Inquisitor Review of the Year 2019-20

Tour de F__ce

Order has been restored. After 52 arduous legs – up mountains, into space, along rivers and across meadows – rolling along the road into the capital in the whatever-coloured jersey, is … Harribobs.

If you need reminding of his puzzle (and why not, it’s a thing of beauty), head to here. You’ll see that, among the comments, Terrier exhorted us to “[…] give him the POTY trophy now!”, adding that Tourist Information was “one of the best ever” and that the “…bottom line should read Tour de Force…” rather than TOUR DE FRANCE. All of which seems to sum up the comments nicely – and the voting, which was never in doubt. So congratulations, for the third time in four years, to Harribobs.

He will shortly once again be in possession of the Inquisitor Shield, making its way to Lancashire from its home for the last year in Kent, where it has been sitting proudly on eXternal’s mantelpiece. As he returns to his own familiar role as runner-up, he can console himself that his own puzzle “Seize Them All” was a “runaway” second in the standings. The top two (two of the year’s six 3-star difficulty puzzles) between them attracted 26 votes, including the majority of the 3s and 2s awarded overall.

These two puzzles aside, voters were much more inclined than in previous years to sit on the fence. Halves and single points were very widely distributed, making the number-crunching very fiddly (and accounting in a large part for the lateness of this posting) so that a record 41 out of the year’s 52 puzzles received at least one vote. This is from an editor’s point of view quite gratifying – although there were still so many excellent puzzles that received no votes. In summary:

• 25 solvers voted – on Fifteensquared, via email or via Twitter (down on last year – interestingly, given that I had the feeling through the lockdowns etc more people were solving overall)
• 41 of this year’s 52 puzzles received at least one vote (this is significantly up on last year)
• the 6 three-star (harder) puzzles received a total of 32 votes, of which 26 were for the eventual top two puzzles
• the 6 one-star (easier) puzzles received a total of 12 votes (no votes last year)
• 2 of the 6 3-star puzzles were in the top 10 (the top two!)
• most voted-for puzzles (13 each): the top two
• most talked-about puzzles (40 comments each): It’s an Ill Wind by Harpy and Shattered by Chalicea
• only 8 of the 25 voters awarded a 3 (all of them to the winner), there were 20 2s

Thank you all for taking part once again. I wish everyone a safe, healthy and happier 2021, and hope that the Inquisitor puzzles continue to divert and distract.

John