  One of the fundamental properties of an intermediate polar is the dynamical
nature of the accretion flow as it encounters the white dwarf's magnetosphere.
Many works have presumed a dichotomy between disk-fed accretion, in which the
WD accretes from a Keplerian disk, and stream-fed accretion, in which the
matter stream from the donor star directly impacts the WD's magnetosphere
without forming a disk. However, there is also a third, poorly understood
regime in which the accretion flow consists of a torus of diamagnetic blobs
that encircles the WD. This mode of accretion is expected to exist at
mass-transfer rates below those observed during disk-fed accretion, but above
those observed during pure stream-fed accretion. We invoke the diamagnetic-blob
regime to explain the exceptional TESS light curve of the intermediate polar TX
Col, which transitioned into and out of states of enhanced accretion during
Cycles 1 and 3. Power-spectral analysis reveals that the accretion was
principally stream-fed. However, when the mass-transfer rate spiked,
large-amplitude quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) abruptly appeared and
dominated the light curve for weeks. The QPOs have two striking properties:
they appear in a stream-fed geometry at elevated accretion rates, and they
occur preferentially within a well-defined range of frequencies (~10-25 cycles
per day). We propose that during episodes of enhanced accretion, a torus of
diamagnetic blobs forms near the binary's circularization radius and that the
QPOs are beats between the white dwarf's spin frequency and unstable blob
orbits within the WD's magnetosphere. We discuss how such a torus could be a
critical step in producing an accretion disk in a formerly diskless system.
