Inquisitor 1747: Unpopular Shift by Nutmeg

11 comments on “Inquisitor 1747: Unpopular Shift by Nutmeg”

1. “An exemplary puzzle with a very well-executed theme and a great variety of well-pitched clues.” I wrote exactly that on the blog of Nutmeg’s previous Inquisitor puzzle (no. 1707 in July 2021), and I’m happy to repeat that evaluation for this puzzle.

   I realised, of course, what the instruction concerning the clue enumerations was really telling us: that smoe answers would not fit their entries. When I found my first two of these themed answers, SATEENS and SUNDRIES, I also had five of the letters of GIVE US BACK and the O of OUR, and I thought straight away of the complete phrase. I was then sure of the kind of thing I would expect to find, and ELEVEN DAYS went straight in.

   With only STYLE and FRIGATES left to solve, I got STYLE first, the other one then being my (expected) eleventh special clue, which was then easily solved.

   Thanks to Nutmeg for a quality puzzle, and to Hihoba for the blog.

2. Hardly any rubric at all this week! Clue enumerations refer to grid entries, eh? … OK then, so some modifications required to some answers then. Answers went in pretty quickly, a number of answers proving to be too long for the grid – removal of ‘days’ solved those issues. Eleven found in total, defining the contents of the greyed out cells. Job done – the unpopular (at the time) Julian to Gregorian calendar switch being the theme and explaining the title.

   Many thanks to Nutmeg for a very gentle but nevertheless fun puzzle, to Hihoba for the blog and to fellow commenters for sharing their thoughts.

3. Not so gentle for me I am afraid. I saw the phrase maybe too early then tied myhself ion knots trying to make things fit.I could see STRE(IWED)and STA(TUES)QUE but things like THURIFER and FRISBEE (I was unsuccessfully trying to fit TAG between S and B
   This was an iron fist in a velvet glove-ie Nutmeg at her best
   Great bit of history
   Thanks all.

4. An enjoyable, gentle offering with a theme that revealed itself as nicely as you would like. Not much to add apart from thanks for a fun puzzle!

5. Tremendous fun, this one, and clever too. All thanks to Nutmeg and Hihoba. My first answers that clearly didn’t fit were the two WEDs, leading to thoughts of weddings and whether maybe some eighteenth- or nineteenth-century novel heroine got married in an Unpopular Shift, but the penny dropped when the next was a SAT.

6. What Jon_S said @4!

   Thanks to Hihoba. More like this please Nutmeg.

7. It’s rare that I come to this site with no parsing doubts and queries, but so it is. Probably my favourite style of Inquisitor: minimal rubric, something not right, game on. Once I deduced that days were being deducted, I thought it would be a quick stroll to the end, but in fact I found it invigoratingly knotty to the end. And an interesting bit of history I’d forgotten. Many thanks to Nutmeg and Hihoba.

8. I also didn’t think it was *that* gentle, and completed about 80% of the grid before getting the phrase and only then realising that I hadn’t managed the rest because the answers didn’t fit.

   But got there in the end and it was excellent fun – STATUESQUE was my favourite, particularly given the clueing.

9. People didn’t object to losing 11 days; they objected to landlords charging rent for the non-existent days!

10. I’m pretty much in agreement with 1-8 above. It was some time before the final penny dropped, though. Having guessed all the phrase except the important ELEVEN, I was wondering whether this was about another ladies’ issue – perhaps loss of NI contributions during maternity leave (if this indeed happened) and so was looking for just one deletion for each of the 7 days. Then I found a second SAT and had to think again. But then I spotted the ELEVEN, remembered the controversy (no, I was not there at the time!) and all was soon done.
    A very enjoyable ride. Many thanks to Nutmeg and to Hihoba.

    John, in view of the high standard of this batch of puzzles, perhaps you could try to encourage a few more female contributions.

11. A bit disappointed that there weren’t that many entries that were real words after removing a day, eg (Fri)GATES, (Sun)DRIED, but forgivable seeing that there had to be 11 of them. At least each day of the week got a mention: (Thur)IBLE rounded it all off quite nicely. A bit on the easy side though, but I’m sure Hihoba didn’t mind. Thanks, and to Nutmeg – not your usual level of difficulty.

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