Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Thanks, Crosswhit99. I decided, after some iterations, to go for the other possibility and now have most of the grid filled with seven clues to solve. However, quite a lot of allocations to resolve. Despite this, the last four words are not leaping out at me. But I feel that I am on the hoe strait now.

I started later than y’all but found it engaging, sometimes frustrating, ultimately a lot of fun! Also it seemed to be a style combination of two previous puzzles (possibly by ELAP). I have to agree with the comments re genius of the setter (!) but think the ‘L’ vs ‘l’ was made eminently clear in the instructions. On the other hand was there a misprint re a missing ‘u’ in my edition of The Times?!

...in other words, was there a clue containing a small ‘u’? I’ll be checking all my four letter words tomorrow, but seem to have completed the grid with only 26 letters! Which of course suggests another four letter word. In any case I’ll be submitting this one. So far 15 attempted (since Ruslan’s posthumous ‘Cleopatra Needled’ grabbed my attention in 2013), 14 completed (I haven’t fully forgiven ELAP for the last bit of ‘Hailstorm’), 10 submitted by the deadline. Wish me luck!

7across has small u

Thank you soooo much! Yes I had got it but hadn’t recorded it on my summary sheet...eye strain, fatigue etc. Very reassuring! Thanks again!

Still have two letters to ascertain and two numerical answers to find. However I seem to run out of possibilities for suitable values for P and B. Any help would be much appreciated.

P is 648 and B is 9304.

Thank you included. I had got B but P still eluded me.

Sorry about the autocorrect. My phone will not allow me to call you by your correct name! The reason I couldn’t establish the value of P was because there is an alternative for R; the letter only appears in two clues.

I’ve finally sent my entry in the post!! I was correct in assuming that the puzzle was a bit like two I’ve seen/ entered before, namely ‘Pairs’ and ‘Word Squares’ both by... you’ve guessed it, Elap! This time he (?) has excelled himself by moving from 2 dimensional word squares to a 3 dimensional word cube! What next? Four dimensional word hyper cube?! I look forward to it. Meantime I’ve long since given up anticipating my name on the winners list. Sigh. 10th time lucky?...