NOW ME – Solutions, Annotations & Results

When I was twitterfing some time ago (surfing twitter that is), I happened to see a tweet from Erik Agard. Taking off on Rebecca Falcon’s idea, they were planning to have a “Women’s March” celebrating the month of March with puzzles by as many women constructors as they could feature. When I tweeted Erik about it, I learnt that this was only for the regular non-cryptic grids they run in USA today.

Given the immensely talented women setters we have at 1ACross, I thought we too could celebrate March 8 by doing a community grid in March and signing up all these ladies. I then sounded Supriya about it since her grid had  been originally scheduled for the first of March. She hit the ground running and got in touch with Mona, who constructed this fabulous grid below. The grid had tributes to six strong and influential woman – Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, Marie Curie, Cleopatra, Rosa Parks and Amelia Earhart. Obviously due to the constraints of a grid, there were only a handful of names that could be included. So, by a stroke of genius, Mona had also put in “HER” thus covering all women, which was what this grid was about in the first place.

She had also worked in “Break”, “The”, “Glass”, “Ceiling” in four entries going from the bottom to top of the grid. It appeared to be symbolic of the struggles of women trying to move up in various fields before they hit this “invisible” but nevertheless present “glass” ceiling and how every successful woman has indeed worked very hard to break this and move up in their pursuit of success in every field.

Supriya then took on the daunting task of finding the women setters, allocating the clues, helping to refine them and finalizing the grid. She managed to rope in 23 different women from various parts of the globe and these clues had so much style and variety that the solving experience was very fulfilling.

She called the grid “NOW ME” – which was a Reverse Anagram representing “Cryptic” Women. The rest is part of 1ACross “her”story:)

Stats – We had a spectacular response to this grid with 69 submissions  – an all time high!.  Of those who submitted,  43 managed to complete the grid with zero errors, but of that,  only 13 went on to get the maximum possible score of 165. Here’s the completed grid. We were very happy that Erik whose tweet was my original inspiration not only completed the grid but also commented that he had enjoyed it. This was an unexpected and much appreciated endorsement for our team indeed.

You can access the Grid with solutions Here – Clicking Reveal ALL will show you the solutions, annotations and the answers to the bonus questions.

Here’s the complete scorecard (sorted by total and then alphabetically). Congrats to  Aashwina Mouli, Anantakrishnan N., Himanshu Rajurkar, Lakshmi Prakash, Mohsin Ahmed, Nilesh Parmar, Prakash Arumugam,
Ramki Krishnan, Samit Kallianpur, Sandhya Paruchuri, Satyen Nabar, Venkatraghavan S. and Viresh Ratnakar –
the 13 solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well done.

Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.52. It got 15 perfect 10s. The minimum score was 5.

Top 10 Clues: Favorite clues were “TALLY HO” (By Juhi Saklani) with 22 votes, “CLEOPATRA” (By Amrita Majumdar) with 20 votes,  “ORWELLIAN” (By me, Sowmya Ramkumar) with 14 votes, “GLASS” (By Mona Sogal) with 13 votes, “RIGID” (by Rhiannon Vivian Bolt) with 11 votes, “KILLDEERS” (By Supriya Mithal) with 10 votes, “APPARATUS” (by Fa Ten) with 8 votes, “OPRAH WINFREY” (By me)  with 8 votes, “EARHART” (By Tulika Das), “CURIE” (by Fa Ten), “ANGELOU” (By Neelima Rai ) and “ATHEIST” (By Aashwina Mouli) with 7 votes each. Almost every clue in the grid got at least one solver’s vote.

Comments from solvers:

1. Enjoyable puzzle – 1AC women rock! Lovely gesture and admirable effort. Could have included famous women from outside the west too, given the large number of non-western setters and solvers. Next time!
2. Love the theme! I love puzzles that seem impossible at first, but then become more solvable as I fill them in.
3. Happy womens day
4. Loved the grid. Many many super clues, was hard to choose top 3. Tally-Ho was brilliant. Difficulty level on the lower end.
5. Well-crafted grid and themed entries. Enjoyed it!
6. That was a fun puzzle, and well crafted! I hope this collaboration continues into a regular thing!
7. nicely done, happy women’s day.
8. Excellent puzzle, was also a great theme
9. Great effort on the crowdsourced grid, very aptly timed!
10. Super!
11. Awesome
12. Great initiative… hats off to Supriya Mona and Sowmya and all the setters
13. Fun puzzle nicely put together. This theme really needs a double jumbo grid and even then one may not do justice. There could be many possibilities for the ‘complete title’, not sure if one in particular fits best, but will go with what leaps to mind
14. Well crafted grid.
15. Fantastic puzzle perfect for the occasion
16. Nice puzzle. Loved the nina
17. Lovely puzzle.
18. Smooth grid!
19. Great effort from some amazing group of women. Congrats all setters and may your God bless
20. Entertaining.
21. Great women power!
22. Great crossword; kudos to the women compilers
23. Thank you, you genius women out there. God bless you all
24. Nice one for the International Women’s Day
25. Excellent grid, Happy Women’s day to all of you !
26. loved it!
27. Appropriate theme of course but not tough enough
28. Nicely done
29. aptly themed with good mix of clues
30. Grid design was very cool. Lots of clues I liked: ANGELOU, yacht (though capsize seems a bit loose for ‘upend’), prong, general. Some too easy. Some too elaborate: OPRAh WINFREy. Some too hard which I might like if I had them explained: apparatus (was okay with cross letters), also ‘note’ seems loose in dd for rundown, ceiling – did not understand and cross letters did not help enough – indeed, only the message gave me this one haha.
31. Wonderful grid and wonderful concept to get so many women setters together for women’s day
32. Very satisfying! I am much more of a setter, and finished my first grid in years! Thank you so much for this 😀
33. The plural of “deer” is not “deers”, right?
34. Nice puzzle and a great way to celebrate an important day
35. Excellent puzzle
36. GOOD TEAM EFFORT. MORE POWER TO YOU
37. Lovely grid..This is my first complete grid and I am so happy that it is on a special occasion
38. Fitting puzzle for a Grand Occasion!!!
39. Amazing grid by and about amazing women!
40. Great grid! Had fun!
41. An excellent celebration of International Women’s Day, thanks!
42. Lovely theme & puzzle!
43. WELL DONE. iGOOD TEAM EFFORT. ENJOYED SOLVING IT..
44. Fun puzzle. Very well done to the group of women who put it together!
45. Superbly crafted
46. Nice, enjoyable puzzle
47. Great idea and execution! Enjoyed solving it.
48. Excellent puzzle!
49. good one
50. great effort by the women setters
51. It was enjoyable and relatively easy to do.
52. Some really clever clues, good theme, well done
53. Excellent work by all the 1Ac women
54. fantastic Puzzle!
55. I’m not sure whether “7 themed entries” means 7 lights, which I’ve listed, or 7 women and I’ve missed one. Other anagram indicators than “various” might be more appropriate.
56. Lovely collaboration to set this fantastic grid
57. Good
58. Interesting
59. Great job. Most enjoyable!
60. Perhaps some indicators could have been better chosen. eg. ‘mostly’ instead of ‘mainly’ in the ANGELOU clue and I would have probably put it in my top 3.
61. Great job.
62. Very nice puzzle. Loved the theme and the clues.
63. Helped me a lot, thanks to all the setters🙏🏻
64. Loved the theme and the idea to use multiple women setters! Many clever clues
65. Great theme, very enjoyable!
66. Fantastic grid! Brava Ladies!

Hope you all enjoyed this entertaining puzzle from the “Cryptic” women of 1ACross.  Did you like the puzzle? Do you have any feedback for us or for us? Please leave your comments in the blog.