Numerical Spot or Tropical Menus - A setter’s perspective
About ten years ago I spent a few afternoons at the University Library in St Andrews trawling through back issues of The Listener searching for numerical puzzles. I found about 200 of them and two in particular caught my eye. One was Listener 2919 by Piccadilly in which the digits 1 to 9 were replaced by the letters in the word NUMERICAL and the other was Listener 2944 Indeksikod by Klan in which the grid was numbered but the clues were identified by letters.
Maths setters are always on the lookout for words or phrases that contain all different letters – the longer the better and if they are related to the theme or to mathematics then so much the better e.g. TRIANGLES and its anagram INTEGRALS.
Klan’s device appealed to me and I first used it with Triangular Torment in Tough Crosswords 6 which had a triangular grid with the across clues all setters pseudonyms. More recently in The Magpie puzzles based on my ( according to comments ) rather odd musical tastes – Bob Dylan, Deep Purple and ELP have also used this device which I find gives me more scope to come up with clues related to the theme as the letter/number equivalencies are split into 3 smaller sets and so, should in theory, be easier to solve.
Some time ago I wanted to include EMERSON, LAKE and PALMER in a puzzle and noticed that the word NUMERICAL with SPOT added would almost fit the bill – Lake would have to be left out but then he was my least favourite of the trio. As I write this I’ve realised that I could have replaced the C with a K and so included Lake after all which would have been in keeping with Klan’s fondness for Ks.
A few months ago I returned to NUMERICAL SPOT and whilst playing around with the letters came up with the word TROPICAL. I was overjoyed to see that the 5 remaining letters spelt out MENUS so I set to compiling a puzzle that would have words that were tropical foods.
The first step is to create a symmetric grid numbered from 1 to however many letters there are in the word or phrase, in this case 13. This meant a small grid probably 5×5 or 6×6. I played around a bit and eventually got a 5×5 that was suitable. I do this by hand – no fancy computer software needed!
The next step was to choose the number/letter equivalencies. I started with 1 – 13 represented by NUMERICAL SPOT and the puzzle’s title was TROPICAL MENUS. I thought about calling the across clues main course and the down clues dessert but quickly ditched that idea! After surfing the net looking for tropical foods I got started and after a few hours had a completed grid with no unclued entries. Unfortunately when I solved it cold I found all the number/letter equivalencies could be deduced without putting anything in the grid which is a somewhat major flaw and one of the difficulties encountered in setting this type of puzzle.
I then decided to swap with 1 -13 represented by TROPICAL MENUS and the puzzle title NUMERICAL SPOT with no unclued entries. Unfortunately the number/letter equivalencies again could be found without entering anything in the grid.
At this point I knew I’d have to resort to unclued entries so thought about using foods but rejected that in favour of TROPICAL and MENUS as unclued entries. Having that coded by 1 – 13 would be too obvious so I reversed it. Using products would be fine for MENUS which would be 120 but TROPICAL would be 51891840 – a tad large! So I opted for sums and made use of the Kakuro type unique set for 15 for MENUS which left 76 for TROPICAL. When setting puzzles with unclued entries these normally go in first however in this case I was limited a bit by the constraints placed on the clues by the theme. I quickly situated A and C down, the PERSIMMON and TUNA clues so 15 appeared and continued with the rest. Try as I might I couldn’t get 76. [ I could have removed CANISTEL but then SOURSOP would go and I wanted both of these in the puzzle as they are somewhat uncommon ]. I looked at the two digit entries and chose a suitable one which would yield an answer to TROPICAL by using + and – signs and the puzzle was complete.
Solving it cold I found that most assignments could be made without entry to the grid but to get the remainder solvers would have to and anyway the grid had to be filled in in order to find the values of the two missing entries. That done all that was left was the DTP bit.