Inquisitor 1430: Re?olution by Jixaur

23 comments on “Inquisitor 1430: Re?olution by Jixaur”

1. I found this extraordinarily tough, and hence maintain my argument from last week, though there’s no sense to it now (fortunately)!

   I battled through and got very close to finishing – eventually found Rockingham and the Stamp Act, but I had carelessly entered MISC at 11A and therefore had two incorrect clashes, which left me totally baffled by 17D and 32D as I’d assumed these couldn’t include clashes, having already accounted for all eight of them, and also meant I’d only found a couple of taxes, no taxation.

   I also can’t see how to represent Rockingham’s method of resolving clashes in the grid – is it something to do with the Declaratory Act?

   Thanks to Hi for resolving most of my remaining questions and I look forward to being enlightened on the final one. I’m not entirely sure that thanks is the word, but some form of commendation to Jixaur for setting what is certainly the most challenging IQ I’ve done for a long while.

2. As a 32D myself, i’m kicking myself that I didn’t get the answer to this clue. Or quite a few others. Is it just me, but I have found it hard to concentrate on the last few puzzles with the axe hanging over the IQ Perhaps subconsciously weaning myself off it. But thank you Hihoba for a blog of what I found to be a difficult theme/puzzle.

   Anyway, it will be interesting to see the IQ in its new home. I loved Nimrod’s pitch to the management on why it couldn’t be part of an app.

3. Thanks Hihoba
   I’m glad to see that I wasn’t the only one to struggle with the final instruction to “aptly represent in the grid Rockingham’s method of resolving clashes“. I don’t think it can be just omitting the letters of ‘taxation’ and ‘stamp duty’ because we had already been told to darken these cells.

   After spending as long searching as I did solving, all I could come up with was ‘PRESSURES’ in a block in the middle of the grid starting at 24, but if this was intended then I’ve no idea how to aptly represent it.

4. As a keen fan of pelota, I knew EUSKARA, but my battered 2011 Chambers did not give EUSCARA which the wordplay of it, and of the crossing AMELCORN demanded, even though the German AMELKORN was a possibility. So, grid completed, but then totally baffled by anagram, and what to do with clashes. I looked for biblical characters, such as KING MORACH, or Wild West characters like HANK GRICOM. And could find no clues to his/her identity from the clash letters. I had not twigged that they could be read in clue order … it would have been friendly to have said so in the preamble ? So after hours of frustration, I gave up.

   I have always been happy to spend anything up to three or four hours on Inquisitors and Listeners … but recently, two factors have made both puzzles much less fun to attempt. First, the frequent tedious requirement to solve nearly all clues, in order to find out, via “an instruction”, how(some)answers should be entered. Second, increasingly obscure end games, as in this case. I suppose that setters assume that nothing is too difficult for Google-users. I have my own private theory that endgames have got much tougher since the advent of Only Connect, which relies on lateral thought to make extraordinarily complex connections. We have seen and marvelled at great minds, like the Cluesmiths, beating the clock to find answers with only seconds to spare.

   But the majority of us less talented loyal solvers like to be able to enjoy and complete crosswords … no worries about the occasional stinker. But when the norm becomes not enjoying, and/or not completing, that loyal core might get increasingly disaffected ?

   I will be told that “nothing stays, everything flows”, and this is the way crosswords are evolving. In which case I am glad to have enjoyed them in the good old days.

5. I eventually managed to unravel this , except the ‘apt representation’ bit, but I did find the preamble confusing. Why not have the bit about the five pairs of letters and historical figure before the stuff about the clashes and make the point then that the two mutually exclusive ways are associated with the figure ?

   I wouldn’t want to make it easier but this would have cleared my own mental pathway and given the preamble a more logical structure in my view. I, like others, was further confused by the ‘apt representation’. I’m guessing this refers to resolution not revolution.
   But hey, I appreciate this must have been a difficult one to get right after being immersed in the setting of it, so let’s cut the setters some slack here and so, many thanks to them both, I did enjoy it and to Hihoba for the really good blog.

6. I tend to agree with Murray @4 to an extent. I really didn’t enjoy this one little bit, and the preamble gave absolutely no indication of lining the clashes up in order. Guesswork should be absolutely the last resort. Sorry to be grumpy but this puzzle really annoyed me.

7. Normally, if I can’t get an IQ endgame, I prefer to wait and be surprised (at how stupid I’ve been) by the solution in the paper on Saturday. This week I decided to come here and post a comment admitting defeat, not realising that I would be one of many.

   As Gaufrid, I don’t think that leaving the cells blank resolves the clashes as they’ve already been blocked out. Having said that, I did wonder whether the “then darken the cells involved” referred only to those where the clashes produced two non-words. Could the remaining clashes spell out something else to leave more real words? If they did, I missed it.

   I was also puzzled by the wording “solvers must aptly represent in, then write his name under, the grid” rather than the more natural “solvers must aptly represent in the grid, then write his name under it.”

   I look forward to enlightenment, either here or in the i on Saturday. Meanwhile, thanks to Hihoba for the blog, and Jixaur for the cliffhanger.

8. In retrospect, the problems in this one probably stem from when it was noticed that TAXATION was exactly the same length as STAMP ACT, with no common letters in order between them. Once it was decided to work that into the clashes, pretty much everything else that solvers have variously found wrong with this one follows. For starters, it made generating the clashes and real-word condition slightly harder. That led to a relaxing of the initial requirement that all clashes be at the beginnings or ends of words; to ensure then that, say, “s rum” wasn’t read as “srum”, it was decided to insert an instruction about shading or darkening cells so that the empty squares were seen unambiguously as blocks rather than just gaps (perhaps highlighting them would have done just as well?); the resulting preamble ended up being more than a little convoluted and difficult to make clear, despite everyone’s best efforts.

   Obviously, it was never my intent to (co-)create a puzzle that was too difficult, or even in the event apparently unfair to solvers. I dislike such puzzles myself. They seem to go against the ethos of crosswords that are, after all, meant to be solved. It’s therefore been something of a chastening experience reading all the negative feedback, or at least the almost universal troubles people have had with the final step. All that is required, anyway, is to leave the cells with clashes blank, which can be seen as a cryptic interpretation of Rockingham’s “repeal” (as in removal, or withdrawal) of the Stamp Act (and, by extension, a specific form of Taxation, so that all letters involved in the clashes are to be withdrawn from the grid).

   Back in 2013, after my first puzzle had been accepted/ published and I was searching for themes for future puzzles, and finding that 2015/ 2016 saw the 250th Anniversaries of an historically important piece of legislation, this logical leap (repeal -> remove letters of) occurred to me so quickly that I don’t think I would have had the slightest chance of ever appreciating that others might miss it. Other ideas got in the way, though, so this ended up gathering virtual dust for a while, and with the anniversary deadline approaching I asked Artix for some help in constructing the grid, along with a few conditions about what I was hoping to achieve (in particular, as I mentioned earlier, clashes only at either end of a word). A working grid came back, albeit with some duplicated words in the final grid, and I think it was this that led Artix to relax the location of clashes condition to give the final form of the puzzle that made it to the IQ.

   At about this point, I wanted to note these quotes from one of my emails at about the time:

   “My one query on grid currently is that the gap in middle of words is being treated as a block which I’m not 100% sure of…Rockingham repealed the Stamp Act in particular rather than taxation in general so there is maybe a difficulty in interpretation… perhaps care in the preamble would tidy this up so it’s probably OK.”

   The most irritating thing, then, about reading all the feedback is that I had actually seen it coming. Dammit.

9. On a separate note, I would still like to thank the editors at the IQ for accepting this one, the test-solvers for their comments, and Artix in particular for driving it towards completion. In particular, thanks to John Henderson for his contribution of the final wording of the “Star Trek” clue at 27dn; in the final editing the original clue for this had to be discarded, and although I provided Star Trek-related elements it was John who put them together in the final clue that has, I thought, a wonderful surface.

   I’m sorry this one has been negatively received. I hope solvers can appreciate the intent, at least.

10. I completed the grid, identified the clashes, and even resolved the anagram correctly into ROCKINGHAM (after an extensive foray looking for KINGs), but had no idea how to then complete the puzzle. The trouble for me was that I interpreted the preamble as meaning that each resolution of a clash should result in two non-words, i.e. 16 non-words altogether. I was supported in this misunderstanding by the idea that darkening the squares with clashes was too simple and that Jixaur was inviting us to find ways of resolving the clashes by having to change other squares as well so resulting in all the non-words. Somehow all of this would then lead to the representation required.

    Yes – I know all this sounds hideously complicated and just has to be wrong, but I just couldn’t see that the preamble could be interpreted in any other way. It all seems so obvious now, but I still maintain that my interpretation is plausible. If only Jixaur had said something like “each producing fourteen words and two non-words”.

    Thanks to Hihoba for revealing all and to Jixaur

11. Jaguar’s comments arrived while I was constructing my own missive @10. Thanks for the insight Jaguar. I’m just thankful that I can now look forward to future tussles with you and other setters in the i. Thanks to all who made this possible especially our editor John Henderson.

12. Thanks for the insight, Jaguar, and for mentioning the clue at 27dn with its superb surface reading… although it may pass you by if you’re not a Star Trek fan!

13. Thanks Jaguar, it takes a brave (wo-)man to stand up and admit (s-)he got it wrong. I actually did interpret rightly the stuff about the resolving the clashes in two ways, each to reveal two non-words, but I think Howard L@10 is right in that the instruction itself can be read in two ways !

    But please don’t beat yourself up too much, I think many most did get the anniversary through Rockingham and some of the clueing was really good, inc. 27D and the references in 22D and 25D to Rockingham’s antecedents. I also liked 29D….got me for a long time !

14. We really thought that the endgame had defeated us. We spent longer rereading the preamble and checking the grid than we did solving the puzzle but thought there was more to it than erasing the clashing letters. Once they had been darkened it did seem crazy to then erase them.

    Thanks Jaguar for coming on and explaining – much appreciated, as was the actual solve!

    Thanks Hihoba for another excellent blog.

    Thanks again to John for his part in keeping the IQ going.

15. A perfectly acceptable puzzle, albeit very much towards the tough end of the spectrum … until the endgame, that is. One man’s “apt” is another man’s “what on earth can he mean?” So I too spent a large fraction of total ‘solving’ time looking for something that wasn’t really there. And I would say that that is as much the doing of the editorial team as the setter(s), so no hard feelings, Jaguar.

    And thanks to Hi for the blog. (But I never did quite get the “?” in the title.)

    PS to Hi: I see you have a query in your parsing of 3d, namely “LIPS (cheek section?)”. This is LIP = cheek, i.e. insolence, + S(ection).

16. There’s enough been said to make most of my scribbles redundant. Like the bloggers (and others) I finished the grid and had the stamp act/taxation clash and the Rotheringham extras. I’d spent a long time looking for a King before Rotheringham landed.

    After a lot of research , I photocopied my grid and tried various strategies for the end game, including ‘stamping out’ all letters making up tax/act/taxation/representation, thinking there may be an appropriate representative image appear (like last year’s pumpkin)

    No joy. That final instruction was proving tricky.

    I then thought ‘darken’ may be an abstruse reference to dark molasses and there’s almost a spelling of molasses jumbled in the middle of the grid; Molasses being the tax that Rotheringham kept, though reduced from 3d to 1d. This created further staring at the 1st and 3rd D columns

    First IQ I haven’t entered for ages. I’d complete it without thinking I had

    Respect to Jaguar for coming on here to explain the background.

    And thanks to hihoba for the unenviable task of blogging this one. This was tough and the end game was frankly too ambiguous. Still, it’s all a learning experience.

17. My attempt to find the ‘apt representation’ involved ‘ROCKING HAM’, so I was looking for garbled types of ham in the grid. Since there seemed to be none, I settled for blacking out the clashing squares, but with no great confidence that was the required solution.

18. It’s very interesting to read all of the commentary on this puzzle (in which I had a hand, although the main credit must rest with Jaguar). Both of us had reservations about the way the final preamble was written – and how it might be misinterpreted – and that our original suggestion (of writing all of STAMP ACT / TAXATION / ROCKINGHAM below the grid) had been overruled (most probably because of space considerations). We were perhaps too focussed on what we could see ourselves, in that all new real words were produced when you treated the empty darkened cells as blocks (thus resolving the issue of the two non-real words earlier and hence somehow confirming that this way was the right end solution – in our minds, at least!). Sorry if it caused some solvers some angst; that was never the setters’ intention.
    Many thanks to Hi & Ho for their excellent blog and to Jaguar and John, of course.

19. Please help! How do I find today’s online version when the Independent’s search facility is staggeringly inept?

20. Spike @19
    Assuming that you are referring to today’s Inquisitor, this series is now published in the i newspaper which is no longer a part of the Independent group. So far as I am aware, it is not available on-line.

21. Like others, I found this very tough, especially the last two rows of the grid, where 36a and 32d held me up for ages. In fact I never really solved 32, but guessed the C of ACT must fall there. I then speculated along the lines that others have outlined, but in the end I decided to erase all the clashes and rely on the darkened cells to act as blocks so the grid still contained real words, though I did have my doubts and wondered if something else was intended.

    I thought the preamble was confusingly worded, especially the end of the last sentence, but let’s give credit where it’s due: the grid is superb – it’s almost perfectly Ximenean, and the few departures from that (ie entries with no unchecked letters) work in the solver’s favour; the clues were superb with some wonderful surfaces and very clever use of deception – 29d had me googling for famous Zowie’s. What a wonderful PDM when I saw the answer must be ARGOT checked Zowie in Chambers. My only minor clue quibble was the DBE with no exemplifier in 2d – a pet peeve of mine but I know many solvers aren’t bothered by it.

    To conclude, the positives vastly outweighed a few negatives.

22. So relieved that others also found it tough. Although I got ROCKINGHAM by fiddling with the letters until they made a plausible name, I bogged down at the bit about “producing two non-words” at each clash. The CLOSET/SABLE conflict could be resolved by picking one of the letters, but whichever you choose you got two real words; or by shoving them both in, but CLOSEST, CLOSETS and STABLE are all good words too. Wild flights of fantasy ensued — should we draw little Stamp Tax stamps in the clash cells, and what did they look like anyway? And so on.

    What a happy thing it was to buy my first i and find Inquisitor carrying on.

23. I am still trying to catch up on the inquistor, though at the moment I seem to be falling even further behind, not even managing one solve per week. There has ben a run of tough puzzles and by now my brain feels like it has been pummelled into jelly.

    Hopefully they will eventually get easier. This one just about killed me off. Thanks to all.

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