Inquisitor 1592: Clue Two IV by eXternal

22 comments on “Inquisitor 1592: Clue Two IV by eXternal”

1. A truly memorable PDM.

   All very confusing and it took me a long while to work out what was going on, but past episodes of the Clue Two series had given me high expectations and they were fully justified. I eventually got 7, giving me MAN clashing with PAC, and suddenly realised why the grid seemed so familiar and made sense of the short-cut reference and the rest of the rubric.

   Brilliant.

2. The Os are thematic because Pac-Man gobbles up discs as he goes.

3. Thanks for the short cut reference – we couldn’t see how things worked having guessed O as the necessary letter.

   Brilliant grid construction but glad we had access to google to uncover the missing characters. Thankfully PAC and MAN revealed themselves fairy early on during the solve.

   Thanks to eXternal for a great puzzle and Hihoba for another splendid blog – we do so love your animations.

4. The rubric sounded very familiar to me, and a few minutes in I had a theory that the theme would be Pac-Man, with him and his four ghost nemeses being the clashes. After getting the clue for PACKETED and realizing I would have to squeeze PAC into one square, I knew I was right. But what about the eight-letter message? The only one I could think of that would be relevant was GAME OVER. Eventually I was right again. This is not to say the puzzle was predictable, as it was still a fun, not-at-all-easy solve, trying to figure out where all the answers would wind up. Sometimes it’s a good feeling to be one step ahead of the setter. But only sometimes 🙂

5. Didn’t try to work out the optimal path, but managed to work out GAME OVER from the 16 possible letters.
   I enjoyed working out the paths of the solutions, and the symmetry proved very helpful.

6. Good fun after a slightly alarmed look at the preamble. Winding entries? Gulp. As it turns out they were perfectly gettable, so no concerns. As per NNI above I didn’t worry about the optimal path given how evident the solution was. I did have a little doubt at the close about whether the O’s should be erased from the grid, but decided the emphasis was on the “would” in “which would collect”. Love the animations above!

7. I don’t mind admitting that this was a DNF for me; I’d not tackled any of the previous entries in the series and found much of the preamble to be completely obscure. Nevertheless I filled nearly two thirds of the grid and solved CLYDE, but the name meant nothing to me. In the northwest corner I had PAC but got fixated on assuming it clashed with EGOISTS, giving PACISTS, which of course was meaningless. I can now see that it was in fact a very helpful hint, but I was never a Pac-Man fan and the names of the ghosts did not come to mind.

   Even with the help of your brilliant animation, I still don’t understand the shortcut, but clearly it doesn’t matter. Thanks to you and of course to the setter.

8. I didn’t recognise the blocked and barred grid pattern but I should have done. I never played Pac-Man, but I’m old enough to have seen it being played.

   After my first attempt at this puzzle I gave up, having managed to enter so few of my answers into the grid. Fortunately I came back to it to try and fit a few words into the top right of the grid, and INKY formed itself when I had to force both SQUEAKY and ONE-LINERS into the spaces. The problem I already had of trying to fit PACKETED into the top left instantly vanished because PAC went into the corner cell, and that gave away the Pac-Man theme. The remaining three thematic names helped with some sticky clues later on, as I hoped and expected they would. And as NNI said, the symmetry proved very helpful.

   The preamble was a puzzle in itself. We were not told that the clashes would be of multiple letters, but I suppose that was fair because we were not told otherwise. The long sentence beginning ‘In the final grid’, telling us how to collect the eight letters, was confusing at first: ‘each collection’ should, for clarity, have said ‘each collected letter’. I managed eventually to work out what ‘optimal’, ‘short-cut’ and ‘preceding or following’ meant. A clever and unusual design, I have to say.

   Only T and O occurred exactly 8 times, and having guessed GAME OVER early on I could see the thematic letter had to be O, and the 8-letter phrase was duly formed using an optimal path and a short-cut (from O to O).

   I didn’t discover what Clue Two IV meant, even after finding mumbers I to III from long ago.

   Thanks to eXternal for an ingenious and enjoyable puzzle and to HolyGhost for an excellent illustrated blog.

   Uklancs @2
   I thought ‘O’ was themtic because it occurs in GAME OVER, whereas ‘T’ does not. I hadn’t connected it to the game.

9. Puzzle of the year so far, for me. A big thank you to eXternal and to Hihoba for the brilliantly animated blog.

   After some time thinking that the clash in 1a must lead to a name involving TED (Play School?), I was fortunate enough to get PACMAN first and a wonderful PDM as the grid and blurb made sense. I almost got the optimal path right first time, writing the letter pairs in order revealed GAME VOER so it was clear what the message needed to be.

   I don’t think that I managed to solve the first Clue Two puzzle but have fond memories of II and III. I eagerly await Clue Two V!

10. Bertandjoyce @3 & Kippax @9: I am not Hihoba.

    bridgesong @7: The short-cut is in the middle row, where the path goes eastward beyond the rightmost column and reappears in the leftmost column (or vice versa).

    Alan B @8: Look up the second definition of clue in Chambers, which will lead you to “clew” …

11. I must admit to some apoplectic expostulations when, after a mighty struggle to get anything much into the grid at all, I realised this was about a flipping  computer game! I’ve never had the slightest interest in computer games, although Pac-Man is one of the very few games I have played; it provided an  alternative to revision when I was at university (one of my housemates had a ZX Spectrum, anyone remember those?).

    Still, I always enjoy a well-crafted puzzle and this was put together brilliantly. I’ll never know how setters manage to come up with something so intricate and elegant, even when they’re working as a team.

    I thought it was a shame that the one of the Os had to be used in the final phrase as well as I’d assumed that the letters would (notionally, at least) disappear from the grid. But that didn’t mar a very fine puzzle at all.

12. @10 Apologies HolyGhost! Great blog.

13. HolyGhost @10
    Thank you (re ‘clue’).  All was revealed – how appropriate.

14. Most impressive — all thanks to eXternal and HolyGhost. From playing Pac-Man long ago I remembered the name, the power-up discs, the short cut and that there were four ghosts. But I’d never known they had names, which was a definite obstacle. Who or what was PINKY? That information, I told myself, was sufficiently arcane that I could use Google/Wikipedia without guilt. With the videogame maze identified, GAME OVER immediately came to mind as the most likely “conclusion”, but it took a lot longer to locate all the Os and confirm this.

15. I really enjoyed this.  The instructions were intriguing and gave a great PDM when Wikipedia helped me out with the mysterious names that were appearing in cells my grid.  I have never played PAC-MAN but I have seen enough other people play to get the feel of it.  Well done eXternal!

    Thanks to HG for the blog.

    Would someone please explain “Clue Two” for me?  I get that this is number IV of a series, but a series of what?

16. @15 See HG’s pointer to the secret of Clue Two at @10.

17. Thank you David @16, I understand now.

18. Great puzzle with a theme that’s no less ridiculous than the songs of Flanders and Swann or an episode of Fawlty Towers. Puzzle of the year so far for me.

19. I meant no more ridiculous!

20. Apologies from Joyce to HolyGhost!

21. Well, I thought this was rather special. Very inventive design of the grid and snaking entries to evoke a feel of a 1980s video game. My solving experience was similar to that of HolyGhost’s with Clyde dropping first, followed by Pac-Man. Then Google to complete the names of the other ghosts. A chuckle at the two word phrase which neatly summed up the experience. Although I haven’t played a video game since in my teens, that was back in the 80s, and it brought back some lovely memories of seaside arcades. I was more of a Defender man than Pac-Man though.

    Great crossword, my thanks to eXternal. And wonderfully blogged too thank you HolyGhost.

22. Thanks to commenters for comments and to HG for the blog. I thought I should pop in to show my appreciation of a blog which has gone above and beyond; HG has outanimated a certain other blogger and raised the bar high. Thanks for bringing the puzzle to life.

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