Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Pat - I have 70 of them on the jasmines, a female buzzing about and a male sat humming on a water lily - what they get up to is up to them but I count 72 and that's enough for me! I'm going to have nightmares tonight about that damned hare now, I just know it .... ;¬(

I must confess I think it would have been a neater touch if Sabre had managed to include jasmine or frangipani etc in the grid, or a lotus lily just to make more of a picture. Entry sent anyway, I'm done with this wee beastie now!

I always was pretty hopeless at maths and never liked riddles - I think it probably is 72 - I too was hoping for a lily or a representation of jasmine, but hey ho, back to gardening.

Really struggled with this but nearly finished. Just got five answers to go, however I am at a loss to get them. 5, 7, 17, 32 and 34. Anyone got any hints?

Thanks Dryden. My references had "the" and not "a" in the riddle.

Best hint given you presumably now know how the clashes work is to sketch out the entries for each one with the alternatives above and below - they should all be identifiable, that's how I finished off the last few.

5 unusual word slog is hit hard in wordplay
7 root is superfluous. Shows is definition o is of green veg and an r make up the rest
17 anagram bug in and l (middle of walls)

32 batch is to live alone in Nz

34 airs are lilts in wordplay

Thanks for that djawhufc. I'd spotted 7 and 17 while doing the ironing, but would never have got the others.
Anyone notice that the plural of 31a is not in Chambers but is in Collins?

After an extremely restless night, with one unwanted bee buzzing about the room, I've finally got there. What a brilliant puzzle which certainly makes up for a few recent disappointments.

s_pugh, I apologise for the consternation caused by my earlier post. The problem for me is that the riddle in the literary text is ambiguously worded regarding the status of the extra two in relation to the whole. The version of the riddle posed by the Hindu mathematician, Bhaskara II, and elsewhere, is far clearer in this respect.
There is no doubt about the answer to the riddle, which is 72 if fractions are not allowed. For anyone interested, this page deals with the maths:

http://euclid.trentu.ca/math/sb/1101Y/2012-2013/MATH1101Y-Quiz-Solutions.pdf

I very rarely find anything to criticise in Sabre, but in this case I think the theme could have been better implemented.

No need to apologise Dryden - the version I found on the web didn't feel particularly ambiguous and I was quite happy with the 72 total once I'd done the maths - especially when I found that tallied with the grid totals. I agree about the implementation though, as previously commented I would at the very least like to have seen jasmine or a lily in there, if only as an added confirmation to solvers that they were on the right track!

As ever though I wonder how on earth anyone is expected to solve these things without recourse to t'internet as they say hereabouts.