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今年の夏、最多の73地点で猛暑日になった。
What does 最多の means here? That 73 is the biggest number of places that had 35°C+ in a summer? Or that it's the most places there in the country? Do I just translate 地点 as "places"?
How does it sound: "This summer, the record of number of 73 places had a temperature of 35°C or higher"?
 
"This summer, the record of number of 73 places had a temperature of 35°C or higher"
Yes, that is how I would have translated it.
The original doesn't use the precise word "record", but it is what is implied by the word 最多 (most, highest number of, etc...), which is expressed most naturally by "record number of".
猛暑日 is also handled nicely. Depending on the context you might have used "extremely hot day" or "extremely hot summer day", which is a classification used by Japan and understood by most Japanese (I should say all Japanese are familiar with it, but they may not recall the exact temperature that defines a 猛暑日), but if the temperature is the important thing rather than the classification, or the specific designation, I would have done exactly what you did.
One slight change I would make is; change the to a.
This summer, a record of number of 73 places had a temperature of 35°C or higher.
 
Incidentally, this might be a bit confusing, but 今年の夏/この夏最多の73地点で猛暑日になった。, i.e. the one without the comma is used for an explanation regarding a specific day in this summer, usually today or yesterday.

(今日/昨日は)今年の夏/この夏最多の73地点で猛暑日になった。
(Today/Yesterday,) 73 places had a temperature of 35°C or higher, which is the record in this summer (until now).

Thus, 今年の夏/この夏最多 means "record in this summer", but 最多 is 過去最多 "record in the history/the largest number ever" in that sentence.
 
"Anyway, it's cheap and fast" and
"Anyhow, it's cheap and fast" sound weird/awkward to me.
"At any rate, it's cheap and fast" — maybe.
I can just translate it as "Very cheap and fast"?
I asked the meaning of とにかく here because "anyway/anyhow/at any rate" didn't seem quite fitting or didn't sound quite right. Also, in another place people gave two other, different from each other, interpretations.
 
"Anyway, it's cheap and fast" and
"Anyhow, it's cheap and fast" sound weird/awkward to me.
"At any rate, it's cheap and fast" — maybe.

I'm a native speaker of English and all those are pretty much interchangeable to me. I think what's tripping you up is that those English expressions generally come after something that's been said that's now being set aside.

とにかく in Japanese, on the other hand, can be used out of context like in this example. It's basically saying "Forget about/never mind anything else, it's cheap and fast!" (with the nuance being "it's so cheap and fast that nothing else matters", which I believe is why Toritoribe-san says it's comparable to とても in this case.)

I'm probably not the first one to tell you this, but as you reach a more advanced level of Japanese, you'll want to get away from framing everything in terms of English in favor of understanding Japanese expressions on their own terms. As (hopefully) you can understand from the above, there's a nuance of とにかく here that isn't easily conveyed by a simple English translation.

Here is a link to a J-J dictionary. The first definition (他の事柄は別問題としてという気持ちを表す) is a good way to understand what's going on here.
 
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Have you learned ~か~ないかのうちに? It's a bit oldish variation of it.
I learned up to N3 grammar from books, and some of N2 and maybe N1 from encountering in texts, too. Someone said it look like it, but was not sure if うちに can be omitted or not. Before that I didn't learn it learn such grammar. It's from N3 Reading Comprehension book.
Thanks
 
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