Listener 4075 - Square bashing by Arden

Philoctetes | 19:39 Fri 26th Feb 2010 | Crosswords

52 Answers

Hoorah - numbers. Again one must marvel at the construction. There are some fairly obvious approaches, but I have not ventured into the hinterland much. I do hope the required clues give a satisfactory payoff.

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jamesah

Thanks to all who commented. I don't know why but almost as soon as I post a question on here I see that I have made a stupid mistake. I've now finished it and am amazed by yet another brilliant construction. How do they do it?

Ruthrobin

I have stuck with it and got there, (thanks, Clamzy) but feel suitably put in place by Philoctetes' comment about the maths we have learned by the age of eight. My O'level distinction didn't prepare me for these nasty things. I would be happy with a one to 107 ratio. (Is that about one every two years? :) )

daagg

RR, perhaps it's a brain wiring thing - some people just don't do numbers. Marcus du Sautoy did a Horizon about this a few weeks ago. When I'm doing these puzzles, I try and follow a strategy, but I find myself jumping all over the place and using all sorts of techniques. I think the same happens with the word puzzles, but at least then you can be confident that each individual answer is correct. The numbers puzzles keep you on edge for a long time.

I have found that using Notepad on a PC is good for writing down each step of logic. Then you can backtrack or check any previous step, and delete back to where you made a mistake. If I try and use pencil and paper, I end up with a right old mess.

catstail

RuthRobin - if you have the listener crossword book, there is a crossword in there from 1998 which uses Pascal's triangle and goodness knows what else (Combinations by Odds p.16). It demands a lot more maths knowledge. I am sure that some of it I learned post O-level. Would be interested to know if it would still be published today.

Philoctetes

Question Author

Sorry, I hope I didn't sound too smug with my 8 year old comment. But this one is only multiplication and division, after all. And, just to be more controversial, surely all mathematics is just a tautology ("numbers" being merely unchanging adjectives that do not have properties in their own right) expressed in terms of the four standard processes? Just think of these puzzles as straightforward little logic tests and they stop being that scary. Though I must say I did feel I had "arrived" as a Listener solver when I first completed on.
And, PS, I am a Classicist by training.

Clamzy

If you really want a challenge I suggest you have a look at Listener 3148 Higher Powers by Leon. I don't know about 8 year olds but I am astonished that as many as 218 solvers got this correct.
For a copy email me at [email protected]

Ruthrobin

We were, in fact, out of touch with calculators and computors except for a child's 1-10 toy - miles from a phone or even a centre of civilisation and did this with only pencil and paper (and a bit of reassurance early on) and it was a dreadful slog but very rewarding when intersecting numbers at the end confirmed the last six letter-number equivalences and the expected words appeared. (But try working out one across with only pencil and paper! - yes, I know it's possible - we did it.

Zabadak

OK. Until a short while ago (when I entered all my answers the right way round, having found out why the first guess was wrong) I was with the cross crossWORD people. It's taken me until now (with time off to do 4076) in bits and pieces to crack this thing. I did it the spreadsheet way (huge respect to ruthrobin for doing it without) and kept hitting a brick wall until I realised I'd entered one (one!) of the clues with a * where it should have been a +. I found this site http://www.algebra.co...r-any-number-1.solver handy for doing the 23's, I'd forgotten how to find factors. When the light dawned, I was transformed from hating all you smug b...rainiacs who had cracked it to being a massive admirer of the Arden's skill and that incredible reversible number at the top. I still think it's a hell of a slog, and I'm still not sure what an arithmetic puzzle is doing in a words competition, but I confess 4076, though also brilliant, seemed a little tame by comparison. I have 9 spoiled grids littering my study. Can anyone beat my record?

Eril

yes - respect Ruthrobin. I used a calculator for the squaring. I do reckon that 1ac took me past my 8yo knowledge as the calcs I had couldn't cope with that number of digits, so I used a simple (and appropriate) method to split up the calculation. By hand?! I reckon I would be still working on it, given my propensity to make calculation errors. Thanks to Catstail for the reference to "removing ambiguity" - after an internet search trying to link an overgrown pixie to the title I realised that I was forgetting an important factor...

I always enjoy the number puzzle, and still remember an excellent Listener which used different number bases on different rows/columns. That was a blinder.