Listener 4203

[Philoctetes]

Well no one seems to have noticed it was going to be a numerical. And i see that someone by the name of "Zabadak" has already commented on the Crossword Club site in a somewhat Z-Cup winning fashion. Obviously inspired by the Games and wants his cup back.

[jim360]

Nope - no need for excel. Indeed it might even be a distraction to try and write a program to solve this. I'm not convinced it would be possible or useful.

Anyway there are a few useful points of entry into this puzzle and once you get going then, sloppy algebra aside, it isn't too bad. I reckon that, if I hadn't got sidetracked for a long time by accidentally entering the right answer for 6d at 2d, using H when I meant W, and one or two other silly mistakes, this took me no more than three or four hours.

[crosswhit99]

Agreed, very enjoyable for one who relies on pen, paper and calculator only ! I started with 18, which can be entered without reference to any other clue.

[IainGrace]

Happy to compete for the Z-Cup. Can't recall a less inviting preamble to a "crossword". Of no interest. Nonetheless, well done to jim360. Magichour, never mind numbers - think letters.

[tnap]

I know numericals aren't everyone's cup of tea, but I too really enjoyed this one. As Jim says, it's not too hard once you find the way in. Spotting the 'novel title' early certainly helps.

[Coalminers]

I was lucky to have my friend Nina to help me with the denouement of this puzzle!
There seems to be a lot of collusion amongst compilers nowadays.

[TheBear69]

Well, I made it to the end but not without some programming to work my way thru the combinatorial explosion. I never found a deductive 'path' but I made an educated guess as to which of two branches to take early on. Even then I did not get very far with just logic. I was able to deduce 4 of the title letters and that was enough to trigger an incorrect but close title (what I had was not a novel title but a famous line with the wrong number of letters!) But that was enough for me to find the right title and then things fell into place.

Bravo to anyone who finds a deductive path for this one; I'm happy to be done with it.

[midazolam]

The Listener is a thematic crossword, whether words or numbers. Apart from the asterisked misprints there is no other thematic material/tasks to be carried out. Non-thematic misprints are there just to make it harder. A word puzzle solely based on a few cluing misprints would not be allowed, nor would the use of non-thematic misprints.

[jumperjudy]

well at least it makes a change from thumbing through the BRB!

[starwalker]

Not the greatest Listener experience I have ever had. Just glad it's all over. Pass the cup !

[Oyler]

Wow! What a Listener debut. This was brilliantly well set and I'm so jealous!! Magpie subscribers had an advantage though as they'd have already seen something similar with the numerical in issue 99 which was Dumber Muzzle by Hedgehog.

[BlackHugh]

Well I will now have to start my fourth attempt at this! But one good thing I have the novel . You might have hoped that getting that meant that you were home with the numbers - but obviously I've made some arithmetical error. I do agree with oyler that it is a great puzzle!

[silversolver]

I am not normally a great fan of the numericals but I enjoyed this in a masochistic sort of way. There was a logical path through it (after one false start) and one can only marvel at how this was constructed.

[Arcticpenguin]

What a nightmare - I'm not a great fan of numericals at the best of times - just have a go for statistical purposes (makes up for the mistakes I make on the ordinary ones). Seemed to have solved 16 out of 26 so should be able to finish hopefully. Can we set up a group to ban these ? Seems to me that "crosswords" should contain "words" not numbers. Why not heiroglyphics or Klingon ? Couldn't be any worse. Enter me for the Z cup on this one.

[TheBear69]

Arcticpenguin, trying to ban these is a futile exercise. As I understand it the four mathematical Listeners are usually among the most popular of the year as measured by number of entries. This is a terrific example and more than justifies the continuation of this tradition.

[Cloverjo]

I love the numericals, although having a tough time on this one. You have wordy ones 48 weeks out of 52. Please leave these alone and stop all talk of banning them.

[dr b]

I decided to have another go as I was traveling this weekend and this was my airport/plane/hotel amusement. I'll be damned if I didn't solve it using just the calculator app on my e-reader. Still not sure how that happened, really.

[fortyseven]

In the past, whenever the Listener numerical has seemed impossibly difficult, there's actually been a clear solution path which can be followed if you don't panic and just keep going. Same thing here. This puzzle is beautifully constructed. Congratulations and thanks to Hedgehog.

[jim360]

There is a totally logical path through this puzzle - for myself I've only really worked out what it was backwards, since rather like a maze you tend to find the dead ends before the actual route. Anyway that makes it a very impressive construction I think. The misprints in non-starred clues surely are necessary otherwise this would be close to a trivial puzzle - since none of the algebraic expressions is all that long and most are simple multiplications.

I suppose the fact that I've loved maths since I was seven makes me biased, but why do people dislike number puzzles so much? They're exercises in pure logic, purer surely than any word listener. To be fair I had the same reaction when I saw this one. "Oh goody, a number puzzle, I've been looking forward to oh my god, misprints?!!" Was probably how I spend the first half an hour with this one. It's just about getting over that step of being overawed, and then some (a lot of) prime factorisation and knowledge of squares, cubes, fourth powers etc., and you're half-way to this finish already in this one.

[word_cross]

100% agree with Oyler and jim360 - I thought this was an excellent numerical. Looked absolutely impossible to begin with, but very solvable without anything more than a calculator (and lots of pages of paper!). In fact, as jim360 says, trying to use Excel to do anything more fancy than keeping track of which numbers / letters you've used probably just makes things more difficult - this isn't one where a brute force approach will help.