CancelReport This Post

Please fill out the form below with your name, e-mail address and the reason(s) you wish to report this post.

 

Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

tatters

22nd August 2016, 19:39
The letter for 2 should have been one of the first you got. Z is where you might expect.
41 of 58  -   Report This Post

wenonah42

23rd August 2016, 11:43
Hi Wintonian

Can you give me a hint please. I have been slogging away and have 12 characters to complete. May have come unstuck as cannot find C using 6d. My value for HNPPXX is 14652 is this correct? I have values for Y, A and G.
42 of 58  -   Report This Post

unclued

23rd August 2016, 16:06
Wenonah - you have the correct value. This will become 45831 in the final grid. Good luck!
43 of 58  -   Report This Post

rrrobbo

23rd August 2016, 16:09
14652 is correct. I now have all the values and 70% of the grid complete and have hit another sticking point. Just when you think you have it cracked, you get stuck again! I have managed to avoid Euclid, but I have plenty of bits of paper with test calculations on - I just played with the unknown letters, using numbers I had not used, to see if I could make valid singles even for the triple. It is not easy to see which clue will help you next to be honest.....It's laborious for sure and there may be better ways, but I got there by being fairly random!
44 of 58  -   Report This Post

wintonian

23rd August 2016, 21:36
Hi, wenonah42, just back from a day out. I see that others have confirmed your calculation of HNPPXX as 14652.

In fact, I followed a slightly different path from you at this stage. I'd already got the 12 letters A, B, D, H, J, P, Q, R, T, V, X, Y, and I then worked out G and M from 13a and N from 12a. I actually missed the fact that I could then have calculated C from 6a, and instead used brute force computation on all the remaining combinations of primes to determine C and K from 26d. So I didn't check 6d until I had all the letters solved. However, if you have worked out the 12 letters plus G, M and N, there are only 11 primes left, and calculating the 11 different possible values of YY(A+C+G) gives only one prime number possibility for C that yields a Pythagorean triple.

This shows that there are several different routes to identifying the prime numbers - if I'd solved for C using 6d, I'd probably have next solved for I and S simultaneously using 21d.

The endgame was, I thought, almost a substantive puzzle in its own right. Only six of the 42 answers could be entered directly, and this phase of the puzzle alone took me around an hour. I started in the bottom right hand corner, where several of the clues lead to three or four-digit values for c in the Pythagorean triples, hence limiting the possible answers to be entered in the grid, and then just used trial and error to work out which possibilities would fit.
45 of 58  -   Report This Post

crosswhit99

24th August 2016, 17:58
I must admit I dislike crossword and cross-number puzzles in which there is very little assistance with clue solving from cross-checking letters and digits - it seems to me to trade off the crossness of the puzzle for the crossness of the solver. The first phase of this puzzle fell into that category and the second phase turned out to be a fairly tedious slog. Apart from that I liked it :-)
46 of 58  -   Report This Post

captaincoma

24th August 2016, 21:02
Can someone please tell me the value of D? I have the other letters in 11 across but whatever I try doesn't compute. Thanks.
47 of 58  -   Report This Post

crosswhit99

24th August 2016, 21:04
D = 79
48 of 58  -   Report This Post

beulah

24th August 2016, 21:55
I have found all the letter values but I am having difficulty filling in the grid. Could someone tell me which of 244 or 854 is correct for 4 across.
BEULAH
49 of 58  -   Report This Post

unclued

24th August 2016, 22:08
854
50 of 58  -   Report This Post