Inquisitor 1349: Walk This -> Way by Ifor

16 comments on “Inquisitor 1349: Walk This -> Way by Ifor”

1. Hated it, hated it, hated it, hated it, *loved it. Despite the lack of secret sign to say this one would be worth it in the end I persevered well past the point of despair and as ever it paid off eventually. What an amazing puzzle – it must have taken Ifor many painstaking hours to construct a grid and a set of clues where everything fitted such an exacting pattern.

   So hard to get started when the theme is needed to solve the clues and the clues are needed to find the theme, so a lot of early frustration. Even when I did begin to get going it probably took me longer than it should have to find the exact theme as I had the Time Warp running around in my head
   “It’s just a jump to the left
   And then a step to the right…”
   I was just waiting to see where the pelvic thrust fitted in.

   I thought the cluing was on the hard side, which was harsh given so much uncertainty about the clues themselves and the final grid entries. There were a couple I couldn’t quite parse (OUTSOAR and TREE – couldn’t see how to get the UST out of trustee, didn’t think to look at the clue any other way!) so thanks Duncan for those.

   And thanks, in retrospect, to Ifor for a corker.

   *This was the point at which I finished it.

2. Duncansheil,
   I think this was one of those puzzles that was relatively easy to solve – but must have been very time-consumingly difficult to blog. So, respect.

   Do you, or anyone else, have any thoughts on the arrow symbol in the title?
   I might be showing my ignorance but does that symbol mean something in maths/logic/whatever?
   (‘Walk this way/walk the other way?)

   For me, the theme emerged with the clue format/solution to 19D. Then I more or less guessed the relevant phrase and the ‘steps’ to be taken. So the cart came before the horse . . . but we all know that is not unusual.

   Thank you duncansheil. Thank you Ifor – some strange words and ingenious clues.

3. oPatrick@1,

   All Inquisitors are ridiculous.
   Titles that often seem irrelevant, impenetrable preambles, convoluted clues to words that barely exist.

   Lots of Chamber-consulting. Even more googling.

   Sometimes takes an hour just to get one answer, which all to often miserably fails to unlock any others.

   Complete waste of a Saturday – think of all the other sport/shopping/leisure activities you could be enjoying.

   I am going to give it up. Next Saturday, and that’s it.

4. jonsurdy – “I think this was one of those puzzles that was relatively easy to solve” – were you doing a different puzzle from me! I found this one of the hardest of recent months, and that’s saying something.

   I question the use of ‘thereafter’ as a synonym for ‘so’ in 10D. Thereafter, by my understanding, only indicates a connection in time order, whereas so implies a causal connection. I can see that they are both synonyms for ‘then’ but not for each other.

5. We found this one really tricky which we expected when we saw that the setter was Ifor. We kept looking at the preamble as we couldn’t tease out the common way of moving the words in the down clues. It wasn’t until much later that we saw that we were actually moving the wrong word in some clues – it gave the same outcome but inconsistent moves! While we are talking of moves, we also couldn’t quite understand the significance of the arrow in the title.

   It was a great puzzle though and our admiration goes to Ifor for the construction.

   Thanks Duncan for the blog – we weren’t happy with our parsing of 2d but you solved it the same way.

6. Sorry – forgot to mention to OPatrick that our online Chambers has ‘thereafter’ as a definition for ‘so’. There were quite a few others we had to check during the solve.

7. This was a wonderful puzzle which tied everything together in a very satisfying manner at the end. I was fortunate to be able to cold solve enough of the earlier row clues and appropriate column clues to ‘jigsaw’ the top left hand corner together and work out the instruction.
   I would agree with those who felt that the clues were on the tricky side – but very fair – with some very sneakily hidden definitions – ‘or’ and ‘a’ in particular made me smile when I finally saw them.
   If I have one eensy-weensy, tiny quibblette it would be that the (failed) musician in me feels that ‘ritenuto’ is musical instruction to restrain tempo, not tone.
   But that’s just pedantry.
   Many thanks to Ifor for the puzzle and Duncan for the very thourough blog.

8. I agree – tougher than normal clues. I found the Downs more tractable than the Acrosses, maybe because it’s easier to simply ignore a lot of the word order. All in all, quite a work-out, but satisfying.

   The word “redundant” in clue F seems redundant – both ‘halves’ work perfectly well without it. And the re-ordered clue 5 doesn’t work well at all – it feels as though it should be WITH two steps back, rather than LEAVES one step forward.

   But I disagree with Duncan’s 4d: I think it’s “deserted” that moves two steps back, to give “Function deserted that is held over indefinitely”, with “over” remaining part of the definition of SINE DIE.

   As to the title … it was indeed a bit of a puzzle, and a few days after I’d completed the grid a thought came to me: if we were to move the arrow either one step forward or two steps back, then we’d get a more conventional version of the sign, namely “Walk This Way →” or “→ Walk This Way“.

   2d was indeed a pig to parse. Thanks to Duncan & Ifor – they both must have taken ages to produce their respective contributions.

9. Thanks for the blog, Duncan.

   I parsed 4 as Holy Ghost @8.

   I found this pretty straightforward – mainly because I twigged the phrase almost immediately. However I held myself up for a while at the end because I had confidently written in SWARF for 2D on the 1st pass – swarf meaning ‘bits lost when cutting thread’ & a ‘swoon’ which could also be a turn (as in ‘having a funny turn’) – only when I found none of the SW corner acrosses would work did I realise my error.

   Overall I thought it was a wonderfully well-constructed puzzle.

10. HG – yes, I wondered about the redundant word redundant too. At one stage I was working on there being superflous self-referential words in all the across clues, what with a casual casually appearing in row A as well (or was it randomly randomly appearing?). Not enough going on as it was, the puzzle needed that extra element to spice it up….

    I reckon you’re right about 4D, but it works well enough both ways, which I’d say is true of several clues and just added to the difficulty.

    Bertandjoyce – thanks, though I’ll remain sceptical hereafter.

11. Re the second clue at F.

    I wonder if there was a typo and the word in the clue should have been ‘retches’ not ‘stretches’.
    Reaches is an obsolete form of retches – hence the use of redundant?

12. Well, a huge thanks to Duncan for the blog as it uncovered all the areas I was going wrong. Yep, this one failed me, but I have had a good run of successfully completed Inquisitors of late which was bound to come to an end at some point.

    Looking at my partially completed grid, I made most headway on the LHS of the grid but I couldn’t for the life of me work out how the clashes were to be resolved. The PDM just didn’t arrive for me this week.

    On the difficulty rating, I found this top-end

    A very comprehensive blog though, many thanks Duncan, and thanks (I think!) to Ifor for providing me with a deep-fried brain this week.

13. I had a thought about the meaning of the arrow in the title, but I think I’ve talked myself out of it already. I wondered if the arrow symbol was a literal representation of one step forward, two steps back – one ‘forward’ line and two ‘backward’ lines. No, probably not.

    Phil R, at last someone else who isn’t airily dismissing it as an easy solve (I paraphrase a tad).

14. Re redundant
    I don’t have my BRB to hand but I recall seeing an obsolete meaning of reach meaning ‘to stretch’ as in stretching a spring which is how I justified it to myself.

15. As usual my thanks to everyone who took the trouble to comment, and to Duncan for the comprehensive blog. Clearly I must explain the presence of the arrow; despite the ingenious rationalisations it’s there togther with the rest of the title for a very mundane reason. The shifts in clues and lights are all made such that “forward” is to be interpreted as left-to-right and “back” vice versa. But shifting a letter forward can easily be read as towards the front of a word (so moving the S in WORDS “forward” might be a device to clue SWORD). This alternative interpretation would leave an unfair ambiguity, which I’d hoped the arrow and the “pointer” reference would resolve. That’s it, I’m afraid.

    Ifor

16. Really enjoyed this but getting to the end required getting the phrase reasonably early. It’s one of my oft-used phrases – I’m one of the original ‘grumpy old men’- so it came to me at about that point I was beginning to run out of steam trying to solve the clues ‘straight’. 3D was the giveaway for me, when it became clear that words were being shifted around in the down clues and that led to some other Down solves until the penny dropped with the phrase.
    I found this ‘middling’difficult, anmd a really clever and rewarding puzzle if you were prepared to stick at it.

    Many thanks Ifor and Duncan for the blog.

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