Apologies to both, but I always get Hedgehog and Hedge-sparrow confused! This was Hedgehog’s fifth mathematical Listener, although he has had a fair few more over at Magpie, mostly grade B and C but with the odd D. What would this one be?
Unusually, each letter stood for one of two digits, including 0. The first stage was to see if I could identify the two 0 letters. From the likes of 9ac COOT where none could be 0, they were soon identified as G and M. Similarly, from 14ac (DIR + T)(C-H)E(A+P), C ≠ H, and I soon got the first definites of C = O = 3. B = E = 9 came next with H and T being 1 or 2.
The next step proved quite tough, and it seemed that all the clues had just too many unknowns to be able to home in on anything concrete, but 9ac COOT and 6dn COCO + NUT eventually got the whole thing underway… albeit slowly! The animation next door reveals all.
Thanks, Hedgehog, a great idea. A bit of a toughie for me (grade D?) but no doubt others found it a breeze!
Full analysis can be found at the Listener Crossword website.
A wonderful puzzle. How brilliant it was that all equations were words!
I found that I could also get relative sizes of letters from the potentially negative factors in the clues, easing my path to solution. At the other end of the scale for me, at least one letter was cracked with an overcomplicated proof by contradiction when looking at the clues again would reveal the answer! (The mathematician’s complexity addiction shines again.)
Thanks to Hedgehog for a lovely evenings entertainment and to Shenanigans for the blog.