1ACGridfest – The Results

Thanks to all of you who participated in the 1ACross Gridfest to celebrate our third anniversary. In all, the following 13 people participated in setting grids for the competition.

1. Chatur Vasi

2. Brian Dungate

3. Col. Deepak Gopinath

4. Kishore Rao

5. Sreeni Srinivasan

6. Sridhar Vedantham

7. Mona Sogal

8. Supriya Mithal

9. Vasant Srinivasan

10. Viresh Ratnakar

11. Neelima Rai

12. Akshay Bhandarkar

13. Kaustav Datta

Our judging panel, constituting of Ramki Krishnan, Heidi Schroeder and Vinod Raman, did a thorough review of all the submissions and scored each clue in each grid on the following aspects

1. a. Cryptic Grammar, b. Correctness of Definition, c. Surface Plausibility, d. Grid balance across different clue types  and e. Originality / A-ha factor and overall entertainment value.
2. In addition, each grid that had something unique about it – such as a theme, NINA etc were awarded 1 bonus point per setter.
3. There were two special conditions to be complied with, to ensure that the grids were custom prepared for the Gridfest. The 1A word had to be a synonym of “CELEBRATION” and the grids had to have “THREE” somewhere in them. Although points were allotted for successfully complying with these conditions, all the grids scored equally on these two criteria.
4. For each grid, the averages across clues were calculated for each of the above criteria and then these scores from the three judges were totalled together.
5. The results were surprisingly very close together and we were glad that the tough task of choosing the winners were in the very safe and balanced hands of the judging panel.

On the basis of the above, here are the winners..

The third place goes to Akshay Bhandarkar (aka Ahab) for his debut grid “In August Company”

In second place is Kaustav Datta (aka Euclid) for “Griddle”

Taking the first spot in this tough contest is Viresh Ratnakar (aka Ragitvach) for “22 4/5 Across”

The details of scores for each grid as well as the comments by the judging panel is available HERE

We have revealed the identity of the setters for only the top three grids as judged in this contest and leave the rest to our readers to guess/identify.

As you know, all these grids were posted in the blog and in our FB group for solving interactively. 35 people participated and submitted completed entries for one or more of the grids.

17 out of the 35 people managed to submit their entries for all 13 grids. 26 people submitted entries for 3 or more grids. Each day, points were awarded for every correct answer.  In addition, at the end of each grid, three bonus questions were asked about the grid and correct answers to these were allotted 1 point each. A total of 440 points was up for grabs, across all 13 grids. Although it was a very close and tightly fought contest, only one person managed to score the full 440 points, without taking even one false step.

Without further ado, let me congratulate Venkatraghavan Sahasranaman, who is the Top Solver in this Gridfest, earning the maximum of 440 points, In second place is Akshay Bhandarkar who scored 437 and closely on his heels is Mona Sogal, who score 436.5.

Congrats to all three of you.

Here’s the final Leaderboard

The top setter Viresh Ratnakar and the top solver Venkatraghavan Sahasranaman will be receiving a copy of Cryptic Crossroads, as promised. I will be in touch with both of you in this regard.

Hope you all enjoyed our first edition of the 1ACGridfest. Do write in to us with your suggestions and feedback..