Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

I am utterly stumped... Without fully understanding the preamble, I plugged away on DURATIONS and at least have those digits worked out. I think I do now understand what the preamble is saying, but I've not got a clue how to act on it to make any progress with the equation.

Is there some simple logical inference that I'm missing, or is there another round of slogging away at algebra?

If you have all the digits, then you must have 20 clue answers, all 4-digit numbers with no zeroes and no repeated digits. 7 of them are BCEFs and the rest are Gs. Of course, you don't know which is which.

An entry for a BCEF answer is simple to compute. The G answers are trickier because for a given G there are multiple candidate BCEFs that produce that G, but it's not hard to figure out a method. Alternatively, you can pretty easily compile a master list of valid BCEF-G pairings. A master list will come in handy anyway when you are ready to do the 8-digit entries.

Figuring out the digits is by far the hardest part of this puzzle. You are more than halfway there. Don't give up.

Hi crowdedmorning. I couldnt find any particular logical inference - however by going through each of the answers and determining their G value, you can see which ones must be in the set of 13 (because of the restrictions). You can also work out the "CF" and "BE" values from each of the answers, to work out which must be in the bucket of 7.

It is a little bit of an arithmetic slog, but (at least for me) the payoff was worth it.

Despite earlier posts I’m completely stuck at the first stage of identifying the digits for DURATIONS. I’ve worked out the 2 options for I and D but can’t get any further. Any hints on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

numbskull, although I don't remember my solve path I'm looking at the clues this morning and think that c should help you disambiguate I and D (in combination with other restrictions you've probably already got).

I think I finally have the values of DURATIONS. Can I check how the equations work: B + C sqr 66 means C multiplied by the square root of 66 plus B. Is that correct? Or is it B plus C multiplied by the square root of 66? I hope this isn’t breaking rules but I can’t seem to find the answer and I need a definitive one before attempting the next part.

My second alternative was B plus C the total of which is then multiplied by the square root of 66. So easy to givr an ambiguous statement.

I think this is a borderline unfair crossword going by the rules of mathematicals that I seem to have seen somewhere.

Normal rules are used so it’s ( C times Sqr(66) ) added to B.

If it was your second way, B + C would be in brackets.

Thank you smst. That's helped me make a break through.

I havent seen the rules of mathematicals, but im not sure how it could be seen as unfair. The normal rules of algebra are mostly followed (as it states), and where they are not eg in the def of "BCEF values", it explains what is meant by that.