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It's a numerical

Thanks as always, tatters. Think I'll be sitting this one out though.

Is there an error in the preamble? If no cell has zero as its first digit, wouldn't that mean there were no zeros in the grid? Should it be that no answer has zero as its first digit, as is conventional in numericals?

Hm, I suppose it might mean that the only zeros are where there are two digits in a single cell and the zero could be the second of those digits. Or it could be an error.

Seems to me that the only way for a zero to appear in any cell is if the cell entry is 10 - given the final sentence of the preamble

I had taken the preamble to mean that letters in a block, e.g. TRIT should be interpreted mathematically as T*R*I*T - that's what I would normally take as an "algebraic" meaning. But having done this, I have reached a point where one clue does not have a solution.

Should I actually be interpreting TRIT as literally replacing each of the letters with its numerical equivalent, e.g. if T=1, R=2, I=3 then TRIT would be the number 1231, rather than 1*2*3*1 = 6?

Yes, I agree, 0 can only appear in 10 -- so a stronger restriction than the usual one.

Something of a relief. Definitely not my forte and I can take a week off!

In case anyone else is confused by my post below, this was an error in my working (as I should have guessed). My original assumption was correct, i.e. TRIT should be read as T*R*I*T.

I've been waiting all day for this. Now you tell me it's numerical!