Inquisitor 1658: More Than One Problem by Ifor

19 comments on “Inquisitor 1658: More Than One Problem by Ifor”

1. Pretty tricky as you say, but doable. I had no idea why NARKS was the condition at the bottom of the grid, but BENDS was pretty clear and the word ladder was only ever going to lead to one entry.

2. Ifor’s puzzles are never easy and this was no exception. FOI was 4D where I erroneously amended the clue to “Rat tint” and entered CANARY (double definition). I continued steadily to complete (correctly) just over half the grid and then came to a grinding halt, with no inklings of the “problems”. Eventually, my first PDM!: 43A was (SES)SPOOL, later found to be S(ESS)POOL. The bottom two rows then fell fairly quickly and finding the theme word was PDM2. The top half remained sparse until PDM3, 12A: ANKLE with a space, so clearly my 4D was wrong. PDM4 was finding that the spaces also affected some down answers. Having pretty well completed the grid, PDM5 was finding and interpreting the catchphrase: so loss of CONCIOUSNESS at the bottom of the sea and BUBBLES in the blood on rising to the surface. PDM6 was rapidly spotting the BENDS and the NARKS, the latter being confirmed by Chambers. I then wasted too much time on the internet looking for diver’s jargon for the gradual transitions before the final PDM, the wonderful Word Ladder jumped out at me – how had I not seen it sooner?

   A terrific puzzle. Quite hard but with PDM nuggets throughout, no internet needed and a finish which brought a smile to my face. Another one to please Murray Glover, a welcome returnee to this site. There were some wickedly misleading clues which were easy once the correct parsing was spotted, 5A being a good example. I had trouble with 42A which had to be (SN)ARK but I did not understand the definition and 36D where I got the definition but not the Frasier’s focus bit (thanks, Hihoba for explaining)

   Thanks to Ifor for a great puzzle and to Hihoba for a thorough blog

3. I found the grid fill frustratingly hard and the endgame took me even longer. It was straightforward enough to find NARKS and BENDS, but  the remaining 15 cells eluded me for ages. I was looking for a variant of “decompression” going up the grid (it’s sort of there, if you spell it wrong).

   To be honest I enjoyed this retrospectively rather than when solving. I do have one query: if the gradual changes from NARKS are supposed to represent a safe ascent, wouldn’t you be pretty hacked off to get the bends when you came to the surface? No doubt I’ve missed something here.

4. @3 – your last point is precisely why this didn’t work for me. It’s hardly safe to move from getting the ‘narks’ to getting the ‘bends’ at the surface!

5. A pig of a gridfill, with the blank cells causing me all sorts of problems; I did eventually appreciate their significance.  I agree with you that the instructions were unnecessarily misleading in their reference to letters travelling up and down, but I suppose it was intended to be thematic, and to be fair the instructions (“safer transition”) immediately made me think of the bends.  Luckily I am also old enough to have heard of the catchphrase, which helped me solve some of the remaining down clues once it emerged.  Unfortunately I had never heard of the narks and I never understood the significance of the omitted letters in the bottom two rows.  I did finish the grid and saw the word ladder at which point (it was now Thursday!) I decided I had spent more than enough time on one puzzle.

6. Cruciverbophile #3. I agree entirely that the “gradual transition” from depth should have been to AVOID getting the bends. Again (apart from my other three quibbles about it) I find the rubric inadequate, though it didn’t stop me from solving the puzzle.

7. As with everyone else it seems, a three-pipe problem. Most of my wasted time was spent on finding the 15 letters to highlight after I’d spotted “bends” and “narks” but once the word-ladder was spotted it was obviously the solution! I’m still not convinced by the phrase “and safer”. Is this because a ladder is a safe way to climb?

   Old enough to have heard of ITMA but far too young to have heard it!

   Overall, an enjoyable diversion. Thanks to Ifor and Hi(hoba).

8. A DNF for me. In fact it was a HGS (hardly got started!) I found the clues tricky, especially the moved letters and it just felt too much like hard work.
   Well done George for persevering and doing your “duty” for our family of bloggers.

9. Re the blogger’s comment on symmetry, the words are symmetrically placed, but the symmetry is not obvious to the eye. The symmetry is a mirror symmetry around the horizontal axis formed by a line drawn through the middle of row seven.

   Like Cruciverbophile I spent ages looking for some variant of ‘decompression’ or the equivalent of ‘a slow ascent’. I thought a zig-zag path would be appropriate since that would lead to a gradual ascent.

   I see I’m not alone in thinking the endgame thematically unsatisfactory, as summed up by Bingybing @ #4

10. Bingy and Andy said it. I spotted Ramp and Tank, symmetrically placed, as two means of coming up safely and gradually, but the remaining 7 letters then had to be found and they went missing, obviously.

11. As usual I must offer thanks for a very thorough blog, and to those who commented thereafter.  I’ll try to address the quibbles:

    “Symmetry” is an open-ended term, but the preamble speaks of symmetrically-placed cells, not a symmetric grid, in line with Chambers’ “exact correspondence of parts either side of a straight line” as referred to by Andy.

    I’d suggest that “…within that clue” is pretty clear.  Up / down are of course thematic, and I agree ambiguous in terms of direction; whence the “11 of each”, without which I wouldn’t have used the terms.  And I’m comfortable with the few letter ambiguities: each permits a decent surface reading and none affects the key words in a statement verifiable in ODQ.

    The word ladder represents intermediate acclimatisation points sometimes provided for divers.  I’d hoped that the symmetry consideration (probably via spotting BENDS, which positions the perhaps less-well-known NARKS…) would significantly cut down the search.

    And do please take the trouble to glance at the published solution, which explains something not mentioned by anyone here or elsewhere – the apparently anodyne title.

    Ifor

12. I’m guessing that the title refers to DIVERS in both of its meanings.

    Maybe there are some famous divers in the the grid, “coming up for air”, but I couldn’t see any.

13. There’s also the 4xOs that were removed. Oxygen? Which is used in treatment as well.

14. Spot on with your comment at 12, Ylo; thanks for pointing it out. No named divers, famous or otherwise – there are limits to what can be accommodated within a grid.

15. I’ve always liked Ifor’s puzzles, which is why I really persevered with this one, even though it was slightly above my pay-grade. Solved the bottom two thirds, but the top third remained stubbornly unsolved, even though I had the ITMA quote. As always, in retrospect, I should have done better…

    Thanks to Ifor and Hihoba (busy week, hence late entry)

16. Another tough puzzle from Ifor, and I had to concede defeat once I’d filled in most of the grid and got the catchphrase etc,mainly because I couldn’t do any of the clues in the bottom two rows. Bit of a stumbling block that. I have nothing but admiration for the grid construction and the way the subject was tackled, but I don’t think I would have ever thought of a word ladder in the end game. Thanks for the challenge Ifor.

17. Am I alone in always having though that the word was DIVERSE. I would never have considered divers as being correct and, if I read it in a book or article, I would have assumed it was a misprint! I know, I know it’s in Chambers, but it shows you can reach an advanced age with some misconceptions. Anyway that is why I missed the meaning of the title, Ivor. Thank you for the puzzle and the comment.

18. Sorry IFor.

19. I had this down as “too hard to be enjoyable” – sorry Ifor, especially as I’m a big fan of your puzzles. And there’s no way I’d have found the word ladder by myself.
    Well done to Hi and others who did.

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