Inquisitor 1486: A Man, A Plan by Bics

12 comments on “Inquisitor 1486: A Man, A Plan by Bics”

1. Also, A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL – PANAMA is one of the most famous palindromes. Certainly my favourite.

   I really enjoyed this one. Thanks Bics, and, of course, Hihoba.

2. Wow Kenmac. If I’d known that I might have discovered Mr Gorgas earlier!

3. Like kenmac, I thought “Panama Canal” immediately on reading the title. My hopes of finishing were not high because, being at the UK national science fiction convention (always held over the Easter weekend), I didn’t have Chambers to hand. But worried away at it in odd moments and was rewarded by the sight of YELLOW FEVER over the cornflakes on Sunday morning. Then ho for the mobile phone to Google this and the canal, leading straight to GORGAS …

   There seemed to be enough gentle clues (e.g. FOOLSCAP, CAROUSALS and OLD-GROWTH around the edge) to ease us in. Several of the tougher words like ANELACE and PROLLER I remembered from past crosswords; BARDO I’d first met in a metaphysical SF novel by Ian Watson, who was at the convention, and GOFFER in a Call My Bluff game at an SF writer’s workshop, while I used a MIMEO for many years of fanzine publishing — so maybe Eastercon was after all a good place for me to tackle this one.

   Many thanks to Bics and Hihoba.

4. I knew the palindromic Panama Canal connection, and found the rest falling into place fairly easily, in spite of some rather arcane words. My only temporary hold-up was pencilling in RONEO for MIMEO Having originally thought it would be de Lesseps to find, Gorgas came up easily on Google. This puzzle was a huge relief, since I had failed to complete the three previous IQs, some of which had apparently been childs’ play to regulars on this site.

   I knew that I was going to need a yellow fever injection before going out to the Gold Coast for the second half of my National Service in 1953, and my fellow squaddies cruelly told me it was going to be a very painful spinal injection. Luckily it was not.

   Incidentally, I have reliable information that Bics is not a “he”, Hihoba, but a duo, with the last two letters, reversed, being the initials of a well-loved lady setter !

5. The clues were quite difficult, but fell eventually. The man himself took a little more finding, but the problem and cause were more forthcoming. Enjoyable, and on the gentle side overall I thought, with the lack of a mind-bending end-game making up for the harder grid fill.

6. I didn’t zoom through this one, but it certainly wasn’t a plod either. I’m another who’s been aware of the palindrome for decades. For some reason it took me an age to see YELLOW FEVER, then the two copies of AEDES were quickly spotted. Even so, William GORGAS was a bit difficult for me to find … Carlos Finlay and Walter Reed seemed to come up among other possible contenders.

   BTW: with reference to Murray Glover @4, I believe that BICS is Chalicea + Shark.

7. Was there any relevance to the pattern of the final grid? It looks like some kind of a symbol, with the removed cells in white and the Gorgas highlighted a different colour from the rest of the background. I’ve looked briefly, but I can’t see anything resembling this image.

   I agree about the ‘cruel and unusual’ words – obscurely clued obscurities are always frustrating.

8. Re OPatrick @7, I too wondered about the pattern in the final grid. It looks rather arrow-like to me!

9. RE Caran @8, I agree and an arrow is used to denote a vector, in this case the Aedes for the virus.!

   It is interesting how we all differ. After a few challenging IQs, I found it very easy to complete this grid. The wordplay seemed very straightforward in most cases and I just needed my Chambers to confirm the obscure answers. The endplay took longer than it should – the title rang a bell and I could kick myself for not googling it first. I then fell at the last fence – I spotted the across instance of Aedes, the spent ages looking for a different word, so the air was blue when I read Hi’s blog.

10. Dear Hihoba, I am sorry we gave you such a challenge and thank you to Murray Glover, above, for his kind words about the lady setter. Indeed, Holy Ghost, Bics is the two of us and the amusingly mixed comments about whether this was easy or difficult are possibly the result of a combination of one of the toughest setters (Shark is, of course, part of the Listener Ascot Gold Cup winning team Rood of a couple of years ago) and one of the gentler setters (with my prolific output turning up all over – I believe Hihoba has blogged them before and found them on the straightforward side). I thought ‘A Man, A Plan’ was a real give-away that would lead solvers immediately to Yellow Fever, the Aedes, and Gorgas – a real star in the history of Panama, but it was Shark, with his great ability to squeeze even more into a grid than my initial efforts, who added the second Aedes (blame him, Dave W for your blue air!) keeping all real words in the final grid. Our joint setting style is that I tend to set an initial set of clues then he tweaks and, of course, adds complexity and difficulty but I am often to blame for the lovely basic Scottish vocabulary that is obscure to people south of Watford. Sorry about that.
    Many thanks to Hihoba – you really are appreciated.

11. Thanks Bics, I enjoyed this. I wasn’t as bothered by the number of obscurities as some – I guess I’m still at the stage where many of the words in barred grids are obscure to me!
    An educational solve too: I’m happy to say that I previously knew practically zero about yellow fever or its origins. I also spent some time looking for FINLAY in the grid once I knew that I was after a 6-letter name. And the palindrome was new to me too.

12. I whizzed though this one and enjoyed it all the way. I was reminded very much of solving AZED, where obscure and Scottish is the norm. I didn’t find ADRIEL in the dictionary but it was obviously right, so no biggie. I enjoyed the A MAN A PLAN title too.

    Thanks all.

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