Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Meursault:

"eg by one letter REJOB becomes [QS][DF][IK][NP][AC]. " was just an example (hence the eg). Forget QDINA

Buzzb, you overlooked the 6th word of my comment, 'etc.' I've looked at SFKPC, VINSF, ANSXK, BOTYL (that one was promising), DQVAN, HUZER (also faintly promising) and all the other 19 possibilities. Seems to be a lot of nonsense.

I was a little concerned about the advice from Crosswhit in comment 44. 2 of the 3 values mentioned in the previous comment were wrong, yet Crosswhit said something to the effect, "You're on the right track." (This was why I asked for some confirmation of those values).
So, I'm a little wary now...

Not really replying to Meursault, but I can't see any way to enter this forum which avoids having to reply to a specific comment which might not even be the final one by the time I have typed this message.

I have finished: the result is not quite what I was expecting, but it is certainly unambiguous. Only one question: apart from allowing you to search for the thematic word, does REJOB mean or represent anything? And does the phonetic alphabet have any significance in the thematic context?

Sorry if I inadvertently confused others, 'on the right track' meant using sound logic rather than necessarily having all the correct letter values.

This really is a brilliant little mathematical puzzle with 'proper' numerical clues and a load of thematic material crammed into the grid - bravo Botox !

Yes, in one very specific instance it has great relevance to the theme !

Well then, Crosswhit, the least you could have done to help Unclued would have been to say, "You're on the right track, but 2 of your values are wrong." Not to say anything about the wrong values perhaps encourages the solver to continue in the belief that he did have the right values.

I think the setter wasn't very good with the balance of solving grid A. At first it was very slow, and many solvers remarked upon this. Then, once more than half the values had been assigned, it became very quick. That is not balanced and not good design. So rather than 'Bravo', I'll say : "Could do better..."

I have the thematic 5 letter word but that doesn't help to convert numbers into letters. Try again tomorrow.

The number that the title and thematic word both encode to is the year of birth of Apollo 13's Lunar Module Pilot multiplied by the number that is the sum of the values of the first, third, fourth and fifth letters, minus the value of the second letter, of the thematic word.

Meursault, with this sort of puzzle where the possible values that the letters can take form a predefined set (as here or in a puzzle last year or so where the letters were the first 26 prime numbers), every letter solved reduces the pool of remaining numbers still out there. By the end there are very few possibilities left, so much of the effort is inevitably at the beginning.

I was actually quite relieved that there were only two bits of brute computation (solving for D, E, L and T, and then solving for M, I, K and O), both of which converged to single solutions very quickly. The rest of the solving was more or less linear (although I am sure there are alternative paths to the one I followed) and still involved a lot of careful calculation and checking.

With this sort of puzzle, I write everything down step by step and use an Excel spreadsheet for the calculations (it's tedious to set up all the clues as Excel formulae, but saves time in the long run). This doesn't stop going down blind alleys (as happened to me in the previous numerical puzzle last November), but makes it easier to spot the errors.