Re: Another nice user puzzle today.
jamesh9000 wrote:
Any hints on how to start? I've been looking at it on and off all day and I can't enter a single number
Start with the 54x in the upper left corner. Its prime factorization is 2x3x3x3. Since there are six squares to be filled that leaves only two possibilities: three 3s, one 2, two 1s; two 3s, one 6, three 1s. In both cases you have three of kind and there's only one way those can be fit into the squares.
The same thing can be done with the 4096x in upper right. Its prime factorization is twelve 2s. The answer contains five squares which gives us three possibilities: four 8s, one 1; three 8s, one 4, one 2; two 8s, three 4s. The first of those is impossible since there's no way to fit four 8s into the answer without conflicts. So again we are left with two possibilities, both of which have three of a kind which can only fit into the squares in one way.
Continue on, factoring the 32x and the 108x and you'll soon have a third of the puzzle filled with a very small number of possibilities which will provide enough constraint to use your more common solving techniques.