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I keep going round in circles here. I have the first 3 digits of 18a double that of the first 3 digits of 24a. Please put me out of my misery and tell me that is wrong so that I can finally bin this infuriating (for me) puzzle.

24a is only two digits.

good morning captaincoma, I am sorry but my brain is frazzled, I meant 28a!!

I wish I could help but I gave up after I got the same answer for 9a+15d and 16a+3d. Good luck!

Hey Gitto, I believe that is indeed incorrect.

Do I sense a general giving up on this one, or is it just much harder to frame a mathematical question and thus get a useful, but not too revealing hint? I'm guessing that the biggest head scratch is working out a method for testing which numbers are couplets without writing out tables of them.

That last post was ambiguous. To clarify - on the word games I'm generally soliciting hints but on the number games I may be able to offer one to anybody who wants it.

At the same number of attempts as the answer to 11ac I have finally completed this!! My problem was an idiotic assumption about what the 3rd digit of 1ac must be. What irks me a lot is that my answers in the 2nd row and 2nd column were not a fluke, as I previously thought, they were in fact correct. I think once you have messed up a mathematical you need to go for a long walk and start again, rather than starting again immediately whilst being unable to erase previously incorrect decisions from a disintegrating brain. One simple mistake always leads to failure.

Well done, Gitto. I thought you had thrown in the towel. I'm progressing nicely and I'm taking advantage of the wet weather to hunker down and get it finished.

Thanks Whistler - my OCD kicked in and I steeled myself for one final attempt.