Inquisitor 1513: Alphaperimetrical Jigsaw by Nimrod

20 comments on “Inquisitor 1513: Alphaperimetrical Jigsaw by Nimrod”

1. Thanks Duncan and to Nimrod for a fun puzzle. My first ever jigsaw solve! Upon seeing the setter and grid I figured that I would be in for an Inquisitor-free week but was encouraged by Terrier to give it a go as many of the clues weren’t too tricky. Importantly for me, the four longer ones were gettable and once I had three of those then I had a decent start. I also struggled with the endgame. I figured that the quote didn’t begin in the top left as that is often specified but also had to resort to googling a few words that I could guess around the perimeter.

   PS
   Duncan: the Entry for X is mixed up.

2. Kippax @ 1

   Thanks – that must have been clicking on the spellchecker offerings without paying proper attention. The W entry was wrong as well.

   Corrected now

3. Unusually easy for an IQ. I’m used to spending half the week on an IQ puzzle and still not manage to finish but I completed this in less same time to takes to solve some of the dailies. The grid was friendly in that it did not allow for multiple possibilities for answer placements. Having solved just one eleven letter and the two three letter clues it was clear how to get started.

   I had to get Wikipedia to tell me who or what Autolycus was but the instructions only state that I have to write in the words, not know what they mean! Very enjoyable,thank you Nimrod and Duncan.

4. Yes, this was a lot more straightforward than I was afraid it would be when I saw – a) Nimrod’s name at the top, and b) The fact that it was a jigsaw. The quote took a bit of tracking down, and I wasn’t sure precisely how it was supposed to relate to Araucaria. The rest though was as straightforward as Nimrod had promised on Twitter the previous day. 🙂

5. I still bear the scars from my battle with “Life After Death” so it was something of a relief that this wasn’t quite such an epic solve. It was still no pushover, and in any case mentioning that a Nimrod puzzle is easy is a bit like saying “can’t you hit me a bit harder?” to Mike Tyson. I spent far longer on the perimeter quotation than I should have done, considering that I know it, and I wonder if Nimrod deliberately put “considered” one square in from the top left to fool us into going down the “I consider…” route.

   One teensy point in the blog: you correctly give John Graham’s dates, then in the penultimate paragraph that he died last year.

   Thanks Nimrod and if you’re reading this, the puzzle may not have been your hardest but it was quite hard enough. Really. Honestly.

6. cruciverbophile@5

   Amended now – thanks

7. I don’t attempt the Inquisitor very often, but I was lured in by John’s tweet claiming it was an easier one than usual, and I think this is the first time I have ever finished it! Araucaria helped a little with finishing the jigsaw, and I agree with Duncan that the perimeter message was the hardest part, but eventually the “ill considered trifles” resurfaced and a bit of Googling resolved the rest, including the name of the character. The Winters Tale is unfamiliar to me but I did read Jeanette Winterson’s rewrite of it, so the character name should have been more familiar than it was. Still plenty of obscure words but at least they were all fairly clued.

   Thanks to Nimrod and Duncan.

8. I would have bet £1000 against this ever happening … an S-cubed (Single Session Solve) for a Nimrod, and a carte blanche at that. Unaware of the tweet.

   I assume Araucaria was an inspiration for the young Nimrod ?

   Held up for a bit by I (or A) CONSIDERED … as a possible start to the perimeter “self-description” … and also the hyphenated abbreviation T-REX being described as two words…T is hardly a word ?(Does anyone else have a five year old packet of Trex in their fridge, like we do ?) But a lucky guess at AUTOLYCUS unlocked it all, and a swift GSM followed.

   Fine puzzle.

9. Yes, a gentler puzzle from Nimrod which was a pleasure to complete before the weekend was over. Not being a soccerphile, I could not parse ARYL, although I knew it had to be correct: I suspected footballers but when I googled the three names, I got nowhere.

   Duncan,re the F clue: in the printed version of the puzzle, it is tip, not trip. So the tip of UGLY, i.e. U, is inserted in GIN.

   I saw John at the York S&B on Saturday and it appears that 29th October is an anniversary of his first meeting with the Reverend John Graham.

   Thanks to Duncan & John.

10. Re the F clue – after DaveW @9 – The clue actually says “(tip given in spirit)” not “(trip giving in spirit)”, so can be read as Dave suggests.

11. I loved the clue for Aryl, remembering that Leicester City’s triumph in the Premier League once obliged Gary Lineker to present Match of the Day topless (and trouserless).

    Thanks to Nimrod and Duncan.

12. I too started this with trepidation well aware of how tough Nimrod can be, but as others have said it was quite an easy grid to fill, and no less enjoyable for that. I am pretty sure that I have never come across a thematic crossword where every letter was used to start an entry, and that was quite an achievement I thought. I struggled for a while to find the quote, and I couldn’t see the connection to Araucaria, but reading the blog I see that just shows my own ignorance. Very enjoyable thanks.

13. I was a bit disappointed by this – probably from most other setters I’d have said it was a pleasant enough diversion, but I was looking forwards to a challenge and a long process of trying to piece it all together. It only took about three clues to work out where everything was going to go, so the jigsaw element barely impinged on the solving process. It did look almost like some of the answers could have been arranged in a different way, so I kept thinking (hoping) that there was some misdirection going on, but in the end the only real challenge was finding the phrase around the outside, which comfortably took as long as the rest of the solve combined. I eventually reached UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES as a likely option, and it rang a distant bell, but I couldn’t make the rest of the letters fit together to make anything sensible, so finally resorted to google. There were a few clues that put up brief resistance, but nothing like Nimrod’s trademark concentrated dastardness.

14. As someone who does watch Match of the Day fairly regularly (particularly as my team are doing very well at the moment; the clue is in my name) I’m kicking myself at entirely failing to work out the wordplay for ARYL 🙁

15. I too have a football inspired name and have more reason to watch MotD this season, but failed to see how ARYL worked.

    I don’t think anyone has mentioned that the Listener puzzle published the same day was a very tough jigsaw by Ifor, who did not provide answer lengths.

16. I really enjoyed everything about this solve apart from the quotation around the perimeter, which i failed to spot. It’s always hard when you have to get into the mind of the setter to guess something like that. I could see that it probably had “connected” in it, but I couldn’t see any connection to Araucaria, and it just seems a bit too obscure to me.

17. Thanks all round! As several have said, this was surprisingly gentle. I was lucky enough to crack DENSITOMETRY early on and to realize there was only one place for it to go, after which the T clues provided a nice next step. I even got the perimeter quotation and speaker from memory (though not the play it came from).

    FATIGUINGLY took ages to parse and I fell down completely on the wordplay for ARYL. But put it in anyway. My old Collins doesn’t have AAH in any form (not even as an alternative under AH or a phrase under OOH); that one, however, seemed a safe bet.

    All in all, a very happy solve.

18. OPatrick @13 – I had the same feelings that the grid fill was going far too smoothly and I was going to end up with one light left over, and then on reading the blog would discover I had missed the key piece of information and had filled in everything wrongly, upside down, back to front and had generally been suckered every which way.

19. I’m a bit late commenting as I’ve been away sailing for three days, but felt I must say how much I enjoyed the puzzle. I love alphabetical jigsaws and, though this wasn’t the most difficult ever, I found it satisfying as always. I found the quote quickly, knowing it from my youth as it was often quoted by my (very) late mother.I had also been to Winter’s Tale relatively recently at the Garrick in the Branagh Dench production, which was excellent. Silly plot, but terrific acting!!

    I was held up for quite a while by AAHED (no SOED and didn’t look in the right place in Collins) and MALI. It took me a long time to spot that I AM could be = “Nimrod is”!

    Thanks Duncan and Nimrod.

20. Still only my third solve of an inquisitor but enjoyed the puzzle even if it took into the second week to sort out the quote. Surprised at how similar my process solving went to Duncan’s albeit at quarter pace.

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