Mini 4 Thursday #28

Note: ||I've had this same idea for a crossword in my handy Google Keep for months now (with the featured set of calculations), but didn't work hard enough to find a symmetric set of theme entries. Glad I could squash it into a mini grid and release the idea from my backlog!||

I really admire your attempt. Compact fun!

Love this idea! Can't believe how densely you fit all these instructions. Also--feel like I'm missing out because I don't totally get how 14A 13D etc. resolves to 6D... could someone spell it out for me?

>!14a 13a = gets even, or read aloud get seven. 
9a is plus one, so 7 + 1 = 8. 
3d is doublet, or double it, so 8 x 2 = 16. 
7a is rootfor, or root four. This is asking what number become sixteen when it is multiplied by itself 4 times, or what is x when 16 = x^4, and the answer is 2 (2^4 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16). 
Finally, 9a tells us to "plusone" again, 2 + 1 = 3, and 3 in italian is tres!<

Ohhhh.. very cool 😎 thanks for the explanation.

NICE!! the theme density is beyond genius!... two minor things (1) italian for 3 is tre not tres... you can switch the clue to either spanish or portuguese with spanish being the more well-known option (2) 16 root 4 yields 4 different roots: 2, -2, 2i, -2i (with 2 being the principal root) but i think only math nerds will think that way  🤓

Damn my bad memory of Italian! Miss Pelosi from high school would be so disappointed. I'm going to ignore the imaginary answers, but fair point regarding -2 - I'll update that clue to be specific. Thanks! 🤓

i got stuck for a while on 6D (perhaps because i chose to read EVERYTHING out loud and i thought that the instruction for Spanish translation was for the repetition of 9A), but this was quite fun!

This is a virtuoso performance of minimized theming… can't say I got it all on my way to a complete fill but bravo!

i'm sad i finished it before thinking about the theme

NYT Minimised 2023-08-14

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