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But cypherhouse you know that the category is a variety of 7 so how many of them can fit in 1a, one of them also being the k??????

Re the unnumbered entry, it tells you you have to number it appropriately which would be a pretty strange request if it wasn’t the 29’d version

actually the preamble may not be totally clear on the first point so I get where you’re coming from.

I actually just worked out the k…. as there weren’t too many options to ensure real words

Yeah that's my point CD is that the solver does NOT know that the category of the k?????? is a variety of 7. Until they read this forum in my case :)

re submission, doesnt the preamble say all entries (except the original unnumbered entry) are real words, so i dont think there is much ambiguity?

cypherhouse - i think the preamble combined with the long message is designed to tell you that.

However i'll be the first to admit it didnt for me!

I'm with cypherhouse on this one - having finally got over the line, I don't think the "4 7 3 4" part does what the setter wants it to do, however hard you try and parse it, it just doesn't work with the preamble.

It's a work of genius, undoubtedly, but genius is no excuse for a faulty preamble that leaves you at best on a guess and at worst trying to solve a GWIT.

Once you manage to GWIT (or you have a huge PDM, depending on how charitable you're feeling), the puzzle reveals itself to be at another level of cleverness.
For me, though, it doesn't make up for the ages spent with the right forename but wrong surname, because Professor Google wouldn't yield the correct name.
Not happy.

I fully accept and understand the frustration of a GWIT puzzle. I hate them. maybe I got lucky here, I don't know.

I googled a list of 7ds. That got me the 'several techniques' within seconds, and I verified the first names within a couple of minutes.

It seemed clear to me given the instruction that one of these was the K****** for the other two. Surely that is a very small leap to make given the message? And as soon as you have one of the several techniques, the last two steps are obvious, even without being able to figure out the 29d.

Smellyharry, I completely agree. If you do exactly as described in the messages it gives very precise specifications for the K?????? and leads to the inference you correctly drew. I only figured out that precision after the fact, but that's on me. I'd be interested to know whether most people who solved it unaided went the AndyP route, finding the final grid before the intervening two steps. Hats off to those who followed the preamble in the written order. Puzzle of the year for me.

Well, that's weird. Now that I have the correct 7, I find that Google throws it up on all kinds of searches. But I swear that it wasn't coming up when I was in the depths of my despair!!
Had I had your experience, Dodgepot, I would have been much happier with this extraordinarily clever puzzle.