“The Courier Mail”‘s numbering of the crosswords is different, and they are not published in the same order. After reading this forum, I think that is better in a way because I don’t know who the setter is until I get to the page – yeehah!

The excellent search engine here makes it easy to find the correct crossword – just put in one of the more unusual answers (do not use the clue as they are not always included)and there you are. Guardian crossword by …. around a month ago.

Interestingly, I tried this subject out on a collection of arts and humanities graduates that I have known for decades. Despite their lack of technical knowledge, they were uniformly appalled at the idea that anyone could use relationship/number/ratio as synonyms. So presumably the confusion lies within the uneducated masses.

(Anyone daft enough not to see that last sentence as a wind up?)

Now on to the controversies!

I know my way around the math and science stuff, and fully expect terms of art in those fields to be used in their broader senses here in puzzleland. It’s only fair. I did not bat an eye at “relationship” = PI. The word is not being used in a strict mathematical sense – this isn’t a math class or physics lab. And once OVOID dropped, again, I didn’t care about the word “regular”, except that is could be considered redundant. In lay terms (did you see what I did there?), an ovoid is “regular” due to its symmetry.

And no one barked about MAGNETIC, which can be equally replulsive…

Anyway, thanks for the blog, Uncle Yap, the puzzle, Chifonie, and the rest of you for the entertainment and enlightenment!

I am aware of all the differences between nunmbers and relationships between them. Two points:

1)defining a number with a relationship is as good a way to define it as any other

2)since relationship=ratio=number is in common useage in English then it matters not a jot what technical definitions one quotes, its a valid usage for a cryptic crossword regardless