Listener 4190 by Oyler

[logophile]

Another great puzzle from the mathematical master ! Solved all the down clues first, then the acrosses. Then it was great fun cutting and glueing little "dice" to get the answer - thanks Oyler ! Enjoy all the great sport this weekend folks !!

[serpentinew]

I must admit it was great fun - but was it, perhaps just a little too simple for a numerical?

[AHearer]

I'm starting to feel a little silly now. Knowing I'm not going to have much time this weekend, and seeing an exhaustive search was practical, I spent half an hour writing a program to solve this, and had the full grid ten minutes later. Now that you tell me it's an easy one, I suppose I'll go back and solve it by hand! Still got the cube-stacking to do, though.

[silversolver]

I am not generally a great fan of the numericals (too much slogging and trial and error in my opinion) but this one was pretty straightforward with the use of Excel to narrow down the possibilities, although I too needed to indulge in a little cube-making to solve the final step. Don't think I would fancy trying to fill the grid using brainpower alone...

[emcee]

All but final bit done: not alot of logic required to fill the grid I'm afraid & calculator redundant too. Slightly disappointed as Oyler's puzzles normally require much more. I'm still, however, in awe at how they're constructed with meaningful 'words' within clues.

[TheBear69]

emcee, don't judge it until you do the final step! I am sure there are some solvers who can do all the cubic thought in their heads but I needed to cut and tape the cubes like logophile did.

I'm ok with a relatively easy maths one since I am still struggling with Arden's Jigsaw puzzle!

[magichour]

Took a while to find the 'way in', but after that it was fairly straightforward. Nearly a Friday Club debut for me, but the endgame will need to wait until tomorrow. Not as daunting as the preamble first appeared, at least I hope not!

[tenflags]

logic eventually got me into the way to complete a full grid and like others will play with cubes in the morrow. I also chuckled at some of the words.

[Alekhine]

Cubes all done and required net completed ... with some thanks to Scotch tape and Mrs Alekhine.

Not sure why people post before completion, but hey ho!

[pushmi-pullyu]

Alekhine, it's often happened that I've posted to say I'm stuck, and almost instantly had a PDM. Don't know how that works, but it seems to.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, I have to agree with Alekhine. It was great to have a numerical that didn't demand lots of paper and frustration to complete the grid, but we spent ages on finding the relevant nets and lots of Scotch tape and paper on the assemblage of cubes.

[jim360]

I'm assuming all the successful solves mean that my vain and forlorn hopes of there being a misprint are for naught. But I can't for the life of me make anything seem to work even for just the across clues. Thought I had squeezed it down quickly from 720 possible sequences to just 48, and maybe even just 12 - but none of those 48 seem to work (e.g. turning up 7's in the grid, or 4a not being a whole number). Which, presumably, means that my initial logic was flawed or I've entered up the formulas wrongly into Excel. Whoops. Back to the drawing board this evening methinks.

[pushmi-pullyu]

jim360, for what it's worth, I found the down ones much easier to work out than the across ones, and once they were in there were so few unches that it made it possible to work backwards for the across ones.

[roslyn251254]

jim360 - start on the down clues, less choices with some of them!

[jim360]

ON the plus side I finally glanced at the down clues and took about 30 seconds to cut that down to 24 possible permutations. Maybe I'll come back to across clues later.

[jim360]

Wait a second... *86 is 48, isn't it? Duh... and if there are 64 squares ...

[jim360]

8*6, even.

Sorry for all this spam, lol, I don't know how to delete my own posts yet.

[logophile]

I would certainly recommend trying this without Excel jim - consideration of just 4 down clues will give all their unknown values, and the large number of fully checked across entries that this provides quickly leads to the rest.

[cluelessJoe]

Just glad that I caught that repeat of a 1973 'Blue Peter' during the week to get me in the mood for this. Looking forward to next week's which I understand involves assembling Tracy Island out of cornflake packets and an Advent crown from wire coat hangers.

[tilbee]

As someone who hitherto has not been a keen fan of the numericals, I came to this with renewed vigour having successfully resolved (and having actually thoroughly enjoyed) the GradeD in this month's Magpie.

In comparison found the grid fill here a little of a let down. Determing the values for the letters was somewhat trivial (at least once I bothered to read the final part of the first sentence of the preamble !) and then it became somewhat of an arithmetic chore. Still need to do the final cut and tape step, but not a part I really so enjoy so may put this off for another day.