Inquisitor 1570: Go West, Young Man by Harribobs

30 comments on “Inquisitor 1570: Go West, Young Man by Harribobs”

1. And … it appeared two days after Thanksgiving. Take a look at clues 7 & 37.

   Great blog – thanks HiHoBa. And THANKS to Harribobs – keep ‘me coming.

2. We rattled through the first half of the puzzle fairly quickly and guessed about the reversal for some of the across clues. The second half went in fairly slowly. We then came to a full stop. We knew that Harribobs had set some stunners – Bert remembered the Australian outline in particular.

   We noticed that in the NE corner you could make MISSOURI but the letters weren’t contiguous so we started looking for other anagrams of states. Despite the strange arrangement of shaded cells we were completely stuck on using them.

   We were absolutely amazed when we realsed the error of our ways!

   Many thanks to Harribos and what a splendid blog HiHoBa.

3. Great blog and puzzle. Inquisitors are normally above my pay grade but I remembered the name Harribobs and i was given a hint of something special. i needed a but of collaborations not to mention a set of crayons.

   My only regret is how many GOP senate seats these western states have..

   Thanks

4. Thanks all around. Like everyone else I was much impressed! Harribobs’ generous setup with all those US references in the clues* brought a rapid PDM after the additional-letters instruction emerged, and I had a lot of fun with a spreadsheet for the map-colouring problem. Though the final grid looked a bit messy because some of my non-yellow highlighters are all dried up. Maybe I need a new set as a Christmas present to myself …

   *Still more could be highlighted above. 16D Upton Sinclair and 27D Hemingway are of course US authors, the Three Stooges (3D) are US comedians, and there’s also Idaho in 28D.

5. Hihoba, thanks for the great blog on a truly wonderful crossword. Isn’t 36 D, Ad Fin, the abbreviation, rather than 2 Down, Ann? Chambers seems to indicate this.

6. Glad everyone else so far was as enthused as I was. Thank you for pointing out still more Americanisms David L and Kenmac (#1 & #4). And you are quite right about the abbreviation Caran (#5). I had missed Thanksgiving Kenmac and, on my trip to New England in the Fall this year, learned two interesting facts about it. First, there is virtually no historical evidence that the Founding Fathers celebrated Thanksgiving and second that the native Americans treat it as a day of mourning!

7. I think that 3d “She’s” should be interpreted as “She has”; so H for husband in SHE should be replaced with “TOO G(ood)”, with no need for Curly to do double duty as an anagram indicator.

   Harribobs’ way with a grid is stupendous. Thanks to him and to Hihoba for the blog. (The last column at 18d could do with a tidy-up, Hi!)

8. This was one of the most rewarding of all 26 Inquisitors that I have attempted since I started this journey eight months ago. As you say, Hihoba, the grid construction is amazing.

   At one point I was prepared to write a sob story about four intractable clues and an unfulfilled theme, but the puzzle had gone very well up to that point, and I tried one more time to make sense of the message with four of its letters missing, hoping that the theme would emerge and help me solve the remaining clues. I also did myself a favour by reading about ‘Go West, Young Man’ in Wikipedia.

   I managed to form a four-word message that made some sense. With that in mind I stared at the grid, and that’s when names of US states started to became visible in groups of cells in the lower half.

   I soon realised that all the white cells were destined to take part in the resolution of this theme. When I wrote down the names of all the western states (17 of them) that I could see taking shape in the grid, they added up to 128 letters, the exact number of white cells. It was then only a matter of delineating them all and shading them appropriately. That also had the desired effect of forcing in the missing letters of the four unsolved clues in the top left and bottom right.

   The clever placement of the 17 names is worthy of the highest praise, especially considering the inconvenient and inescapable fact that the areas of the actual States are not in proportion to the lengths of their names. (Look at tiny Texas!) The use of US spellings in the message (‘neighbors’ and ‘colors’) was a neat touch.

   Many thanks to Harribobs and Hihoba.

9. I agree with your interpretation of 3d John Lowe (#7). I have corrected the grids, I had misplaced the A and I of ORDAIN (NAIDRO instead of NIADRO). I hope that is what you meant.

10. What an incredible grid. How does he, she or they do it? It took far too long for me to realise that I should be looking at the white squares for the end game, but finally, while looking at the shaded perimeter squares for the umpteenth time, I became aware that the constituent letters for California all appeared in the SW corner of the unshaded squares. A quick look at the other corners seemed to confirm the construction and I felt I had the puzzle solved. Remembering my less than generous verdict of a “hard slog” for IQ1526 I then put the crossword to one side only to return to it a couple of days later. And a good thing I did too. It wasn’t a hard slog and in identifying the states I found two wrong entries, both of which, not surprisingly, I couldn’t parse. For 44a across I had ZOMA (AMOZ in reverse) and for 45a the English spelling SEMITISE. I thought that the first was an abbreviation for Amazon which could just about be equated to the salesman in the clue, but was always uncomfortable with it as I had already identified AD FIN as the abbreviation mentioned in the preamble. It also meant I had eleven entries entered in reverse. I should also have twigged the American spelling of 45a given the theme of the crossword. I got there in the end though and, in doing so, verified the veracity of the four-colour map theorem, but only at the second attempt.

    Thanks to Harribobs for an amazing puzzle and to Hihoba for the blog

     

11. Some solvers (including me) felt that Harribobs’s last puzzle, Inner Turmoil, had such a fiddly and complicated endgame that the enjoyment factor was missing, despite its amazing construction. Quite the opposite here – this was also an incredible feat of construction but the difference is that the solver didn’t have to surmount all sorts of obstacles to appreciate it. The result being a big WOW!

    I don’t possess a set of crayons, and as I don’t submit solutions I didn’t bother to get one for the colouring (or coloring). I did however make sure to establish exactly where each state appeared.

    Is there any significance to the colour required for each state? From the preamble I assume not.

     

12. Hi (#9) – The tidying at 18d I referred to is just the emboldening of the extra B, showing here as “B/strong>” and making the last column wider than need be – a missing “<” perhaps. I’m glad I made you find an error I hadn’t spotted, though.

13. Yep, one of the best, truly impressive. Though I was concerned I might not have enough different colour (or color?) highlighters. 🙂

14. Jon @13

    Howard (@10) mentioned the four colour map theorem, which informs us that four colours (or colors) are sufficient for colouring in this map or any map.

15. John Lowe at #12. I have corrected the problem (it was at 18A, which is why I hadn’t spotted it.)

    Re the colors for the grid, cruciverbophile (#11),  I don’t think there is any significance in which colours to use.

    Jon (#13), there is a well known topological theorem that four colours are sufficient to colour any map without two areas with adjacent edges having the same colour, so I used four, while the example map, printed in the text, uses five!

16. I completely agree with the comments above – this is one of the most impressive puzzles I have ever encountered in 4 or so years of doing both the IQ and the Listener. It’s sort of implied by the colours but to me it looks like the border properties of the states is also preserved with e. Gm the texas section only bordering those that the state of texas actually borders. A remarkable feat indeed!

17. A puzzle of two halves for me – a relatively straightforward grid-fill and a return the following afternoon with a slowly dawning realisation that I had to shade ALL the white areas. What a feat, Harribobs! It has to be admired.

    Hihoba: thanks for the blog, but I don’t think the As in Colorado and Nebraska are interchangeable if you want to respect state borders – were you to exchange them then Nebraska & Wyoming would no longer have a common border but Colorado & South Dakota would. (Similar considerations mean that the A in Utah has to be as you have it, rather than in the cell where 29a starts.)

    Also the four colo(u)r theorem is good for planes, spheres, cylinders, etc., but not for a torus (doughnut) where the appropriate number is seven. (See also #4131 in The Listener.) And in an idle moment I discovered that a Möbius strip requires six colors – I hope that hasn’t spoilt the fun for Harribobs to create another wonder for us.

18. A fabulous puzzle!  At first I was a bit so-so about the end-game as I started off looking for abbreviations.  When I realised the full names of each state were included in the correct geographical position I was floored.  Bravo!  For me the title and the spellings of color and neighbor gave the game away early on: I was looking for states in the puzzle everywhere.

    I made a complete mess of my grid attempting to get the colouring right but as I don’t send the puzzles in it didn’t matter.  Hats off to anyone who coloured each square correctly first time.

     

    Thanks to Hihoba and Harribobs.

19. Astonishing. I convinced myself that this was going to be based on The Grapes of Wrath and would involve tracing a journey from Oklahoma across neighbouring states to California. But as I began to colour them in, more and more states revealed themselves and the full genius of the grid was clear. Hats off, Harribobs!

    Thanks Hihoba for the blog.

20. After solving I always wonder how setters do it so often and so well (and I know there’s software out there now to help them), but this one takes the cake for gridfilling. Must have taken ages. Fab-u-lous.

21. A(nother) marvellous feat of construction. Excellent work, Harribobs. Brilliant work. I’d love to see a blog on how this was done. Many thanks to Hihoba too for the blog.

    That trophy’s probably not going anywhere, is it?!

22. I’ve just looked back at the previous Harribobs puzzles, and have to admit that I gave up on all of them. But not this time. Spotted what was required with Washington in the NW and North Dakota in the NE. I had several clues still to solve at this point, but knowing all the letters in the vicinity helped me complete the grid. I only had 4 highlighted, and the blue one was too dark and completely hid the letters. Not that it mattered as I don’t send in an entry.

23. Monumentally good.

24. Jaw dropping and beyond credibility.

    As the pennies started to drop so did my language control.

    Best puzzle of the year for me, including Listeners and EVs I’ve done.

25. Stunning achievement

    But enough about my colour scheme, hats off to Harribobs for a brilliant puzzle. No idea how the hell he did it.

26. I don’t attempt the Inquisitor, but someone who does tipped me off about this, so I came here to gawp. My jaw’s still sore from hitting the floor as it dropped!

    Btw, IRONICAL indeed that Upton Sinclair, once described by Time magazine as “a man with every gift except humor and silence”, should be “ordered to drop terrible puns”!

27. Thanks to everyone for the generous comments, and to Hihoba for the excellent blog.

    I was as surprised as anyone else that the grid worked out so neatly. I had expected that some internal filler cells would be needed for the states to fit together and for a grid fill to be found.

    All the hard work was done by the fabulous grid-filling software Qxw, available (free!) from quinapulus.com. A key feature of the software is the ability to select any group of cells and stipulate that they be filled by text from a special list. The text can optionally be jumbled – so that took care of all the state anagrams. All that was left for me to do was to build the grid a few states at a time, and with trial and error in the placement of bars, everything eventually fell into place.

28. Thanks, Harribobs, but I feel you’re being far too modest. Even with the help of grid-filling software, you’d have had a lot of work to do.  This was a truly great crossword – it was well-crafted but also great fun too (the two don’t always go together!).

29. Can only agree with the other comments. This was a truly astonishing feat of construction. How H managed this thing of beauty is beyond me. But safe to say I’ll be surprised (and delighted) if I ever see another of its calibre.

30. Almost a wonderful construction – however, there is in actuality a Colorado/Oklahoma border (as Hihoba’s map above clearly shows) and that border is not present in the grid. It’s a shame that Harribobs could get 32 of the 33 state borders into his grid, but not that one. Perhaps if he had added another column to his grid the added elbow room would have enabled a selection of words that would have made this puzzle perfect – there’s no symmetry to be spoiled.

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