Listener 4777 No 21 By Child's Play

[emcee]

An excellent puzzle. I enjoyed the first stage of the problem as logic was required throughout rather than testing umpteen possibilities.

The gridfill was quicker than anticipated and there is no ambiguity regarding the final answer.

I did wonder, had the current situation been different, whether this puzzle would have seen the light of day.

I'm glad it did.

Thanks, Child's Play.

[Cruncher]

That's encouraging. Finding this one difficult to break into

[Cruncher]

Now on my third summit bid...

[u10]

Was the date that this puzzle was published a coincidence bearing in mind what is happening on Sunday?

[Cruncher]

Think I made very heavy weather of that but enjoyed the dénouement. Sorry about our Lionesses. It would have been so nice to have another World Cup triumph to celebrate

[Dim16]

Nice puzzle with some features new to me for a Numerical (eg jigsaw, reversing) plus
an intriguing endgame.

I’m unable to find a solution where all operations are nontrivial, so have had to call it a day but I enjoyed the challenge nevertheless.

Thanks Child’s Play.

[emcee]

Dim 16, 0!=1 is a useful starting point.

[Dim16]

Emcee

Thanks, that might be the key point I was missing...

[Dim16]

Well I got there in the end, with a bit of help (thanks, emcee) and it was well worth it.

Agree with emcee that it was nice to have a Numerical that didn't involve a lot of computation, especially if, like me, you don't feel inclined to check the two 7-cell entries.

All in all, very neat.

Thanks again, Child's Play.

[Keepatit]

I didn’t mind this, despite the GWIT endgame, but I thought that the reliance on the knowledge that 0! = 1 was pretty disappointing. It’s not an obvious result to a non-mathematician (I did Further Maths A-level back in the day and it never occurred to me) and for numericals to appeal widely they shouldn’t need tricks like that. Nor the factorising requirement for the seven cell clues. A calculator and a clear head should be all that’s needed.

[HawkCrossword]

I tackled this one on a seaside break. I was pleased to have a numeric, and doubly so that it didn't need much advanced computation. I got through with a calculator app on my smartphone, and some queries to the Wolfram Alpha site on prime number factorisation. The grid stare took a while, but the solution was very neat indeed. These crossnumber puzzles are developing much more satisfying endgames these days. Many thanks, Child's Play!

[timesquiz]

I’ve come to this quite late, saving it for my holiday. But I'm stuck on the preamble!
Across and down clues are each given in ascending order of their answers….the numbers in brackets are the number of cells in the grid entry. Yet there are grid entries of 2 cells following grid entries of 3 cells. How can this be? Surely a 2 cell answer is a lower value than a 3 cell value as leading zeros are not allowed. What am I missing?

[HawkCrossword]

Hi Timesquiz. Some of the cells have a 2-digit number in them, but the lengths show the number of cells, not the length of the answer. So (say) an answer could be 123, with the 12 in one cell and the 3 in another. This is given as length 2 (2 cells). It would be larger than some length-3 answers, e.g. 101, where all digits are in different cells. Hope this makes sense!