Stats – The puzzle page had 660 views. We had 50 solvers completing and submitting the grid. Of those who submitted 19 managed to get the maximum possible score of 170.
Click Here to see the puzzle
NOTE: Pl. press the “Save” icon before you hit “Submit” or while solving to save a copy in your cache (cookies from the site must be enabled for this to work) – Retrieve Saved Version
Bonus Questions:
1. What’s Saral’s message to the solvers (6,3,5,3,4,2,3,1,6)?
2. List all the theme words that you can spot in the grid (1 point for each right answer)
Here is the solution grid:
Answer to the Bonus Question:
1. Twenty one Happy New Year to all 1 Across (Clue Acrostic – Both I and A had to be picked up from 20D and I is to be taken as 1)
2. Musician, Banker, Trainer, Professor, Lawyer, Actor, Teacher, Tailor, Dentist, Pilot (Also highlighted in grid)
Annotations:
Across: 8 (IN MUSCAT IS – ST)*, 9 BAN(-s) K ER, 11 Hidden, 12 NAIR* ACE, 13 CR(A Z)Y, 15 PROFESS OR, 17 LA(W)YER, 19 B(OT)TOM*, 22 AGREE* ABLE, 23 (-f)ACTOR, 25 ATORQUE*, 27 TEA CHER, 29 TAIL OR, 30 (-y)ESBLAMES*.
Down: 1 CITEME<<, 2 Acrostic, 3 S(CAN)TY, 4 SA TRAP S, 5 J ALAPENO*, 6 OK (-f)R(-y) A, 7 RM FOR FEE*, 10 PI (LO) T, 14 Hidden, 16 SET A T, 17 LOSTADEE(-d)*, 18 EXE(-mp+R)TION, 20 A T(-h)ROB(-s), 21 {D}{ENT}{IST}, 23 Hidden, 24 RE RE LE<, 26 (-a)U(-c)TI(-o)N*, 28 Reverse Acrostic.
Results:
The following people maxed the score.
Anicha Reuban, Anirudh Sahni, Arvind Kannabiran, Arvind Ramaswamy, Ashit Hegde, Bhalchandra Pasupathy, Keith Williams, Lakshmi Prakash, Madhup Tewari, Max Jackson, Mona Sogal, Prakash Arumugam, Rengaswamy N., Sandhya Paruchuri, Sree Sree, Supriya Mithal, Vasant Srinivasan, Venkatesan P. and
Venkatraghavan S.
Here are the scores of the other players
169 – Dave Williams, Deepak Gopinath (Col.), Himanshu Rajurkar, Kumaresh K R, Narayanan R, Nilesh Parmar, Samit Kallianpur and Sohil
168 – Anantakrishnan N., Jyothish B, Kishore Rao, Maya Sharma, Neelima Rai, Raghavan S V, and Sriram R
167 – Debasmita Basu, Ian Vanderschee, Priya Shyam and Rathnakumar V
163 – Madhusudan Hanumantha Rao
162 – Ramani
160 – Mukundala Balasubramanyam and Srinath
159 – KK Rao
158 – Diwakar Menon, PB Padmanabhan and Ranjani Srikanth
157 – Nagendra Prasad R.
156 – Ratna Rao
153 – Prasad RV
149 – Radhika Anand
Congrats to all the solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a great score of 8.6. It got 17 perfect 10s – i.e 34% of those who submitted thought it was perfect. The minimum score was 5.
Top 3 Clues: The most favorite clues were for “DENTIST” with 20 votes, “EXERTION” with 17 votes and “LAWYER” with 12 votes.
Thanks to Saral for a terrific themed grid and for managing to include so many theme words as well as a clue acrostic and a Pangram in the puzzle. Nicely done indeed.
Comments on the Puzzle
1. Great fun solving the puzzle. Happy New Year to all!
2. Nice puzzle. Banking on banker 😂
3. good exercise.
4. All in a day’s work of a cruciverbalist
5. Fairly simple grid , wish clues were tougher
6. Excellent Puzzle!
7. Enjoyable
8. good fun. happy new year.
9. Nice puzzle and wish everyone a happy 2021!
10. Relatively straight-forward, but seemed odd not to specify the number of theme words you’re after in the add-on, which creates some unnecessary doubts in the mind of the solver.
11. 10 for the effort
12. Nice puzzle and theme.
13. very nice acrostic and theme
14. To include so many professionals in a cryptic crossword is commendable.
15. Superb. Clues are good. So many theme words.
16. Well crafted grid. Nice clues ingeniously worded to give message.
17. fun grid
18. Very enjoyable grid.
19. Fun, and though simple enough, some annos took a while to figure out
20. Truly professional puzzle!!!
21. Engineered to perfection. Keep it coming.
22. Wonderful puzzle
23. Very enjoyable. Nice clues.
24. Interesting theme and fun to solve
25. Good Attempt especially with Pangram AND Message. Lot of scope to refine clues to make a smooth surface
26. Awesome grid ….my first attempt
27. Very nice grid and clues. And a great many fit of theme words.
28. Nice puzzle
29. very nice
30. so many theme words fitted into the grid..nice
31. Good effort
32. A bit tough, initially. But then the going got good
33. enjoyable grid.
34. No specific comments to improve. Keep the clues with a mixture of hard and easy ones as you have done, which will make us attempt. Enjoyed solving the crossword.
35. Good fun
36. Nice
37. Simply brilliant puzzle , definitely as a banker i enjoyed the clue on banker.All in a days work for sure.
38. Enjoyable grid. I liked how you incorporated a hidden message, so many theme words and made it a pangram too.
39. Good one!
40. Very enjoyable grid! Well compiled!
41. Some nice clues. I spent a lot of time looking for the message in the grid!
42. Nice and elegant puzzle
43. VERY GOOD
44. Amazing how so many professions could be included in one puzzle, plus the message in the clues. Awesome!
45. Some of the surface readings were a bit awkward, but I guess the ‘message’ was forcing that. Were we supposed to get both I and A from 20d? (If not, the A seems to be missing)
46. Thank you Saral! For a wonderful grid🤗
47. ..
48. Fun theme. Good mix of easy and tricky clues. If 18d is a DD for EXERTION, the second def is dubious.
49. Nice puzzle
50. Great fun Saral ,great beginning to the year.Happy New Year to you too