18 comments on “Inquisitor 1671: Double Take by Encota”

1. Many thanks for the explanation. I cracked a number of clues and felt the cartoony ambience, but got distracted and never finished. Having totally forgotten Tony the Tiger didn’t help!

2. Pretty tricky to complete, and an unclear instruction at the close I thought (not helped by Google insisting incorrectly that Doonesbury was 49 years old). If like me you wrote the grids in the wrong order, and your message read LUE ??MBERS TWO THEMED C, then any ambiguity was swiftly resolved. Satisfying to get it all complete, though I did come close to throwing in the towel.

3. You are not alone, kenmac.  Looking back at my copy, I see that I solved almost all the clues and made a start at filling the grids and then ground to a halt.  I could see that we were dealing with cartoons but I never identified either Doonesbury or Rupert, despite being familiar with both (although I would have had to research the artist responsible for Rupert).  There were just too many variables to deal with, meaning that the solution could only be obtained by a laborious trial and error process.

   Incidentally, “upfurl” is listed in Chambers under “up” but is undefined.  I share your reservations about that clue and the one for UPS.

4. Took a while to get going but there were just enough breadcrumbs laid out to eventually reach the end of the trial…helped by the distinct whiff of comics and cartoons. However I failed at the very last hurdle: I didn’t understand the message spelt out by the extra letters but thanks to the blog it all makes sense now and I am (figuratively) kicking myself. Thanks to setter and blogger. I notice we’re in the middle of a “Listen with others” takeover of IQ!

5. I finished it, obviously thanks to Google for the dates and Tourtel, wasn’t too sure if I enjoyed it or not, and am grateful for the parsing of Origin and Suave.

6. This came at a very busy time for me, and after one session, revealing some answers but little in the way of possible entry method, I abandoned ship with some relief. Checked back in today because I guessed it was going to be super clever (and cartoony).

7. I managed to get there in the end (a team effort alongside Terrier), and I’m glad that we persevered. It was clear from the clues that there would be a cartoon theme and as is usually the case with jigsaws, once a few clues are entered then things begin to rapidly slot into place. For me it made sense to work from the bottom up due to the shared ‘S’ in the bottom left corner. It then dawned that many of the letter variants would fill the central column and ‘….BEAR/BURY’ quickly appeared.

   I enjoyed several of the cartoon links in the clues – I needed help to understand Tony but smiled when I got it, and the same for SONIC.

   Thanks Encota. It must be so satisfying to find the shared dates and word lengths between TOURTEL/TRUDEAU and their creations.

8. I like cryptic jigsaws if I find that I can cold-solve most of the clues before I attempt to fit the pieces together, but that can be difficult if the thematic design puts further obstacles in the way of either solving the clues or doing the jigsaw.

   Solving 12 of the 16 Across clues was simply not enough in this case. If I had been able to get all of the 5-letter entries from that set of clues it would have been worth starting on the Down clues, but I was three short and decided to stop there and then. I now see that the theme would have been tough for me too.

   I have good memories of Encota’s previous puzzle last year (with Monty Python underlying the theme), and I positively look forward to the next one.

9. Thanks for the blog – a tough one to have to do – my experience of solving was similar to yours (or should I say your daughter?).  Most clues cold solved & then some tentative grid filling which surprisingly quickly resolved the grids  – helped in the order by the extra letters.

   But not helped by initially having OATH instead of AVER  – parsing works as Vow (OATH) = O (of) A (one) (I)TCH (yearning to go topless) with C as the extra letter – unusual to have 2 answers both fitting such a convoluted clue – but the fact that that gave me too many 4 letter down entries meant I fairly quickly identified the anomaly.

   One change to the blog – SONIC is simply SON +IC (integrated circuit) for Chip – it doesn’t work as an anagram.

10. shikasta @9
    Re: SONIC

    Oops, one that slipped through the net. I knew it at the time of solving but somehow keyed it wrongly.

    Fixed now – thanks

11. Yes, a slog, but satisfying when I’d got two completed panes and the instruction. But disappointed when I didn’t understand what to do with it. (There is no ambiguity about left & right once you have the message as Jon_S says @3.) I got the C & the L but as I didn’t notice the two anniversaries I didn’t know what to do with them, so the YEARS in each pane were left unadorned. Ah well.

    Thanks to setter & blogger for their noble efforts.

12. I agree with most of what has been said. A tough one with a sprinkling of cartoon references which gave a clear hint of the area of the theme. (I recall that Encota used the same ruse with his Monty Python puzzle). I was pleased to complete the grid eventually and the message but the last small step was just one step beyond (to quote Prince Buster). I considered CL as 150 but could not see what ambiguity this resolved – as stated, the grid order was obvious if the message was to make sense!

    A nice idea, ingeniously executed, and a challenge which I ultimately enjoyed. A pity the preamble was misleading.

    Thanks to Encota and to ken/elmac.

13. I also found this a slog in the early stages. Trial and error was my method for filling the grid too, and the obstacles to answer entry required making a number of bold assumptions. I ended up with the grids the wrong way round (of course!), and realised this from the swapped halves of the generated message rather than the CL which, I felt, was more of a final detail than a resolution. Perhaps some of the clueing could have been tighter for an entry method of this complexity – I’m thinking of the examples already mentioned above, such as the unnecessary “here”  in the clue for UPS. The revelation  of the theme was satisfying, so the effort was (I think) worth it.

14. I loved Rupert bear when I was about 6 then I loved Doonesbury when I was about 36. They both appeared in dreadful rags, one in UK and the other in Oz. But I challenge the assertion that there are 4 unclued entries.  Unless Doones is a word.

    Otherwise I loved it but needed a co solver. I didnt bother with the last  but being lazy but wish Mr Trudeau could do an election special

    Anyway for me it was a tale of two Ruperts.

15. Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear.

    It seems that most solvers either gave up or needed lots of extra help to complete this.

    Maybe Encota really didn’t want anyone to solve this one?

16. I don’t often comment on the IQ these days as I found I was spending most of the time repeating myself.

    I just thought I would pop in this week as a lone voice in the wilderness to say I thought this was great.  Not having any grid numbers is a bonus as far as I am concerned, and the similarities and apparent ambiguities in the two grids made the grid filling even more enjoyable.

17. Copmus @14

    The four unclued entries are TOURTEL, TRUDEAU, RUPERTBEAR and DOONESBURY?

18. Well I rather enjoyed this one. A bit of a change of style. Put off a little by the clues being unordered: I don’t normally like having to puzzle-fit all the answers by trial and error. But either SONIC (smile) or YEARS help; get both and a lot is locked down. One or two of the 3-letter answers also narrow things down.

    Was held up for a while by my incorrect solution to VOW: I had “leaver” for “one yearning to go”, which I was pleased with, but which gave me E not R.

    Thanks Encota, and thanks kenmac+

Comments are closed.