Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

A numerical puzzle this week, apparently.

The clues...

Any help given should not be too generous, not too specific, just a gentle nudge. Hints only, please, no answers.

The theme...

Again, the help given should not be too generous, not too specific - and certainly not anything that would spoil the puzzle for other solvers. A nudge, a pointer in the right direction is what should be aimed for.

The Listener is a unique puzzle and should be treated with respect.

A non-scientific experiment showed that solving was faster with Excel. (That's how my brother did it.)

I'm still not a great fan of the number puzzles, but I feel like a reformed smoker in now avoiding Excel! And there is a degree of satisfaction in finding a reasonably efficient approach.

And I'm always in awe of the setters of these puzzles!!

There is a misprint in the cell numbering that can be ignored. At least two clues are redundant, but reassuring. I used Excel, but envy those who did not need to!

Not as daunting as I first feared. For me, definitely impossible without the use of Excel.

2 and a bit hours yesterday with a calculator, a pencil and 2 sides of foolscap. (Numericals usually run to 10+ pages.) No need for excel, but then I'm old enough to remember being taught how to extract a square root. The easiest numerical for a long time, and the most pleasing to solve.

Similar for me, 2 hours on a plane with a calculator, no excel. Held up slightly by not being able to check if zero was an even number (I thought it probably was...).

Rookie question here but do I assume that ladder answers are entered upwards - ie the answer to 38 would go in cells 38 - 43 - 58 in that order?
TIA

That’s correct, and snakes are entered downwards in similar vein

Thank you!

A nice refreshing change. Great fun. Thanks IOA