1ACGridfest – Grid 4 – Whodunit – Solutions, Annotations & Stats

Stats – 26 entries were received in all for this puzzle. When duplicates were discounted, there were 24 unique entries. 12 of those who attempted the puzzle got a full score of 37. The following is the list of people who had full scores, in alphabetical order..

1. Aashwina Mouli
2. Akshay Bhandarkar
3. Crypt Ella
4. Ganesh Nayak
5. Lakshmi Vaidyanathan
6. Mona Sogal
7. Narayan Mandyam
8. Sridhar Vedantham
9. Venkatraghavan S.
10. Vignesh Kiran
11. Vinayak Ekbote
12. Viresh Ratnakar

Congrats to all of you.

Here’s the Solution grid (from the Setter) – “Ramki” also needs to colored Green, along with the other theme words in the puzzle.

Questions asked at the end of the puzzle included Annotations for Clues 17A, 34A and 2D.

Here are the Annotations

Across:

1 Support amidst electing in a frenzy while engaged in festivities (11) CELEBRATING {BRA} in {ELECTING}*
9 Those after a life time of working are tiredest within (7) RETIRED [Telescopic]
10 He’s a trading centre at home! (6) MARTIN {MART}{IN}
11 On the radio formerly known as a joint (4) KNEE (~nee)
12 She carelessly hid over that is to say internally (5) HEIDI {IE<=} in {HID}*
14 He in Tamil is a kitchen appliance (4) OVEN (~avan)
15 He is British and half Indian (5) BRIAN {BR}{(-ind)IAN}
17 Triad with support over human resources (5) THREE {TEE} over {HR}
18 Fool a multinational corporation (3) SAP [DD]
20 Each big boy starts to fall back (3) ABB Acrostic
21 Agree about a requirement at the beginning for number of days (5) YEARS {YES} about {A}{R(-equirement)}
23 Remove non-essential details of a long narrow piece (5) STRIP [DD]
27 Compact but can hold a lot of bits (4) DISC [CD]
28 Butter kiwi at the ends for him (5) RAMKI {RAM}{K(-iw)I}
29 Fertiliser usually requires emulsification at the beginning (4) UREA Acrostic
31 This lady was my crush over you in the midst (6) SOWMYA {WAS+MY}* over {(-y)O(-u)}
33 She spent lakhs on me according to hearsay (7) LAKSHMI {LAKHS}*{MI}(~me)
34 Succeed with odd theory and fresh methyl salicylate (11) WINTERGREEN {WIN}{T(-h)E(-o)R(-y)}{GREEN}

Down:

2 Maxima and minima of measure within something that is beyond the usual (7) EXTREMA {EM} in {EXTRA}
3 Fear thyself – internally uninhibited (6) EARTHY [Telescopic]
4 Coloured communist fare (7) REDDISH {RED}{DISH}
5 Pinto marketed some male turkey (3) TOM [Telescopic]
6 Contract dispute appeared in print in reverse on the contrary (6) NARROW {ROW}<=>{RAN<=}
7 Short variety roughage (4) BRAN BRAN(-d)
8 Intellectuals in America measure a note (8) LITERATI {LITER}{A}{TI}
13 Tabloid earlier admitted a proposal (4) IDEA [Telescopic]
16 Animal in operation goes yakety-yak (6,2) RABBIT ON {RABBIT} {ON}
19 Rare deformity at the back (4) REAR*
22 Climbing rose’s rear ends held Mabel funnily (7) RAMBLER {MABEL}* in {R(-ea)R}
24 To express disgust first in english is a difficult one (7) TOUGHIE {TO}{UGH}{I(-n)}{E}
25 Rascal’s a langoustine! (6) SCAMPI {SCAMP}{1}
26 Indian half pant raises a quiet laugh (6) NICKER [DD]
30 Deposit and lose right to send forth (4) EMIT (-r)EMIT
32 An opening bid by an inhabitant of colony with a complex social organisation (3) ANT {1 NT or 1 No Trump