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Could someone please put me out of my misery?

It's a little difficult to ask a question about this without revealing information, so forgive me in advance.

Re the pair 12ac and 26, as was noted earlier, qz and (c + qz) have to differ by a certain small number. But I can only see 2 pairs Pythagorean triples (inc non-primitive) in which the C terms differ by c (the C terms being 50/53 and 65/68). But that would give a value of z that has already been assigned to a (from 2 down) or a value of z that would mean that (qz)^h has two zeros at the end, which is impossible.

HELP!

Demeter

Hi. I don't know where you are getting your list of triples from but it's very incomplete. Any multiple of 5 or 13 can clearly be the big number, so eg 75 and 78 would work. Neither that, nor either of the two you suggested are the solutions for 26 and 12a, but they do differ by 3.

Thanks Smellyharry.

Yes, I was operating with an incomplete list of triples.

A friend has just shown me this one. I'm glad I never attempt these!

I think that logic overcomes maths to solve this - although a little knowledge of pythagorean theorem (a^2 + b^2 =c^2) is needed.

I found this a fairly straightforward and enjoyable puzzle, and for once I managed to avoid blind alleys. Thank you, nipper!

I've been getting on well with this puzzle and have relished the challenge as always. My internal (within the perimeter) answers are all working as expected (so if I get some digits for an Across clue from working out the Down clues, then finally working out the partially-filled out Across clue gives me the expected value. E.g. I got 25dn and 20dn, and then the 1st and 3rd digit of 25Ac correspond with my calculated answer.

HOWEVER.....

My perimeter answers are gobbledegook. I'm assuming that if an error is 5 (so lets say the left hand side of the equals sign is 344 and the right hand side is 349, then my error value is 5) then the letter to put in the perimeter for that clue would be E.

Is that right? Anyone else get gobbledegook?

You are calculating the error correctly. But if it's 5 you don't put in E. Think what other letter you could put in instead of E that is associated with 5 in this puzzle.

Stix, the letter you enter is that which corresponds the the difference, not that which appears alphabetically. So, if the difference is 5, and Z=5, you enter Z in the perimeter, not E.

How is Z equivalent to 5??