Inquisitor 1549: Heaven by Chalicea

15 comments on “Inquisitor 1549: Heaven by Chalicea”

1. Completing the grid and completing Blake’s vision took a lot less time than actually working out what thematic words had to be removed, and what the message actually was. 🙂 Still pretty straightforward overall, and thoroughly enjoyable. A nice change of pace.

2. As Jon says, thoroughly enjoyable.

   I too found that some words to be removed were easier to identify than others, and that became an interesting and entertaining part of the solve.  I got the completed phrase with two pairs of letters still to identify and had to go back to the clues to prove that they were indeed the correct letters.   I liked the theme very much, and the way it revealed itself – with the help of the phrase.

   The wording of part of the preamble was indeed a bit puzzling, and I thought in the end that it wasn’t in order to put us off but just the result of striving to be too succinct.  ‘on each side’ could easily have been written more clearly as ‘on each side of the removed word’.  (The doubt arises because ‘words’ in the second sentence would at first be taken to refer to the ‘words’ in the first sentence.)

   Thanks to duncanshiell and Chalicea.

3. Yes, a nice soothing solve after the long agony of the previous week! I always feel happier on the rare occasions when I don’t need to look anything up. Thanks all round.

   The “words on each side” bit seemed clear enough to me.

4. I enjoyed this too, especially when I realised it wasn’t related to Blake’s 7 (or Blake’s VI, as I at that point had it). Surprising how many thematic words I got without noticing they were all from the poem. I think it fell into place very nicely. Thanks to Chalicea and duncanshiell.

5. AlanB @2. You definitely made the right choice by choosing to this one in preference to Ifor. A fairly gentle one from Chaicea, which I enjoyed. I agree that the “each side” bit in the preamble was confusing, but once the penny had dropped, things started to make sense very quickly.

   BTW, Alan, I have added a belated comment further to yours two weeks ago which you may find helpful. See comment 16 for 27th June.

   Thanks to Chalicea and Duncan.

6. Thanks Chalicea for a fine puzzle once again. Relatively straightforward, although I had some trouble identifying all of the extra words and for a while had COMPLETE ____’S VISION which was tantalising but missing the crucial element! I’d failed to notice that the extra words were all from the poem – nice touch.

   Thanks to Duncan for the blog. It looks like there is a letter I missing in the grid at 5d.

7. DaveW @5
   Thanks for going to that trouble. I went back to the blog of two weeks ago and read your comment – much appreciated.
   Yes, I definitely made the right choice, although having completed this one in good time I went back to Ifor’s puzzle and had the sort of problems with it that I predicted – and more besides!
   On the whole, though, I am enjoying these experiences and hope to report on no. 1550 next week.

8. Excellent puzzle with the emphasis on entertainment rather than difficulty for its own sake. Chalicea never fails to deliver the goods, and I’m delighted that we get her puzzles relatively frequently.

   Was there any significance to the letters in the boxes reading SURE and CALM clockwise?

9. A bit on the easy side for me – I prefer something I can get my teeth into. But I appreciate that we need to cater for solvers with a range of experience, so that’s OK by me. Thanks to Chalicea & Duncan.

10. I’m surprised that nobody has yet mentioned the “these / those” options before “satanic mills”. Mrs T did this one solo while I grappled with the Listener puzzle and she originally went with “these”, but I was sure that when sung as a hymn, which is surely how most people encounter this poem, it is “those”. Call me old-fashioned (or a retired librarian), but rather than check online I looked at two authoritative printed sources, The BBC Hymn Book (1951) and The Penguin Book of Hymns (1989), and both give “those”, so we decided to amend our entry before posting. Since this thread began yesterday I have looked online and “these” crops up regularly. I have also found “these” in another book, JR Watson’s An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (OUP 2002), but unfortunately the annotations do not state whether this is the definitive version. Has anybody seen Blake’s manuscript? I wonder if both options will be allowed, but if “sure” and “calm” are significant it obviously has to be “these”.

    Another excellent puzzle from Chalicea, who regularly proves that they don’t have to be difficult to be fun. The use of key words from the poem as the extra words in the clues was inspired.

11. Re #10, the ODQ has “these”.

12. Terrier @10
    “The use of key words from the poem as the extra words in the clues was inspired.”
    I agree totally and meant to mention it in my earlier comment @2.

13. Many thanks to all, and, of course, especially to Duncan. I am truly honoured by all those warm comments. For Ifor and me, there is a touch of comedy in the frequent solver comparison of his really tough ones and my relatively easy ones as we do, almost always, test the ones the other sets. Our crosswords also frequently appear close to each other in a time sense as the editors use our different levels of difficulty for a fine balance. He doesn’t do ‘easy’ and I can’t do ‘tough’ but we have invariably approved of the other’s before solvers comment.

    The ‘these/those’ ambiguity almost caught me out. I had set the crossword with ‘those’ remembered from school hymn-singing but checked in the ODQ at the last minute and found ‘these’. The ODQ has let me down in the past (spelling of o’Keeffe where the ODQ lacks an F and my published crossword had the error) but it is, I believe, our official source with Chambers.

14. On the Wikipedia page for Blake’s hymn there is an image of Blake’s own manuscript, as used in the Preface to his book on Milton.  The hazy image there links directly to a sharp image on its own Wiki page, from which you can see that ‘these’ is clearly written.  If you accept this as Blake’s handiwork then ‘these’ is correct.

    I found Chalicea’s comments illuminating.  I cannot fail to have noticed how the reporting of these puzzles nearly always includes a comment on how ‘tough’ a puzzle was (or not), rather like the ‘time taken’ for a puzzle is reported by most contributors on the Times for the Times forum.  I usually report only on the quality of my solving experience and (from my point of view) the quality of the puzzle – not usually on the level of challenge (although I’m sure I did so once on a puzzle by Schadenfeude).

    I tackled the Ifor and the Chalicea within a week of each other, and they are recent enough for me to remember my experiences of them: the Ifor was tough and the Chalicea was not!

15. Super puzzle.  Being able to build JERUSALEM among DARK SATANIC MILLS gave me  big smile when I twigged what was going on.  I am embarrassed to admit that I was another whole failed to spot the removed words were also from the poem.  I feel I am letting the setter down in these cases, their effort gets wasted on me.

    Thanks to all.

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