Crossword Help Forum
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There are plenty of folks who complete and submit the puzzle with assistance from others, so it's really up to each solver to decide and it's not against the published rules.

… if it did bother your conscience you could always credit the help you've received and enter as 'brassmonkey and the welders', for example ;-)

I managed to complete this by solving the anagram first but I still can't see the links between the perimeter numbers. Not really necessary though is it?

I haven’t done enough of this sort of numericals to have any data but I do wonder whether you could do some sort of frequency analysis to assist if you were really struck as I expect 1,2 and 3 to come up more often in the equations and when they spell real words you would therefore expect the more common letters to appear at the lower numbers.

Anyone look at this?

It is perhaps a shame that with the benefit of the (8,4,3) message it isn't necessary to see that the 15 sums of adjacent pairs of perimeter numbers are all numbers of a special thematic type (as are 2 of the 3 corner cell's numbers).

Captaincoma, tatters had a hint in the other thread for the relation between perimeter pairs. Appropriately, it involves triangular numbers.

I think it would have been quite neat if there had been no reference to the 8,4,3 phrase in the preamble as it would have been pretty cool to find it

crosswhit99 agreed -- I saw what the three corners needed to be straight away, and the message fixed them, but it then took me a while longer to figure out what the roundabout of relations was all supposed to be! I think "relations" wasn't a very helpful way to express that. With a slightly clearer pointer, as candledave says, the existence of the message could have been left as an easter egg to find. Ingenious puzzle in all though.

Having a ball with this one!

For the answer in 5 down: I’ve got the three digits that need to go in those 2 cells. When I go to use those same digits in 5 Down Left, can they be in any order?

Ie if 5 down is 123, and I put the 1 in the first cell, and the 23 in the second cell, does 5 down left have to start with 123 or could it start with 132?

Also, 5 left down seems to end in 3, which is strange, given the number of factors in its clue! (Rules out any even numbers, any fives, etc.)

Given that the perimeter cells are going to spell out something, using the 15 letters, no cell can have a number bigger than 15 in it.
If 5down right was 123, 5down left must start with 123.

Don't see why you think your last point presents a problem.