turast: Your list -
1. The "flips" & "rotation" only work if the letters are lower case. b & d OK B & D not.
Of course the misprints are all, deliberately in lower case. Instead of complaining, we should be congratulating Yorick on coming up with a completely original idea for misprints.
2. Does this mean that entries are in lower case?
No, and it's clear that only upper case works for a number of the entries. E.g. the letter E can only be symmetric in upper case;the letter I cannot work flipped in lower case. That is hardly difficult to infer.
3. East West flip would suggest that these entries are all across & reversed
No it does not; an EW flip of a down entry is perfectly reasonable.
4. North South flip would suggest that these entries are all down and reversed
Ditto
5. NORMAL would suggest that these entries are either across or down and in the right order, BUT, they would not undergo a TRANSFORMATION.
Correct
6. ROTATION looks like it can only apply to the individual letters, although LOINS / LIONS might "rotate" within a putative grid.
The instructions say to apply to the entry as a whole. So ROTATION is equivalent to turn your paper upside down and entering the answer.
7. Are individual letters transformed according to the flips and rotation?
No, the transforms are to the entries as a whole. This of course affects individual letters but depending on the transform and the direction of entry MAY reverse the order of the letters. A rotation reverses the entry. A NS flip reverse the entry if and only if it is a down; an EW flip reverses acrosses but not downs.
8. If we are right about the misprints, this means that
- GROUP 1 entries are normal (no transformation)
- GROUP 2 entries (b for p) are NS flip
- GROUP 3 entries (b for d) are EW flip
- GROUP 4 entries (d for p) are rotation (either across or down)
Correct (but this does not mean that Group 2 is restricted to down, etc)