Inquisitor 1762: Square Dance by Serpent

19 comments on “Inquisitor 1762: Square Dance by Serpent”

1. Seems a long time ago now
   Superb puzzle. I’d forgotten it was GALS so looked it up when I saw all these buffalos around the perimeter. I never saw the the title of the act at the time but I knew Malcolm was involved(especially in banking his share)First time i saw scratching.
   Thanks Serpent and Hihoba

2. I enjoyed this one a lot in the end and found it very clever (even though the “song” isn’t particularly classic in my view). However it took a while to get going, and only when I found Malcolm McLaren did it all fall into place.

   As with all answer-modification puzzles there are two key things to figure out:
   – Which letters to remove
   – And where to put them

   For the first point, we don’t have any hints except “the first and last letters of removed words will be useful”, so it took time to realise the first letters were the ones to remove, but it was very satisfying when I did

   For the second point, I couldn’t decide whether “appropriate” in the rubric a letter removed from an across answer is entered in the appropriate left or right cell in the row containing the answer meant that left letters would go left and right ones right – or whether it just meant “wherever it makes sense for the outside entry”. In the end, it was left=left and right=right (as well as top=top and bottom=bottom) so I don’t know if the wording was intentionally vague, or just me being obtuse?

   Either way a tough effort but well worth it.

3. Experience & comments very similar to arnold @2: first letter of each removed word is the letter to be removed from the answer to that clue. And just a little uncertainty about “appropriate left or right cell”.

   In 37a for example, I never understand how “porter leaves inn” is interpreted as “inn leaves porter”. Someone did try to explain once but I always forget.

   Anyway, thanks to Serpent for a moderately challenging puzzle, and to Hihoba for the blog. (Your first word should be “puzzles” not “puzzlers”.)

4. I enjoyed this a lot more than Hihoba, but had a different journey: the first and last letters of the redundant words weren’t making sense to me, so I ignored them, and concentrated on the grid (I didn’t share Arnold and HolyGhost’s sense of ambiguity about which way the transposed letter would slide). After flirting with Buffalo Bill (e.e. cummings poem?), McLaren’s old hit came to mind, and only then did I see him in the last letters of removed words. I never did get what the first letters were doing, so thanks to Hihoba and other commenters for the explanation. And thanks to Serpent for the challenging dance.

5. I didn’t got far enough with this to spot the theme, and I can see now that I knew nothing about it anyway. (The name Malcolm McLaren is only vaguely familiar.)

   I was interested in the blogger’s comments about cold solving. That’s something I practise for fun from time to time, even when it is not necessary, and I have become pretty good at it. Success depends more on the quality than the pitch of the clues: tough clues take longer, but a particular quality that I call clarity makes cold solving not just possible but also very enjoyable.

   I started quite brightly with this puzzle in the bottom right, and for a while I enjoyed working up the grid, but still keeping mainly to the right as the left was less tractable. At about the half-way point, though, the puzzle had become a slog, and I was happy to stop. The clues, when I could unravel them, were very good, but the surplus words were too much of a hindrance, and the displaced letter device seemed to compound the difficulty.

   It’s rare for me to be defeated by the clues rather than the theme (which is a much more familiar experience for me). I shall just hope for better luck next time.

   I’m sorry I could not do justice to a puzzle by this setter, whose seven previous Inquisitors I thoroughly enjoyed.

6. H___G____ @3. I think you need to read “leaves” as “leaves behind”.

   Also, on Hihoba’s behalf, I’ve fixed “puzzles”.

7. The letter moving gimmick made it a slow start but then I saw a BUFFALO emerging in the top row and, being familiar with the theme, things accelerated greatly and I didn’t find this a slog at all. But in my haste I managed to completely miss the message coming from the last characters.

   Lovely blog…I note that the Buffalo gal on the bottom row is a little worse for wear.

   Thanks to Serpent and Hihoba.

8. I enjoyed this, and when I realised BUFALO GALS was being repeated over and over again it put a big smile on my face. Very appropriate puzzle for the song and dance.

   Thanks to setter and blogger.

9. @Phil K, she’s probably been going round the outside for some time, so not entirely surprising 🙂

10. First time post here, but I wanted to say how much I enjoyed this puzzle. The grid fill was a good degree of difficulty for me and I’m grateful to Hihoba for the explanations of clues that I failed to parse. For example Vicuña completely eluded me even though it seems obvious now. Many thanks to Serpent and Hihoba.

11. I am another who enjoyed this. An intimidating start but plenty of PDMs as things fell into place.
    One feature that has not been raised so far is that in for the first half of the removed first letters the BUFFALO GIRLS are dosie-doeing*
    Thanks to Serpent and Hi
    *Other spelling are available

12. GILLILE in the first row should be GULLILE.

    I enjoyed this puzzle, but unlike Hihoba, I couldn’t resist listening to the track. I’m afraid to report that it was an unpleasant experience, with no redeeming features.

13. Phil K @7
    Oops – sorted on Hihoba’s behalf

14. “The first letters of the extra words give four anagrams of BUFFLO GALS”: there’s more to it than that — these are actually the letters that have to be moved to the perimeter from the clued word.

15. Dave W @11: “One feature that has not been raised so far is that in for the first half of the removed first letters the BUFFALO GIRLS are dosie-doeing” – that is simply because the letters of BUFFALO GALS run up the first column and down the last column.

16. Looks clever, but I’m afraid I got distracted and failed to finish this one. Thanks to Serpent and Hihoba anyway.

    The official solution in the i yesterday omitted the extra touch of rotating letters so the gals would face each other.

17. HG @15. I have only just read your response to my comment @11 and it seems that I did not explain my point very well. I was referring to the first letters of the EXTRA WORDS in the clues not the letters removed from the answers. In clue order, the first 22 of these are SBLUAFGFOALLAOFGFAULBS, where the letters of BUFFALOGALS interlace with themselves in the reverse direction – a bit like a dosey-doe. The last 22 seem to be completely random.

18. Dave W @17: The first letters of the EXTRA WORDS in the clues are exactly those letters removed from the answers. (See TonyG @14.)
    Given that each row has two entries, the first, third, fifth, etc, generate letters that go into the left column and so have to spell BUFFALO GALS backwards; similarly, the letters from the second, fourth, sixth, etc, go into the right column and so have to spell BUFFALO GALS forwards. Hence the interlacing.
    You say “The last 22 seem to be completely random.” – but that is not the case. If you sort the clues into column order (top to bottom then left to right), then the same thing happens: each column has two entries, the first, third, fifth, etc, give letters that go into the top row and so spell BUFFALO GALS forwards, whereas the letters from the second, fourth, sixth, etc, go into the bottom row and so have to spell BUFFALO GALS backwards. And once again they are interlaced.

19. HolyGhost@18: Ah yes! I had not spotted that. Thanks.

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