Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

The clues...
Requests for help should normally include the full clue itself, the number of letters in the answers and details of any you already have. Any additional information or special instructions, common in Listener puzzles, should also be included.
Hints only, please, no answers.

The theme...
Help with the theme may also be sought and given here. The assistance should be fairly gentle in tone. Aim for just a nudge, a pointer in the right direction - and certainly not anything that would spoil the puzzle for other solvers.
If anyone feels that too much has been revealed, they should contact the site administrator - Norah.evoluted@aol.com. Norah errs on the side of caution, anything iffy is likely to be removed.

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

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

It is, as one would expect for the penultimate Saturday in August, a numerical.

Thanks, Smellyharry. I'm quite happy to start off these threads, but I decided I wasn't interested in working out when the numericals come along. Someone will usually help me out, and that's appreciated as I don't see the puzzle until Saturday anyway.

Back to 4934...
As it's a numerical puzzle, the normal wording is no use. Basically just ... help a little, not too much and DON'T give away anything too revealing. Thanks.

I found this quite tough. It didn't help that I made a mistake somewhere in the middle game and had to start again.

Second time around was better!

I still prefer the normal puzzles, but there is always some satisfaction in solving the numericals! Especially as I no longer rely on the crutch of Excel.

Thanks, IOA, for a well-constructed and daunting puzzle.

Got right to the end with an almost complete grid, missing only the cells along the two diagonals … then stuck as nothing works. No idea where I’ve made an error. Frustrating as the sudoku was working perfectly. Is it possible that there are two solutions, differing only in that one doesn’t satisfy the last two clues?

I found this a bit of a slog, but perhaps I missed some bit of logic.

After the first couple of steps I kept ending up at crossroads with two or three options and no obvious way to pick the right one. So resorted to drawing out multiple grids and seeing which options eventually ended up at a dead end.

So it didn't feel like I solved it in an elegant way, but got there in the end.

In response to the previous comment about the diagonals - I found I needed to start including them in my logic when I had about two thirds of the grid filled in. Not sure if that info is helpful, but I also hope it isn't revealing too much!

Agree that, unless I’m missing something (which is extremely possible), logic only gets one so far. The solution must ultimately be accomplished through trial-and-error, particularly given the myriad viable alternatives derived from limited information. The entry is fairly straightforward to determine. One can also make some reasonable, educated guesses about the values in the diagonals and related entries. But I’m not sure how one can solve the puzzle without brute force. Again, I could be completely missing a more elegant approach.

I think it is solvable without brute force. That’s how I did it, without Excel. But I did use a factoriser towards the end to save time. And I won’t pretend it’s straightforward. Very easy to make a plausible but unjustified assumption. After finishing I asked ChatGPT to do it. It took 15 seconds 😉

I agree that this was a bit of a grind. But I think it does ultimately pass the test of being soluble through logic rather than trial and error - although the logic required at some points does involve eliminating the impossible rather than positive deduction, and I’m not sure where the boundary between that and ‘trial and error’ lies. It seemed to me to be a test of note-taking organization rather than inspiration - but from my limited experience the numerical puzzles are often like that.

I could follow the logic, the more so as retraced my steps. There seems to be a leap required at some point, but suspect I'll revise that view.

Yes, Quisling, there's a tempting assumption there. Took me a couple of tries to question it.

Glad it's over. In the nicest way. Many thanks, IOA!