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Listener 4151: Number or Nummer by Ruslan
58 Answers
Tricky start to this numerical with a preamble that initially confused me as I misunderstood what was going to be English and German.
I now have all the letters, a completed left hand grid and the two words, but yet to determine the right hand grid.
Will sleep on it
I now have all the letters, a completed left hand grid and the two words, but yet to determine the right hand grid.
Will sleep on it
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Almost gave up. It seemed a waste of time to flog through it all. Then I redefined it as a programming challenge.
10 loops of 10 or 10! possibilities. Just look to see if each clue answer is the right length.
Add a few reductions for A, D and B and it runs in 30 seconds.
Produces 48 possibilities.
Should add plug for REAL STUDIO here!
Add a check for the T in 21 across - 2 solutions resolved by clashes. Thus the LH grid.
Take the other 40 odd solutions and resolve clashes and out pops the RH grid.
The English German transliteration is too obvious.
No real fun. No PDM No learning (except to read the clues more closely)
As an exercise to the brain nil pointes.
Lets reduce the number crosswords to 3 or 2 a year and choose those that give a bit of .......?
10 loops of 10 or 10! possibilities. Just look to see if each clue answer is the right length.
Add a few reductions for A, D and B and it runs in 30 seconds.
Produces 48 possibilities.
Should add plug for REAL STUDIO here!
Add a check for the T in 21 across - 2 solutions resolved by clashes. Thus the LH grid.
Take the other 40 odd solutions and resolve clashes and out pops the RH grid.
The English German transliteration is too obvious.
No real fun. No PDM No learning (except to read the clues more closely)
As an exercise to the brain nil pointes.
Lets reduce the number crosswords to 3 or 2 a year and choose those that give a bit of .......?
JustinTime, I do not think it's really fair to judge the puzzle when you solve it by brute force, as you did. I think it's a legitimate way to solve it, but you should not expect a PDM.
I am sure Ruslan intended solvers to use 15D, 24a as an entry to get a small number of B,D possibilities; then A, then I and Z at which point you would likely stumble at 8A until it finally dawned on you what the convoluted instructions were trying to communicate. While I thought the instructions were about as poorly worded as I've seen, I actually thought the puzzle itself was pretty clever. I did find it pretty tedious dealing with the longer clues and all the nesting, though.
I am sure Ruslan intended solvers to use 15D, 24a as an entry to get a small number of B,D possibilities; then A, then I and Z at which point you would likely stumble at 8A until it finally dawned on you what the convoluted instructions were trying to communicate. While I thought the instructions were about as poorly worded as I've seen, I actually thought the puzzle itself was pretty clever. I did find it pretty tedious dealing with the longer clues and all the nesting, though.
I did use Excel to help me - it seemed sensible especially for all those long algebraic clues to have an nice numerical answer ready with just a couple of changes. But that only sped things up. I think the real breakthrough was resolving the clashes between 15d and 21a.
Thanks Contendo for explaining "clue order" by the way.
I actually tend to enjoy the number puzzles - the only ones I can make any headway into. Solved 2, and I nearly completed a third, but make some silly slip up I think that stopped me finishing that one. If I'm ever to do the word puzzles I'll need much more help to even start to break into them.
Thanks Contendo for explaining "clue order" by the way.
I actually tend to enjoy the number puzzles - the only ones I can make any headway into. Solved 2, and I nearly completed a third, but make some silly slip up I think that stopped me finishing that one. If I'm ever to do the word puzzles I'll need much more help to even start to break into them.
Have abandoned this (thus drawing to an end my annual bid for completion, which is a shame - but I am no computer programmer so task is well beyond me ... even cracking the bottom RH corner by limited trial and error went beyond being a chore). For much more fun, and right down the normal strasse, try Shark's EV - with its splendid multiple endgames which any child could imagine !
I liked this one, so thanks to Ruslan. Didn't seem to be any more calcs or testing of different possibilities than there normally are, and the idea was also a good one, especially the way that a 0 in one entry could seem to be appearing at the start of another entry, so tempting the solver to discard that possibility - fell into that trap, but fortunately spotted it before any harm was done. The instructions were a bit opaque at first, but - like many - became clearer as the puzzle went on. The torturous calculations I presume were due to the requirement for two distinct solutions or possibly to allow the solver to solve, otherwise they were surely over-complex and encouraged simple arithmetical slip-ups.
Agree with Eril in so far as I don't think this was as difficult as it seemed, if and when you finally realised what the preamble actually meant, and understood its implications. Some of the tortuous calculations could have been simplified - some looked as if they were attempts to make clues appear to have German words in them - but in practice they just made calculations tedious and, as Eril says, prone to arithmetical errors.
I agree with the most recent comments. This wasn't as hard to solve as others have made out, and is worth having a go at, without recourse to programming or even Excel. The key, as others have pointed out, is the south-east corner. There are only six possible solutions for 24 and only nine non-clashing possibilities for the pair of 24 and 15. Considering 19 yields 17 possible solutions, and considering 21 on the left reduces these to one. Given 13, Z must be small, and the rest is straighforward. On the right, there is only one solution for 21 that fits and doesn't begin with a T.
For those who are bemused by the algebraic logic, there are mnemonics to help. The best of these is BODMAS, which stands for Brackets, Order, Division & Multiplication, and Addition & Subtraction. [Some use PEDMAS, for Parentheses, Exponents ...] In other words do everything in brackets or parentheses first, then all exponents or roots ("order"), then all divisions & multiplications, and finally all additions & subtractions. Within each set of brackets/parentheses the BODMAS order follows. It would have been clearer (e.g. in 5) if Ruslan had used parentheses nested within brackets, rather than parentheses within parentheses; in that case, you do the parentheses first and then everything within the brackets, according to the usual order.
To take an example, in 13 do I+D and then multiply it by F (save 1); do S+T, then multiply it by A and divide it by Z (save 2); then cube Z (save 3); now do 1 - 2 + 3.
To appreciate how well constructed this puzzle is, try to replace 16 with a simpler single expression that yields the separate answers on the left and right, using the two different sets of solutions.
For those who are bemused by the algebraic logic, there are mnemonics to help. The best of these is BODMAS, which stands for Brackets, Order, Division & Multiplication, and Addition & Subtraction. [Some use PEDMAS, for Parentheses, Exponents ...] In other words do everything in brackets or parentheses first, then all exponents or roots ("order"), then all divisions & multiplications, and finally all additions & subtractions. Within each set of brackets/parentheses the BODMAS order follows. It would have been clearer (e.g. in 5) if Ruslan had used parentheses nested within brackets, rather than parentheses within parentheses; in that case, you do the parentheses first and then everything within the brackets, according to the usual order.
To take an example, in 13 do I+D and then multiply it by F (save 1); do S+T, then multiply it by A and divide it by Z (save 2); then cube Z (save 3); now do 1 - 2 + 3.
To appreciate how well constructed this puzzle is, try to replace 16 with a simpler single expression that yields the separate answers on the left and right, using the two different sets of solutions.
Well middle ground view for me..
logic and grind (no programming facility to crunch through 10!), I think it was a good puzzle but the instructions could have been clearer. I initially wasted some time on the assumption that one solution (grid) would be English and one German. In any event maybe I might of been able to reduce some grind if My logic was a tad sharper.
Sort of enjoyed it but ready for a frying pan round the head from she who must be obeyed for spending more time on this than I should have done.
logic and grind (no programming facility to crunch through 10!), I think it was a good puzzle but the instructions could have been clearer. I initially wasted some time on the assumption that one solution (grid) would be English and one German. In any event maybe I might of been able to reduce some grind if My logic was a tad sharper.
Sort of enjoyed it but ready for a frying pan round the head from she who must be obeyed for spending more time on this than I should have done.
Also finally got there. I was initially tempted to write a program but then managed to spot the opening in opening - incidentally for those dismissing it as a brute force approach I'd have thought that writing a program to solve it would have been quite a good achievement!
perserverer - German words certainly did appear in the clues, all connected with newpapers or names of newspapers.
perserverer - German words certainly did appear in the clues, all connected with newpapers or names of newspapers.
Whew. Week-on-Sunday club, checking in. A lot of hard work, and some good revelations, but too much of this reminded me of the word puzzles where you have to puzzle out the wordplay after getting the answer. You seemed to have to make inspired guesses to make the thing possible. I am hoping for insight into the logic intended by the setter, in 10 days time. Thank you, Ruslan, I think!
Con gratulations to your nephews, tilbee. I hope that they have a great time at Oxford, with lots of hard work, like I didn't do. Which college(s) is(are) being honoured? That is where I first met the Listener crossowrd - what a lot of time I must have spent (wasted) on them since. Not least on this latest numerical, which finally gave in, after 3 attempts. Brute force failed, brute force failed again, despairing logic in the SE corner (like others) finally won through at 1am on Monday morning - Great joy. Wish
I was a computer boffin - or do I really. How do you write a program for this? Now for last Saturday's effort.
I was a computer boffin - or do I really. How do you write a program for this? Now for last Saturday's effort.
It's a terrible shame that people use "brute force" for these puzzles. I would have thought it was easier, and certainly more fulfilling, to use logic. There were very few possiblilities for the bottom right corner of the grid as it turns put.
The preamble was quite clear, i thought, once carefully read. I was in denial for a long time that the second grid was a completely separate puzzle, but that was hardly the fault of the instructions.
The preamble was quite clear, i thought, once carefully read. I was in denial for a long time that the second grid was a completely separate puzzle, but that was hardly the fault of the instructions.
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