Listener 4283

[Contrarian]

I presume the www.crosswordclub.co.uk site is down.

There's no other url is there?

[borealis]

Great enjoyment; lots of smiles. BRB, minimal Bradfords, and a piece of paper - how nice not to use a computer. One other reference to check date. Only needed the first column to confirm numbers, but the joy of seeing the rest of the sum working was fun in itself.

[doctormatt]

Brilliant construction; the last stage post-grid fill took a while, due to my stubbornness, but all resolved now!

[s_pugh]

As if we don't have enough number puzzles! ;¬( Straightforward grid fill bar the empty cells but this one's heading for the bin. I know it's supposed to be a challenging crossword but can't we leave applied maths to the quarterly-ish numericals? Can't say I'm a fan of this one.

[perseverer]

S_pugh - If you can guess the theme from what you have in the grid, you really need to do very little maths!

[jim360]

Those cutting themselves off from maths are surely cutting out about as much thematic material again from ever being used.

[Scorpius]

Another magnificent puzzle from the Mango team, and a poignant reminder of the sad death of Roddy Forman.
As I'm hopeless when it comes to working in non-decimal bases I feared I would fail at the last hurdle, but I reckon it's possible to arrive at a correct solution without doing any complex maths, provided one has twigged the theme. Of the four likely thematic dates, three can be eliminated immediately because they fail to satisfy some of the conventional numerical provisions in the puzzle, so that gets 8 number values; assigning values to the remainder is straightforward.
I did manage to do the base d addition as a check (and it all tallied), but it wasn't strictly necessary.

[s_pugh]

Thanks for the encouragement Perseverer, I'd spotted the potential from the four hidden words but had missed one of the possibilities for the initial letter of the result word which totally threw me. Amazing how a fresh look can make everything spring into place. I'd still say you need to 'do the maths' to prove it all (which I've now done - thanks Excel yet again!), and while jim360 is presumably a maths whiz from his avatar not all of us are quite so blessed! ;¬) A remarkable construction but a preamble that I suspect would scare the pants off a Listener newcomer. Thanks to Mango.

[jim360]

I used excel too. Didn't particularly fancy messing about with solving one of those word sums in base d, for d not 10, when you'd need to go up to d^5, by hand. Much simpler to let a calculator do the messy number word for you, and input the logic yourself.

I just find it odd and perhaps a bit frustrating that the only thematic idea it seems OK to complain about, consistently, is maths. I certainly don't want to see maths all or even most of the time. In fact I like the fact that I have to research stuff that's new to me. Especially poetry... I'd have thought that it's nice to have a puzzle that requires skills or knowledge you didn't otherwise have. Isn't the best puzzle something that forces us to learn something new?

[EAChaplin]

Back to the Future

If we are to work in Base d and I have that correct, then the year under the grid denotes an event which hasn't yet happened:-). I should mention I never did get the hang of the DeLorean.

[aldanna]

So clever. I just can't imagine how Mango planned all that. As said, the grid fill was not too hard but very enjoyable. I outsourced the numerical stuff (well, why keep a mathematician and bark yourself?)

[Askival]

Could anyone help explain the preamble a little to me please? I've sussed the theme, have what I think must be the full grid, and I would like to verify everything with the mathematical aspect but I'm not exactly sure what I'm being asked to do... When it says "used to sum four hidden words", does that mean you need to add together each letter of a word to get a number, then all of those four final numbers add together again to get a fifth?

Sorry if I'm overcomplicating, but I'd really love to finish this one as it's been so enjoyable up to this point.

[Ruthrobin]

Askival, email [email protected] and I'll try to help you.

[olichant]

The penny has taken ages to drop for me (as did the gridfill) - but I'm glad I perservered. There is so much to admire in this.

[Cagey]

Continuing my bid to be last poster each week. What a great puzzle. A bit of all things. I did number listeners originally as they are the most accessible, but then drifted into occasional word ones. I too like the variation. This one and one last month in the Magpie that combined numbers and words great.
I like puzzles that are original, regardless of complexity of setting or solving.

[iamamoose]

I agree with EA Chaplin. For elegance, the year really should be entered in base d, as the rest of the puzzle uses it. But that is obviously not what the setter intends.

[easterfool]

I too am speechless with admiration after a slow solve - no I didn't start last Weekend but a couple of days ago. How this was put together I do not know but I am so glad that it was. Whilst folk are wanting the year in base-d why not go the whole hog and have the crossword number that way too. That would make some people think, blanch, moan or weep - but it would have helped work out the base if you needed further help I suppose. Personally this comes tops for me - I raise a glass to Roddy and co.

[the_heisman]

I wonder if there will be a setters' blog on this. It boggles my mind how one can conceive at the outset that such a stunning outcome is possible. Surely this is a monkeys and typewriter thing with only a very small number of monkeys? Genius.