Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

The second part of the endgame is a Codeword. Shading the H squares makes the grid, and the numbers key the cells -- cells with the same number will have the same letter in, and these letters have no relationship to the original gridfill at all. "The title may be read as help for following one of the instructions" becomes essential here: L is 10. This is pretty thin as a starting point for a Codeword, but I noticed that we had two words *LL, and one of them used the "1" which must therefore be A, I, or E. I saw *1**1 in the top right, and felt a Greek letter vibe, which proved to be sound. Also, several other suggestive words appear, so it wasn't too bad in the end.

With our completed Codeword, "use BETAs" tells us to focus on the cells with B (preprinted) in them. There are ten Bs, and each falls at the start of a word in the Codeword. It wasn't immediately obvious what order to take the words in, but by reading across words first and then down, in normal clue order, the second instruction emerges: ERASE, ALL, BUT, TAU, ENTRIES, SOLVE, LETTER, SUDOKUS, USE, KAPPA. This tells us to "erase all but TAU entries" (a capital TAU is "T", so erase all squares except those with a T in, or start with a new grid and copy over the Codeword letters for just the cells with T (preprinted) in), "solve letter sudokus" (we notice that the grid is 9 rows by 18 columns, which makes two sudoku grids side by side -- I drew in nice thick lines to make it clear), and when solved we "use KAPPA" (a capital KAPPA is "K", so we will look at the cells which have a preprinted B in them).

The third part of the endgame is a pair of Sudokus. And they were quite tricky Sudokus! This endgame really tested the old puzzling muscles. The Codeword letters for the T cells provide the seeds: the nine distinct letters for the left Sudoku were AEGIORSTU and for the right Sudoku were AEILNRSTU.

With our completed Sudokus, "use KAPPA" tells us to focus on the cells with K (preprinted) in them. There are 21 of these, and reading from top to bottom, left to right, they produce: ERASE ENTER ORIGINAL NUS. This tells us to "Erase" (everything! i.e. start with a new grid), and then "Enter original NUs" (a capital NU is "N", so in each cell with N (preprinted) in it we write in the letter we had in the original gridfill. There are 28 of these, and reading from top to bottom, left to right, they make a playfully modified version of a famous Latin inscription that can be found in London. You don't actually need to recognise the quotation, except for personal satisfaction. That last step has produced the final grid. The endgame is over.