Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

I too recruited him indoors planks. Not for the maths though (we’re both mathsy) but for the creation of the excel spreadsheet. I knew what I wanted the spreadsheet to do but building a module to convert numbers to words was beyond me, despite google’s instruction. Him indoors did it in double quick time. He was then hooked so we’ve just completed our first Listener together in record time! Hubby’s parting words were “how the heck does someone create something like that” to which I replied that I ask myself the same question every week.

An excellent puzzle. Hat’s off and thank you to Kea. Your puzzle has netted a new Listener recruit... well for the number puzzles at least.

I’ll have to draft in him indoors again - it will similarly be his first foray into the Listener, two new recruits for Kea!

D’oh, just realised my error, team planks shouldn’t have too much difficulty now.

Although across and down entries starting in the same cell are given different clue notations it wasn't immediately obvious to me that, for example, the answer to clue 'n' is the same as the value 'n' in the first across clue. Had this been explicitly stated in the preamble it would certainly have speeded up the initial grid fill !

Wintonian (@7) got this spot on. As I said earlier, my problem was to keep forgetting that the number I had just arrived at went somewhere else. There isn't much maths in this, just very simple addition - the problem is the devious reverse logic.

The idea is clever since it provides nice chains of reasoning, but the calculation of digit sums is proving to be very tiresome. I appear to have made a mistake and will need to backtrack but that should not be too hard as I always keep a record.

I have spent a lifetime doing mathematics and I have to admit that I find these numericals do very little for me, as most of them, including this, require virtually no mathematical reasoning. I do have to admire, however, the ingenuity of the setters and this is a lovely idea of Kea's. Thank goodness for Excel, although there is still a lot of hands-on work to do.

There is a website dcode.fr that can do a lot of the hard work for you.

I would appreciate a little guidance getting started here. Is the answer to the clue at A the 6 letter number OR the number arrived at after you do the calculation with the letters. I was going well on the assumption that it was the former until I got to clue b because my answer to A + G is way more than 9 letters. Think I’ve got the wrong end of the stick!

I think the answer to clue A is the 6 letter number ELEVEN which can then be used in the down clue "n" which i have as FIFTY THREE , which can then be used in across clue G ....
My answer to A + G would be 11 + 91 which seems to fit in at across clue B (102)
I could have it wrong though!

You fill in the actual number where the clue is given. So if A is ELEVEN - six letters, you fill in 11 at A and add the total of E+L+V+N elsewhere.