Inquisitor 1283: Office Issue by Ifor

18 comments on “Inquisitor 1283: Office Issue by Ifor”

1. Thanks for such a detailed breakdown. It was difficult to keep track of everything – I often find that’s the case with Ifor.
   I think the symmetry of THE BARD OF AVON is nicer, but BARD OF AVON sounds better.
   7 dn (I think)-
   ‘Among the characteristics of’ = IN and ‘indication of error’= X so removing the cross from [cross]WORDS = INWORDS def.’contemporary language.’ The word can be found in italics in Chambers under ‘in 1’ ‘….that is fashionable, much in use(as in in-word, in-thing); within a small group.’
   I was tempted by ‘The London Prodigal’ which was attributed to Shakespeare but is now thought to be written by Jonson [‘OFFICE’ = JO(h)N +’ISSUE’ = SON] but i went for DENMARK in the end – personally I would have liked another city under the grid, not a whole country! Sorry to quibble so much (and didn’t ‘I am a weakish speller’ appear in a fairly recent listener?)
   Thank you Ifor, it was pretty challenging I thought.

2. I spent many hours on this while recovering in bed from a virus infection. I solved it all, knew all the plays, but fell at the last hurdle.

   I too, kenmac, confess to resorting to a crossword aid (Puzzlex) for some of the partial anagrams. Like D Reynolds (at #1) I think the highlighted phrase has to be “THE bard of Avon” for symmetrical reasons. I spotted BARD in bomBARDier first which fortunately led to the other one which crosses it.

   Yesterday (too late for sending in an entry) Ho enlightened me on DENMARK which really should have been obvious to me. Bother!!

   A really excellent, testing offering from Ifor, pretty well flawless.

3. P.S. Kenmac, the phrase from the down clues is “I’LL SEE MAP AREA WHISK” (singular area, not plural as in your preamble) and the extra E from 22D is missing from your right hand column. Quibbles really, otherwise excellent blog!

4. This was very impressive. It can’t have been easy generating all the extra letters, but all the clues were perfectly fair and I liked the partial anagram approach. Tough stuff though. I spent
   a good few hours on this. Thanks to setter and blogger.

5. I thought this was brilliant. I don’t get to do too many IQs but I happened to have a few days’ holiday to try to tackle this. I only highlighted “THE BARD” in my completed grid so I presume that’s me out of the running for a bottle of champers!

6. …excellent blog as well

7. @1 D. Reynolds. Thanks for the explanation of 7d.

   It looks like a touch of ambiguity did creep in to the preamble after all 🙁 given my failure to see THE and Tramp’s failure to see further than THE BARD. It might have been better if it had stated how many cells were involved.

   @3 Sorry, Hi. I’ll correct that in the fullness of time.

   PS Welcome to anyone who may be visiting fifteensquared for the first time as a result of the editor’s note beside IQ1284. Please make yourself known, we welcome all comments and we don’t bite 😉

8. I found different cells to highlight for The Bard of Avon – all making vertical words, and sharing the A and the F shown here. It may not have been the intended result, but it seemed to fit the rubric… It wasn’t so pretty, though!

9. Loved this one. Got a different selection of THE BARD OF AVON which seemed unlikely so I think there could have been more clarity there… But didn’t detract from enjoyment. Got Denmark a basically the only other option – thought maybe it was an anagram of an item of office equipment

10. I struggled with this but I usually do with Ifor’s puzzles and don’t mind that. I failed at the last hurdle though as I thought it had to be DENMARK from the title but read that the word had to an item and assumed therefore it would be an anagram (reverse of the rest) – I can’t see DENMARK as an item.

    I think that it was Radix who gave us ‘I am a weakish speller’ recently but knowing how long the process takes I would imagine that Ifor set this well before the other was published.

    Minor quibble but telnet is a protocol or set of rules to allow connection to computers over telecommunications, it isn’t a computer system.

11. Oddly, I noted that SNATHE = ATHENS* as soon as I solved 38a. No thematic progress until I spotted the anagram from the across clues about halfway through, quickly followed by TREY/TYRE & EVINCE/VENICE, and the INWARDS problem was resolved to IN-WORDS by realising the reference to The MW of WINDSOR. DENMARK took a little while to tumble out (& justify), and then THE BARD OF AVON snaking through the grid became apparent.

    I guess I got lucky – a moderate solve (in terms of difficulty) and I didn’t find any nagging ambiguities. Ifor continues to impress (not least for the novel way of producing the phrase-generating letters); and thanks, Ken, for the blog.

12. We loved solving this one and even when we had sorted out the theme it still kept you puzzling right until the end. It also wasn’t a puzzle that revealed itself early on!

    Nearing the end, we suddenly noticed the possibility of the anagram of The Bard which helped us solve the last few clues as well as sorting out a previous error!

    Thanks Ifor for the fun – we were very impressed by the construction of the puzzle.

    Thanks also to kenmac. We hadn’t noticed the editor’s link to this site at the time of solving – obviously too busy with the puzzle. What a good idea though.

13. My thanks for the very thorough blog and for subsequent comments, some of which cleared up minor points. And my particular thanks to Nick for his gracious assumption that the use of the “weakish speller” anagram which also appeared in Radix’s excellent Listener was coincidence rather than plagiarism. As he surmises, the puzzle was submitted prior to the Listener’s being published. Two other points – the TELNET definition paraphrased the Chambers entry as well as I could manage it, so my apologies if it was misleading to those with the right technical background. “Item” is useful crosswordese for the members of a thematic set – bearing in mind that in many puzzles these may be completely disparate in terms of category and linked through their letter content or structure, it’s hard to see an alternative.

    Ifor

14. Many thanks to Ifor for the enjoyable workout and to Kenmac for the excellent blog.

    I found this was one in which you certainly couldn’t leap straight to the ‘end game’ after a few entries and I followed a few blind alleys by trying to do so e.g. looking up David Brent quotations !
    I also read the second anagram as “I’ll see map are awhisk” which sound more Shakespearean to my ears.

    Great stuff.

15. Tremendous stuff. Probably my favourite Inquisitor of the year so far.

16. As someone who has a go at the Inquisitor each week but tends to come to a halt after about 20 answers(I only ever finished one many years ago)this I found daunting and didn’t know how to start and gave up very quickly-too much like hard work

17. A very enjoyable puzzle from Ifor. But should have ‘Denmark’ not been written as an anagram, in keeping with the theme ?

18. Like Hi above I’d been ill (in a non-life-threatening way, for several weeks this year) and was particularly depressed by the side-effect of not being able to finish Inquisitor. So it was really cheering to complete the previous one, which seemed relatively easy, and then this ingenious toughie. ATHENS and VENICE popped into my head quite early, and remembering that Pericles was Prince of TYRE clinched it. Apparently I won the champers too, unless there’s another me in Reading …

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