Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

The 5th clue. Not painful, but I won't have much time today. Good luck...

I'd made a silly transcription error in one of the squares -- once that was corrected it all fell into place. Luckily I jot down notes in a computer file as I go, so reworking was pretty quick. But I found it a rather tedious slog.

One of the nastiest, most tedious numerical Listeners I have ever encountered. There are just too many options at every stage. It's going to take a week to sift through just the options for 23 with only two checked cells. Could somebody confirm that _ _ 51_ is correct.

I had

??21?

Dryden. --21- is correct. If you've got as far as the 13/26/39 trio, the middle digit of 26 will enable you to confirm 30 and hopefully 31 which allows you to calculate the relatively small digit sum for 23 and therefore very few possibilities that satisfy it's prime status and also that the reverse order of the digits gives a larger number than the original order

Thanks.
??21? was my other possibility for 23, but I thought I had eliminated 3528 as an option for 18 because of the possibilities for 17.

...All very well me wishing other solvers good luck.

Continuing the solve...I already had 19881 for 25, so 26 starting with 9. The options for 13 seemed to be 251, 271, 281, 311, 331. The latter two were discounted since then the digits sum of 17 couldn't > 15. But then I didn't have a multiple beginning with 9 for 26.

I can't remember why 19881 for 25 was better than 11881 or 22801 - maybe that was the error ?

Any offers ?

Meursault,
I'm far from finished, but I have just come to the conclusion that the second digit of 25 must be 8 or 9. The other options for 25 cause problems for 26 (multiple of 13) whatever 13 is. So the two options I have for 25 are 19881 and 48841.
I haven't yet seen what eliminates one of those.

Thanks Dryden. I've revisited the 5 digit squares with 3rd digit 8 and last digit 1,3 or 7. Indeed, there is 44841. Also there is 77841. Either I completely missed both of those previously, or I discounted them for some reason that I can't remember. Back to the drawing board...

48841 is the entry.