Inquisitor Review of the Year 2020-21

by

M- -OMPL-M-N– -O …

…eXtent, the team of eXternal and Serpent, whose excellent puzzle Character Assassination tops this year’s voting table. It was based on Mark Dunn’s “progressively lipogrammatic” novel Ella Minnow Pea, in which letters intermittently dropping from the pangram on a monument are banned from use on the isle of Nollop. While (comment #35) Mr Harding’s eleventh-hour attempt to award five points to the puzzle was disallowed, nobody can now disagree with his opinion that “if you literally run off to the shops to buy a book the moment you finish a puzzle, that’s a win”.

It was a close-run thing. Not until the tweeted and emailed votes were added did the order of the top three puzzles resolve itself. Yet to file an Inquisitor entitled “Bridesmaid”, eXternal tells me that, just this year, he can live with occupying his traditional spot in second place. Congratulations to Hedge-sparrow, whose illustration of a poppy ran him close – deservedly earning a place on the podium.

The overwhelming feeling when processing the numbers was that it was harder than ever to select a top three. 41 puzzles received points (same as last year, very gratifying from an editor’s point of view) and more voters than ever resorted to half-points. There were even written abstentions this year – six solvers actually wrote to say that it was impossible to choose favourites).

In summary:

  • 24 solvers voted – on Fifteensquared, via email or via Twitter (same as last year); there were 6 abstentions (on the grounds that choices were too difficult to make), 2 late votes (which wouldn’t have affected the medal winners) and one “spoiled paper” (see Mr Harding’s comment above)
  • 41 of this year’s 52 puzzles received at least one vote (the same as last year)
  • Many more halves, confirming how difficult the choices were
  • the 4 three-star (harder) puzzles received a total of 15 votes
  • the 4 one-star (easier) puzzles received a total of 7 votes
  • most voted-for puzzle (12) was Character Assassination; there were 9 votes each for the second and third in the standings
  • most talked-about puzzle was overwhelmingly Gila’s Title Sequence, mainly because it stimulated a conversation about fairness in the selection of themes (noted)
  • only two puzzles (Clue Two V and Heavy Metal Band) attracted a 3 score; there was one 2½ (Sign Up Here!) and only thirteen 2s

There are some changes in the tabulated standings this year. I’ve removed details regarding number of comments and number of votes for each puzzle. Also, after feedback from setters last year, I’ve only listed puzzles that totalled 2 points or more. If required, I’ll supply further details, to anyone in the former case – and to setters only in the latter.

Position No. Title with starred difficulty

(***tougher-*easier)

 Setter Pts
1 1726 Character Assassination** eXtent 14½
2 1692 Clue Two V** eXternal 12½
3 1725 Fieldwork** Hedge-sparrow 10
4 1691 Death Wish** Serpent 8
1721 Hole*** Nimrod
6 1679 Heavy Metal Band** Harribobs 7½
7 1689 Whodunnit** Vismut 7
1718 Epitaph** eXternal
9 1710 The Lord and the Lady** Ifor 6½
10 1690 Plain*** Nimrod 5½
11 1695 Sign Up Here!** Ploy 4
1707 Passing Thought* Nutmeg
13 1698 Spooky Manifestations** Kruger 3½
14 1686 Nearly Ten to Four** Eclogue 3
1705 All Rounder** Serpent
1714 Clouds*** Phi
1715 For Her Eyes Only** Artix
18 1697 Sold Down the River** Ifor 2½
1702 Heavenly Deductions** Dysart
1704 Ransomware** Eclogue
1709 Proper** Vismut
1711 Across the Board* Opsimath
23 1703 War and Peace** eXtent 2
1706 Defence** Chalicea

Qualification: 2pts and above

My usual thanks to everyone involved, together with good wishes, hopes and prayers for a healthy 2022.

John

 

11 comments on “Inquisitor Review of the Year 2020-21”

  1. I’m very happy to see an eXtent puzzle take the honours this year. Serpent and I have been collaborating on puzzles for several years now and it is good to see we’ve produced one which has been so enjoyable for solvers. My thanks to those who voted for Character Assassination and for my other puzzles.

    I’d never heard of Ella Minnow Pea, but it was among a few themes which had been mooted by Serpent and it seemed to me to offer great potential for a barred thematic puzzle with its themes of lipograms and pangrams. The puzzle is really an old-fashioned letters latent puzzle at its heart, to mimic the lipogrammatic element of the novel, although we could then add layers to produce the first pangram from the latent letters from entries and add an omitted letters device to the down clues to produce the title, finishing with a bit of grid manipulation and some highlighting. I think Serpent even managed to fill the grid with a fairly basic dictionary, which always makes him happy.

    As commenters have recognised, it is the way in which barred puzzles can explore themes in depth that sets them apart from blocked puzzles and the PDMs along the way are pleasing rewards. It is wonderful to see so many varied ways of exploring themes in series such as the Inquisitor and it is testament to the broad appeal of this series as a whole that 41 out of 52 puzzles attracted votes. I am sure that we will continue to see further puzzles in the series developing themes in new and exciting ways.

    I’m with the vast majority of commenters in thinking that the Inquisitor is a great source of cruciverbal entertainment. I’d like to congratulate Nimrod and his team on, once again, delivering a magnificent array of well-edited puzzles of all shapes and sizes. I’m sure we can look forward to another great year of Inquisitors.

  2. As someone says, in a Sondheim musical probably referenced last year, ‘I’ll drink to that’.

    I’m another who bought Ella Minnow Pea as a result.

  4. Does anyone know a way of obtaining old Inquisitors? I only missed a handful last year but nearly all of them are in the top ten here!

  6. Very well played indeed.
    So it’s …

    GOLD to eXtent.
    SILVER to eXternal.
    BRONZE to Hedge-Sparrow.

    Excellent work from all four of you (as eXtent is a duet).

    Please keep up the wonderful work, it is very much appreciated by all of those of us that frequent this dark and mysterious place, at whatever level.

    Could I just personally ask a wee favour of you all (seeing as that you’re the glorious winners) … could you give us some kind of indication as to how you all go about setting an Inquisitor, and (roughly) how long it takes to generate such excellent ‘artwork’.

    I think that it would be really appreciated by quite a number of us.

    I ask as I have noticed for some time that there are quite a few of us who have stated that we would like to have a go and try to set one too. I suspect that none of us are in a position to steal your livelihood, but we’d like to give it a go – we are a social community, we all believe in the same ideal, that an Inquisitor puzzle is a truly wonderful experience each Saturday morning.

    Just asking … no worries if you’d all prefer not to.

  7. Dear “Me_sat_here_at_home”,

    I will happily tell you more about how I went about setting “Fieldwork” if that would be of interest to you. Can you let me know your e-mail address?

    Best wishes,

    Hedge-sparrow.

  8. @me_sat

    There are still only three prize winners as eXternal gets two medals ?

    And nimrod, rather than individual emails from existing setters to aspiring ones, do you think you could curate a beginner’s “how to set an Inquisitor” ?

  9. Sparrowinthehedge @ 7 : Many thanks for the offer, that’s really very kind and generous of you and very much appreciated. I suspect that others would like to know too, so if (as suggested by Arnold @8) Nimrod could collect and collate, then that would be even better.

  10. Hi Me_sat_here_at_home,

    Not sure if you’re still monitoring this link, but in case you are…

    I suspect Nimrod currently has more than enough on his plate, but as I say, I’m happy to give you (and anybody else who is interested) some insight into my own experience of setting “Fieldwork”. Alternatively, head over to Listenwithothers.com where Listener puzzles are discussed, and where there are regular contributions (“blogs”) from setters about how they went about creating their published Listener puzzles. If you go to the Archive link and select “July 2021”, for example, you’ll find a blog I wrote about the last Listener puzzle I had published (“Octet”): there are similar blogs by many other setters, and they provide some fascinating insight into the way setters go about creating their puzzles.

Comments are closed.