Listen With Others

I have just had the delight of solving Arden’s Touché in this month’s Magpie magazine, a quite fabulous challenge!  By comparison Arden’s recent Listener 4516, “A Defter Premier” was a breeze – but only by comparison 🙂

I guessed early on that the common feature of the entries was going to be their primeness but kept wondering if there might be a trap laid for the solver.  Luckily there wasn’t – or if there was then this solver fell into it and still hasn’t noticed!

I did start off wondering if I could solve it all with just pencil and paper – but my arithmetic failed me miserably (twice) so I am now also the proud owner of an Excel sheet (‘excitingly’ entitled L4516).

I just checked through my scanned files and could only find this one above.  Now I think I highlighted the diagonals and the five digit numbers that make up the central diamond before sending – but I may well have made another of my all-too-frequent crayoning errors: if so, darn!

This was a very good Numerical puzzle at the easier end of the spectrum – ensuring the level of difficulty of the Listener remains unpredictable to the solver, one of its (many) facets.  And if you found this far too easy and don’t already subscribe to The Magpie then you know what to do via http://www.piemag.com

And the Title: “A Defter Premier”?  Well, a Fermat-based puzzle without the appearance of PIERRE DE FERMAT himself would have been disappointing, wouldn’t it?

Cheers

Tim / Encota