Stats – We had a great response to this grid with 41 submissions, although it had been posted on a “not for competition” basis (43 in total, of which two were duplicate entries). Of those who submitted, only 16 managed to complete the grid with zero errors while only 13 got the maximum possible score of 145. Here’s the completed grid.
The following questions had to be answered by the solvers..
What is the Theme? A: Ways to get out in cricket
Identify 5 themed words in the solutions? A: CAUGHT,STUMPED,HIT WICKET,TIMED OUT,LBW,BOWLED,RUN OUT
What is the missing theme entry hidden in the puzzle ? (3,3,4,5) A: HIT THE BALL TWICE
You can access the Grid with solutions Here – Clicking Reveal ALL will show you the solutions, annotations and the answers to the bonus questions.
The 13 Solvers who got all correct answers were Ramki Krishnan, Mathi, K. Williams, Krishnan Anantheswaran, Raj Jayaram, Venkatraghavan Sahasranaman, Viresh Ratnakar, Nick, Mona Sogal, Samit Kallianpur, Camelia Oberoi, Madhup Tewari and Max Jackson. Our Hearty congratulations to all of you and commiserations to those who tried but just missed.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.07. It got 7 perfect 10s. The minimum score was 4.
Top 3 Clues: The most popular clues were “Scribble” with 13 votes, “Ensnared” with 10 votes and “EMUS” with 9 votes each.
Comments from solvers:
1. Fun puzzle. Looking forward to more from Asis
2. Fun
3. Great theme , enjoyable puzzle and loved the fact that surfaces were mostly cricket related – not an easy task.
4. Nice Puzzle ousting the ennui from the lock down
5. Good effort on debut and creditable to weave in cricketing references in all clues and/or entries. Something funny in 5a methinks. Wish setter could have used a standard grid, three consecutive unches being decidedly no-no
6. VERY NICE ONES , SOME CLUES WERE AWESOME.
7. A well-crafted and enjoyable puzzle
8. NICE
9. “Good Opening” by the setter
10. i AM A BIT CONFUSED WITH THE MISSING THEME. THE ENUMERATION FITS WHAT I HAVE GIVEN. BUT WHAT IS MISSING IS HANDLING THE BALL
11. Nice attempt. Unfortunately, the soundness / succinctness of some clues suffered by justifying the surface readings, but fortunately this didn’t make the whole unsolvable.
12. Enjoyed the puzzle
13. Good !
14. Nice and smooth. Good construction of clues overall
15. It was challenging, and my lack of knowledge of cricket didn’t hinder too much.
16. Good grid that kept me engaged with nice googlies and chinamen. However, setter should be shot at sunrise for the use of URNFUL as a word 🙂
17. Good theme and effort, some clues appear rather contrived
18. Great to have the theme in some form in every clue.
19. Enjoyed solving it
20. Stumped by a couple of the clues. Took a swing
21. Well structured, nice puzzle
22. Impressive and enjoyable themed grid-fill, some fun clues!
23. Liked the themed surfaces throughout.
24. Good humour, sometimes a bit easy, sometimes a bit hard/confusing lol (bearing, bowled, etc..)
25. the se corner was extremely challenging. The puzzle is very cleverly constructed.
26. LIKED IT VERY MUCH
27. Too convoluted a theme.
28. Challenging but engaging grid.. theme has been woven expertly ..well done!
30. Excellent grid! Had good fun solving it!
31. Great fun
32. Okay
33. OK
34. too many 3 letter words for my liking but good otherwise
35. Nice mix of theme words! Well played!
36. Thank you!
37. Wonderful clues, all of them. So hard to pick the top three. Waiting for more from Asis.
38. Found some clues a bit tough but overall a nice challenge
39. interesting
40. I guess ” obstructing the field” might have been difficult to get in.
Hope you all enjoyed this entertaining debut puzzle from Asis. It was commendable that the setter tried not only to construct a themed grid for his debut but also managed to have a maximum number of clues relating to the overall theme of cricket – no mean feat indeed. Thanks to all of you for taking time to solve and also give some valuable feedback. Did you like the puzzle? Please leave your comments in the blog.