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nxe

20th May 2023, 00:04
Nice and easy with a bit of coding to do some of the legwork, but I bet this would be a bit of a slog if you were intending to do it by hand. An admirably constructed puzzle for sure, but not a wildly fun solve for me at least. One for the purists, perhaps.

I'll be curious to see if there's a nice bit of algebra that facilitates the final step in a more elegant way than just doing an exhaustive search.
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felipedon

20th May 2023, 06:17
An enjoyable solve. Not as daunting as the preamble might suggest. And none of the usual laborious trawling through lists of primes, squares, etc.
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andyp

20th May 2023, 08:21
Can I check - does the preamble mean that all the answers to the clues and corresponding entries have i) no zeroes and ii) no repeated digits.
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dylan

20th May 2023, 08:27
Well done nxe and felipedon. Apart from two of the letters, I can't see any way into DURATIONS.
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andyp

20th May 2023, 08:39
dylan - have you tried working out which letter is 1?
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candledave

20th May 2023, 08:49
andyp -
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candledave

20th May 2023, 08:50
Ha - I’ll try again.

Andy - your reading of the preamble is correct
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bananabean

20th May 2023, 11:15
I think I know DRTIN for sure. Is that the best way to start?
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candledave

20th May 2023, 11:23
Broadly how I started although I made some educated guesses generally but probably got A next then S then O and U.

As all answers are 4 distinct non-zero numbers, it’s quite easy to check a couple and work out if an option is wrong.
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andyp

20th May 2023, 13:46
All done - despite some errors in DURATIONS originally, once that was fixed the rest came out without as much brute force needed as originally feared.

Thanks Miles for something very different - it amazes me how the setters dream up these things, let alone then turn them into a puzzle!
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