelihood of it happening again in the future, and if it does then that may suggest that the outcome is indeed surprising.

    You could argue “what if I had not seen the data yet?”. If you had not seen the data it would make sense to talk about likelihood of you finding the three winners pattern in there. However if you had not seen the data then you would not be asking the question in the first place. The point I am making is that if you spot a pattern retrospectively, whatever it is, it does not make much sense to talk about what the likelihood of it happening was.

23. Re the debate above on multiple winners within a few weeks of each other, there has been quite a bit of statistical analysis of coincidences over the past few years. These tend to show that there are three categories of coincidence:

    one, that it has hidden causes (the balls in a lottery draw are of differing weights or there is a bias towrads picking out yellow envelopes in a postal draw NB NO ASSERTIONS HERE ON MY PART ! ) so are not really coincidences;

    two, cognitive biases tend to make people think that particular events are unusual and

    three, chance statistical events – given enough draws, time and people, the chances of say, a double- winner of national lottery are not as high as you might think.

    PeeDee@22 is saying that yes, someone has to win every week, that is a certainty. So the odds on that same person winning next time, assuming a fair and randon draw, will be 300 to one. However, over enough draws, you can be almost certain that that 300 to one chance event will occur sometime, and surprisingly often.

    And finally, I was lucky enough myself to win twice within a three-week period !

24. Thanks, PeeDee. I bow to your superior statistical and philosophical expertise ! I was speaking purely as a Clapham omnibus man, who has been worried for some time that my increasingly expensive weekly IQ stamp was, to mix a metaphor, being spent on a distinctly unlevel playing field. Others, including much missed Trevor C, and Mike Laws too, shared that worry.

    Over and out.

25. Great fun, much appreciated. This was the first time I went from Inquisitor to the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes to check I was on the right track. Alas, ODNR insists that the rhyme in question has only two lines (ending “people” and “steeple”), and it took me a while to regain confidence.

    After doing the origami part only in my head and highlighting appropriately, I got nervous and carried out actual physical foldings before sending the thing in. How could I be sure that elaborate fold-detection apparatus hadn’t been installed at Inquisitor HQ to weed out the unworthy? Big Nimrod Is Watching You.

26. Thank you Hi for the blog and thanks too for all the kind comments.

    The puzzle is called Child’s Play and I didn’t want it to be too difficult, so the decision to have misprints and corrections both spelling the required sentences was taken in order to make the solving process easier by reducing the number of non-normal clues.

    As Dave@25 says, the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes has this version of the rhyme but in two lines. Though how the authors knew it was two lines I’m not sure since the source comes from an oral tradition, and there are countless other examples of rhymes in the book where every other line rhymes. Anyway, I took the decision to refer to four lines both to simplify the preamble and so that HERE IS THE CHURCH appeared whilst solvers were looking at something vaguely church shaped, likewise HERE IS THE STEEPLE etc. Sorry, Dave@25, that the change caused consternation, it was meant to help!

    Ferret

27. Ferret@26 — apologies! I didn’t mean the ODNR observation as a carp; just an incidental report from the Path to Enlightenment. Assumed you’d picked up a four-line version from the Opies or some other source not to hand here. It would have been harder to put across as a two-liner, and I’m happy with the legit invocation of poetic licence on that front.

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