Jaques is back – previous Inquisitor puzzles were last year & the year before.
Preamble: Each clue contains a single misprint in its definition. The correct letters, in clue order, describe what solvers must use to replace two clued answers in the filled grid. The changes make the situation more obvious and leave only proper words in the final grid.
I was hoping for an easy ride this week – or a least not a difficult one – as I leave for the continent at the weekend and need to get the blog ready by Friday.
It felt like I solved about half the clues on the first pass, though it was probably not as many as that. (Even when the answer was clear from the wordplay & intersecting letters it wasn’t always obvious what the misprint was.) I was motoring along at a modest pace but at some point it was getting late and I was tired so I resisted the temptation to try and polish off the final half dozen or so clues and went to bed instead.
The following day, I set about trying to make sense of the corrections: the phrase started with ALTERNATIVE EVIDENCE FOR HEMP…; I got a few more letters and decided to feed what I had to Google, which kindly led me to … HEMPEL’S PARADOX.
I was aware of the paradox (that’s what you get when the philosophy half of your degree contains a big chunk of logic) but Hempel hadn’t rung any bells. I won’t rehearse the argument here, as I’m sure that interested solvers will have already checked it out, but one view is that an observation of a BLACK RAVEN and one of a non-black non-raven (such as a GREEN APPLE) are equally supportive of the hypothesis that all ravens are black. Hence the replacements in the grid.
(Regarding the phrase, I’m not really sure what “evidence for a paradox” is – or is that being too pedantic?)
Thanks Jaques – on the gentle side, but I enjoyed it. (And some nice clues in the mix there.)
PS I did see a rose-coloured swan quite recently.
| No. | Clue ✓[✗] | ✓ | Answer | Wordplay | |
| Across | |||||
| 1 | Pasha in charge irritated about difficulty with cha[i]t (7) | A | APHASIC | [PASHA IC (in charge)]* | |
| 6 | Type of mel[s]on piece to break down (5) | L | MANGO | MAN (piece) GO (break down) | |
| 11 | Knowledge covers river base for put[n]ting location (5) | T | GREEN | GEN (knowledge) around R(iver) E (base) | |
| 12 | Irishman after balance is concerning site[s] for wash (7) | E | BALNEAL | NEAL (Irishman) after BAL(ance) | |
| 14 | Shor[u]t synopsis: “I Me Mine” has replaced George’s intro (7) | R | EPITOME | EGO (I) ME with PIT (mine) replacing G(eorge) | |
| 15 | Churned up field and mostly need return[f] (8, 2 words) | N | LINE FEED | [FIELD NEE(d)]* | |
| 16 | Ia[n]n’s neglected to give property informal sinister look, to begin with not apparent (6) | A | INFEFT | INF(ormal) LEFT (sinister) ¬ L(ook) | |
| 17 | Zero grieve for stat[l]e point of view (5) | T | OPINE | O (zero) PINE (grieve) | |
| 19 | Hollywood home of celebrity back in mi[u]ddle? (7) | I | PIVOTAL | LA (Hollywood home) TO (of) VIP (celebrity) all< | |
| 21 | The elderly lacking flexibility once found in parts of the ev[y]e (as of today) (7) | V | YESTERN | YE (the) STERN (lacking flexibility) | |
| 23 | At least two in e[f]ight for sky covering rugged coast (5) | E | OCTAS | [COAST]* | |
| 25 | In middle of pass steep earth severe[s] mountain ridges (6) | E | ARÊTES | (p)AS(s) around RET (steep) E(arth) | |
| 27 | Attempts perhaps for more cleav[r]age months after one protects sapling (8) | V | IMPLANTS | MS (months) after I (one) around PLANT (sapling) | |
| 29 | Job’s in trouble scri[a]bbling in the margins? (7) | I | APOSTIL | POST (job) in AIL (trouble) | |
| 30 | Drug ecstasy for lad[z]y that’s key (7) | D | HEROINE | HEROIN (drug) E(cstasy) | |
| 31 | Tree[k] apparently ends in Lahore (5) | E | APPLE | APP(arently) L(ahor)E | |
| 32 | Win[l]d’s time to split (5) | N | TREND | T(ime) REND (split) | |
| 33 | Australian natives with rank sc[p]ent – American infantryman edges out (7) | C | GIDGEES | GI (American infantryman) [EDGES]* | |
| Down | |||||
| 1 | De[a]ftness frequently absent from delicacy (7) | E | AGILITY | FRAGILITY (delicacy) ¬ FR(equently) | |
| 2 | Getting inf[t]o from attempting piano filling in for time (6) | F | PRYING | TRYING (attempting) with P(iano) for T(ime) | |
| 3 | According to locals, o[i]f that woman runs into one that’s cowardly (4) | O | HERN | R(uns) in HEN (coward) | |
| 4 | Less confused to receive guff, for Rebus, maybe what r[c]unning snout produces (8) | R | SNIFFLES | [LESS]* around NIFF (guff) | |
| 5 | Nothing arises after brief questionable act making fish[t] (7) | H | CAPELIN | NIL< (nothing) after CAPE(r) (questionable act) | |
| 7 | Parted nation, in a mess, Right Left? Like the pole[l]s? (10) | E | ANTIPODEAN | [PARTED NATION]* ¬ RT (right) | |
| 8 | Essentially theory underlies mason’s end joint in Aberdeen’s stone hamm[p]er? (7) | M | NEOLITH | (th)EO(ry) after (maso)N LITH (joint, Scot) | |
| 9 | P[B]uckish lad endlessly on Fortnite? (5) | P | GAMIN | GAMIN(g) (on Fortnite?) | |
| 10 | What helps plane[t] put down root centrally to cover landscape’s borders (4) | E | OLEO | (r)OO(t) around L(andscap)E | |
| 13 | L[C]ook out for pesto finally in Bake Off (10, 3 words) | L | KEEP TABS ON | [PESTO (i)N BAKE]* | |
| 17 | Adore travelling with latitude to head South, exces[l]s in packing (8) | S | OVERLOAD | LOVE (adore) ROAD (travelling) with L(atitude) later | |
| 18 | P[J]et across the Irish Sea – on land holding beginning to taxi (7) | P | ASTHORE | ASHORE (on land) around T(axi) | |
| 19 | Initial coa[s]t of paint is costing money though not coloured (7) | A | PRIMING | PRICING (costing) with M(oney) for C(oloured) | |
| 20 | Those who r[w]ent without seizing ancient throne (7)] | R | LESSEES | LESS (without) around SEE (throne, archaic) | |
| 22 | A[S]light look framing through the lens (6) | A | SETTLE | SEE (look) around TTL (through the lens) | |
| 24 | Bird[o]’s top superficially eraser (5) | D | CAPER | CAP (top) E(rase)R | |
| 26 | Thai do[i]sh hot in Indian lingo (4) | O | BAHT | H(ot) in BAT (lingo, Hindi) | |
| 28 | New copy, could it be chopped for literary ex[d]it? (4) | X | NAPE | N(ew) APE (copy) | |
I did not find the solving as gentle as HG as there were some cunning definitions and some uncommon words. All the clues were perfectly sound, however, once I grasped them, so I enjoyed the challenge. I was not familiar with the paradox so had to look it up. I think I understood it and spotted GREEN and APPLE immediately. The required replacements seemed obvious as they maintained real cross-checking words, but I did not see why this made the “situation more obvious”. I wondered whether we were supposed to include the triplets above each keyword which lead to HAS BLACK ON A RAVEN. ???
I felt a end-game was a bit of a damp squib but I enjoyed the entertaining and amusing grid fill.
Thanks to Jaques and to HG (who. no doubt, was wearing his rose-coloured spectacles.)
Enjoyed: thanks to Jaques and HolyGhost. Agreed with @1 that the misprints and arcane words reduced the alleged gentleness, but the endgame was familiar territory — I always loved Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games columns and am pretty sure he wrote about Hempel and his not-black not-ravens.
Resolving single-letter misprints is often part and parcel of solving these puzzles, and this one was (I thought) one of the trickier ones.
I worked hard in my first session last Sunday solving many good clues and (eventually) filling all except the SW quadrant, where I had just YESTERN and HEROINE to get me started in that corner the next day. Before that, though, I saw that I could make ALTERNATIVE EVIDENCE FOR from the extracted letters, followed by seven of the last 14 letters. I had more of HEMPEL’S than PARADOX, and that was enough for me to find the topic and read all about. I duly completed the changes to the grid before I finished off the last corner.
I had one query. I wondered why 27a IMPLANTS did not have a DBE indicator (like ‘?’) in the clue, as ‘sapling’ is an example of ‘plant’.
An enjoyable puzzle with good clues and a simple, well-executed design.
Thanks to Jaques, and to HolyGhost for the blog.
Another DNF recorded again here, well and truly beaten by this one (and available time) I’m afraid. I only completed about 50% of the clues (with almost all answers residing in the Western half), so I ended up with a ‘half and half’ grid at the end. OPINE as an answer for the second week running.
Not sure what was really the most difficult though – attempting IQ1808, or subsequently trying to load this website!
I also found this challenging and enjoyable, and was greatly relieved that we did not need to understand the paradox to complete the endgame, which I thought was pleasingly neat. Seems to me a very classical Inquisitor… thanks to Jaques and HG.