Phi Crosswords

phionline.net.nz

  • About me
  • Types of cryptic crossword
    • Solving crosswords
    • Outlets
  • APEX Crosswords
  • My other puzzles
    • BBC Music Magazine crosswords
    • Beelzebub Crosswords
    • Church Times puzzles
    • Enigmatic Variations
    • The European crossword
    • Independent Inquisitor
    • Independent: newspaper
    • Jumbos
    • Magpie
    • Other puzzles
  • Setter’s blogs
  • Book Reviews
  • Cats

Inquisitor 1587: A Growing Population

There’s not really that much to relate.  For many years we have had a calendar of cat pictures, one of those where you tear off a sheet a day.  Each picture is accompanied by a story about the cat pictured, or a piece of cat lore, or a grooming tip.  Very occasionally it is simply a quote, and that’s how I picked this one up.

Hemingway’s fondness for cats is well-documented and he had something like 50, which makes our eight look unambitious.  (NB for a change this is a cat puzzle not preceded by the death of one of them.  They’ve all had a very good summer.)  Many of Hemingway’s cats were polydactyls – with extra toes – and I did wonder about trying to work something of that into the puzzle.  But it proved hard enough to get a reasonably long chain of cats.  You tend to end up with Abyssinian, or Birman or similar and there aren’t many cats beginning with N.  (Having seen a few Norwegian Forest cats at cat shows, I’m not convinced that they aren’t dogs in drag.)

Counting up the length of the chain gave the dimensions of the grid – and I was clearly going to be left with at least a single space in the perimeter (if not three, or five, or…); from that the idea of mirror symmetry evolved.  Mirror symmetry can be a bit tricky when it comes to the unchecked letters, and I generally find that there are fewer of them.  But in a puzzle where the whole perimeter is effectively unchecked that is no bad thing.

Share
Tweet
Pin

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Phi RSS feed

  • RSS - Posts

About me

This is the website of Paul Henderson, who sets crosswords for The Independent (London) under the pseudonyms Phi, for the Daily Telegraph (London) under the pseudonym Kcit, and anonymously for The Times (London) amongst many other outlets. For a more detailed biography see the About Me page.

Blogroll

  • Alberich Crosswords
  • Alchemi's puzzles
  • Anax Crosswords
  • Azed slip
  • Big Dave's Crossword Blog
  • Boatman Cryptics
  • Crossword centenary
  • Crossword Centre
  • Crossword Club
  • Crossword Unclued
  • CrosswordMan: Crossword construction software
  • Crosswords by Chameleon
  • Crosswords by Hasslethymi
  • Fifteensquared
  • George vs The Listener crossword
  • Guardian Crosswords
  • Hoskins Crossword
  • Hubble Crosswords
  • idothei
  • Independent Crosswords
  • Listen with Others
  • Listener Crossword
  • Magpie Crossword Magazine
  • One Across
  • Peter's Cryptic Crossword Corner
  • Telegraph Crosswords
  • The Stickler Weekly
  • Times Crossword Club
  • Times for the Times
  • Undisclosed Enumeration

Comments

  • William F P on Covid strikes
  • Phixwd on A forthcoming loss
  • David Thomson on A forthcoming loss
  • Erin on A forthcoming loss
  • Tim Myall on A forthcoming loss

Copyright © 2022 · Beautiful Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in