Inquisitor 1895: Neck Rub by Ifor

12 comments on “Inquisitor 1895: Neck Rub by Ifor”

1. This was an excellent offering I thought. The grid fill went steadily and the device of only using the first occurrence of letters in the perimeter became clear fairly early on, although I failed to make any sense of the title by this route. After untangling the two messages from the extra letters I was still at a loss as to how to complete the crossword. I’m sure others will have spotted Necker Cube much earlier than me. It was only when I read the theme letters in the grid in order that I got it. A very satisfying offering.
   Many thanks to Ifor and Kenmac.

2. My thanks too to Ifor and Kenmac. This was something of a struggle, not helped by a wrong guess about the modifying rule — my first four perimeter answers all had their last three letters dropped, but then of course it got more complicated. But the Necker cube is familiar enough and being able to read it in the grid was a nice payoff.

3. I found this a hard puzzle, but struggled through, only to fail completely at the last. I misled myself by deciding that the two word phrase would be something relating to the non-repeating of letters; something like “uniquely privileged”, with the words providing some sort of cryptic indicators for “neck” and “rub”. I tried drawing some plausible looking lines between points, but only produced a stylised picture of a fly swatter. It is humiliating to realise that the answer (which I’d never heard of) was staring out at me from the shaded letters (though, to quibble, would one normally describe the Necker Cube as a phrase or a thing?). Anyway, thanks to Ifor for a very fair puzzle, and to Ken for the blog.

4. This was fun – just the sort of IQ that we like. We sorted out the fact that letters were not repeated in the perimeter as we steadily chipped away at the puzzle.

   We cannot remember what our mistake was with the extra letters in the clues but it wasn’t until near the end that we uncovered the phrase and our mistake.

   We then sat and looked at the puzzle….. and looked …….. and looked. We took a break and then looked again. Joyce went on a website where you can look for anagrams of words where you don’t know all the letters. No joy. Suddenly Bert who had been staring at the title realised that it could be NECKER CUBE but had no idea what it was.

   Thanks Ifor for a splendid IQ. Thanks also to kenmac for the blog.

5. I made steady progress at first, getting 3 of the full perimeter answers (1, 27 & 38) fairly quickly and, with a few cross-checking letters, was able to deduce the entry gimmick. But I could not see how it could be applied to the title. There were a few unfamiliar word uses in some clues – I had not encountered DIE = MERGE or BELLOW =TROAT and needed my trusty Bradford to confirm the wordplay I had guessed. Having completed most of the grid, the SW corner was still very sparse and I began to think it was “I-for impossible” but I knew it could not be. Finally, anticipating my missing redundant letters, I did complete it. The only wordplay that stumped me was for 4D, which had to produce TIPS when one of the Ts was removed. I should have looked up PS to discover yet another term I had never met.
   The two messages were quite clear and it was very neat that the key letters, placed perfectedly at the vertices, also spelt out the the name of the object. I also was already aware of the cube and the optical illusion but was totally unaware that it had a name.
   Another amazing grid construction from Ifor! Thanks to him and to Ken for the blog.

6. Just realised that we hadn’t noticed that the shaded letters spelt out NECKER CUBE. How did we miss that?

7. I have less time now than in previous years to solve these puzzles, and I was very glad to have made time for this one, which took longer than most – mostly, I think, because of the ‘extra letter’ device, whereby that letter could have been anywhere in the clue. The clues, though, were excellent as well as being challenging. When the grid was half filled, I collected enough extra letters to make partial sense of the messages: ‘LINK … TWELVE …’ for one of them and ‘THOSE IN …’ for the other. With half of the perimeter clues solved I should perhaps have got ‘Necker cube’ from ‘Neck Rub’, but that had to wait.

   Completing the message THOSE IN TITLE was the key to finishing the puzzle: completing the instruction in the other message, discovering the Necker cube in the grid and solving the remaining peripheral and inner clues. SMALT and CONS were tricky. I first tried SMART (SMARTASS) and MONS (MONSOON), as they were both a good fit with the rules of play, but I had to be patient and solve those clues properly!

   TIPS was my last clue to solve properly (it was a guess when I entered it). I now know that PS is the prompt side of a stage!

   Thanks to Ifor for a brilliantly designed thematic puzzle and to kenmac for the blog.

8. Fair’s fair to Ifor – although I rally disliked his recent Listener offering I thought this was a really excellent puzzle – a very enjoyable solve with a neat and satisfying finish

   Thanks to him and to kenmac for the blog

9. A puzzle about optics that demonstrates what we (some of us) can fail to see: there it is, spelt out in the grid, in ink, even. I knew I was missing the point, but I still joined the letters, with two lines to spare, to create a kind of rubber ring, if rubber rings had a square middle and hexagonal skin. An enjoyable journey to a tricky destination; thanks to Ifor and kenmac.

10. A lot of head scratching about what the “transformation” might be (surely not just removing the last 3 letters, oh no look, there are 4 letters removed in one and it’s SMALT not SMALL!) followed by a lot of head scratching about the second instruction, but finally both came together and the NECKER CUBE emerged beautifully from the grid.

    Just the sort of Inquisitor I like, with an interesting theme and a bit of pencil artistry at the end. And lo and behold, the optical illusion really does work, even in this blog!

    Thank you to blogger and setter, it was fun (and thanks for making it ever so slightly easier by revealing the full letter count of the abridged answers).

11. Thanks to kenmac and others for unraveling this. Despite completing the grid and finding the clues, not having heard of a Necker Cube, my lines traveled between N, C, E, K and the rest without coming close to looking like a discernible shape. If I’d spotted that the letters making up Necker Cube appear in the grid in order it might have helped, but I doubt it. I give myself 5/10 for getting halfway there.

12. My thanks to all, especially Ken for his usual exhaustive and accurate blog. One very minor point – “Towton’s field” refers to the battle of 1461, which has the melancholy distinction of being the bloodiest ever fought on British soil.

    Sagittarius – I hope we can agree that “Necker cube” is a phrase that describes an image or object. I opted for the former because I thought the latter too generous; although had I done so I suppose I could have included some whimsy on the lines of “either of two solutions will be marked correct”.

    Alan – I always consult Chambers when faced with an odd pair of letters. It’s surprising how often (as in Prompt Side) they turn out to be useful (to the setter) abbreviations.

    Arnold – had the perimeter rule involved a direct relationship between lengths such as the “omit last three letters” mentioned, I’d have given entry lengths. Since there’s no such relationship, I agree with you that answer lengths are needed for fairness.

Comments are closed.