Listener Crossword No. 4542 Have Fun, It's Wordy By Kea

[emcee]

Apologies if another thread has begun; nothing is showing up that it has.

On reading the preamble I thought this looked tricky (if not downright impossible). However, the start of the puzzle was very linear and gave a number of entries straightforwardly. The remainder of the puzzle, as long as great care was taken remembering what a number represented, was not overly difficult.

In summary, not a great deal of mathematical logic required but much care needed.

Thanks, Kea.

[PhilipW]

Agreed emcee, a lovely puzzle. One of the few times I have got a Listener out in under an hour, but I think the glass of Calvados helped - a lovely idea for a numerical puzzle. The challenge is as much understanding what is going on and finding the starting point and then it falls out very neatly. I felt the same about your point of having to take care to remember what a number represented...it reminded me of the first time I ever used a reverse Polish calculator and getting used to that mindset.

Thanks Kea - very enjoyable.

[12barblues]

Completely agreed, not as difficult as the compiler’s name suggested with the main issue being keeping track of what we’re entries and what was an alphabetic sum. Lots of fiddle adding up though

[sunny-dave]

I cordially dislike numericals (depite them being my initial introduction to the world of The Listener) and was going to have a weekend off - I'm moving house next week and many hours of Numerical Listenering seemed an activity I could do without.

But I love Kea's puzzles and (encouraged by the comments above) decided to have a quick look over breakfast - so glad I did.

A delightful puzzle, with lots of nicely interlocking cross-checks to confirm that one is not heading down the wrong leg of the trousers.

Thanks Kea ... now back to sorting/culling/packing my possessions before the removers arrive.

[icynorth]

Agree with the above: the biggest challenge was getting my head around the preamble, and the puzzle had no real traps after that.

I don’t know how easy it is to engineer complexity into these things, but I found only one answer which held me up for more than a couple of minutes. Still, after the horrors of 12-letter jumbles, I’m not complaining.

[crosswhit99]

Took a while to realise that the numerical entry for clue x was the same as x in the clues, after that it became pretty straightforward. Certainly a clever construction, especially managing to get all but three of the letters into the title.

[icynorth]

I suppose the obvious way to add complexity would be to have more clues as functions of more than one letter, but then it would rapidly drift from being pencil-and-paper solvable.

[sunny-dave]

Agreed, icynorth - I think one of the virtues of this puzzle was that there was no need to deploy any heavy artillery (spreadsheets, scripts, whatever) - it was entirely doable with no more than pencil and paper - which is refreshing for a numerical these days.

[British_Olympics]

As an eagle eyed contributor on t'other site has spotted, the title is even more apt as it uses exactly the same letters as those in the puzzle's serial number!

[sunny-dave]

Yes - I saw the answer to my musing there, British_Olympics - very neat of Kea and a good spot by the contributor.