Stats – The puzzle page had 653 views. However, we had only 25 solvers completing and submitting the grid. Of those who submitted 15 managed to get the maximum possible score of 146.
Click Here to see the puzzle
Read the following instructions/guide carefully
Solutions for all Across clues and five (5) Down clues are longer than their grid lights. The Enums are indicated in the brackets.
Each of these solutions contain French/German/English numbers, which must be digitally transformed and entered in the grid (in one case twice).
All down clues have an extra letter/character, which is to be ignored for wordplay/definition. These characters read together in clue order give two examples for grid entry of all the Across & five longer Down clues. Each grid light takes only one character.
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 Question: What phrase is formed from the extra characters in the Down clues?
Here is the solution grid:
Answer to the Bonus Question:
DREI IS 3 DIX IS 10 ETC
Extra Characters from Down clues:
1. D (OVERDOSEd)
2. R(WAr). Also note C from cRY could also have been the extra letter based purely on wordplay but only R would work for the phrase
3. E (LUNGe)
4. I
5. I (RiGIDNESS
6. S(POKEs)
9. 3 (32
14. D(LOCK(d)OWN)
15. I(FINiAL)
17. X (SEx)
19. I(PAiR)
20. S(QUEENs)
24. 1
25. 0 (A0)
27. E(MOROSe)
29. T(INtEL)
30. C(cAPEX) – deletion of X could also have worked for wordplay but only C would work for the phrase. Ambiguity at 2Dn and 30Dn deliberate to make the phrase more relevant to solving.
Annotations:
Across:
Across: 7 NET(WEB)+WORKING(ON), AT FIRST – POSITION INDICATOR, 8 REIN(CHECK)+STALL(HAMPER), 10 S(H)ELF, 11 BY(G)(ON)ES, 12 ACROSTIC, 13 M in DEADAGUN* UNDA(M)AGED, 16 TENNIS+E – INTENSE, 18 CAN(IN)ES, 20 (-lad)Y(AC(H)TING), 21 (-b)EATEN, 22 SE(A)(SON)ED
Down: : 1 (METH)(OD), 2 ARJUN (ALT LETTER PICKING), 3 (AIR)(BAG), 4 A(GO(-ld))G, 5 RIGIDNESS(-i)* DRESSING, 6 STAB<-, 9 (+L)O(-l)DESTONE ( Sent No. 2 UP) OLDESTONE – SENIORMOST PERSON, 14 MAS(K)S, 15 DYING ~DYEING, 17 (SE(-x)IN)(T)(EIN), 19 (A)((-o)VERAGE), 20 ER in S(-unn)YDEOLYODELERS ( American to indicate US spelling), 24 USDRONE* – RESOUND, 25 (RE)(A)((-pa)PER)DEFN – COLLECTOR COULD BE GRIM (REAPER), 27 TELESCOPIC – SOBS, 29 F in IN(-t)EL* – ELFIN, 30 DD .
Results:
The following people maxed the score.
Anicha Reuban,
Anirudh Sahni,
Arvind Kannabiran,
Ashit Hegde,
Bhalchandra Pasupathy,
Dean,
Keith Williams,
Lakshmi Prakash,
Max Jackson,
Michael Debenham,
Mona Sogal,
Ramki Krishnan,
Sohil,
Venkatesan P. and
Venkatraghavan S.
Here are the scores of the other players
145 – Chris Martin and Himanshu Rajurkar
144 – Prakash Arumugam
143 – Madhup Tewari and Tejas Siddharth
138 – Narayanan R
136 – Ian Vanderschee
134 – Madhusudhan Hanumantha Rao
127 – Vasant Srinivasan
117 – Sree Sree
Congrats to all the solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a Spectacular score of 9.2. It got 11 perfect 10s – i.e 46% of those who submitted thought it was perfect. Even the minimum score was 7.
Top 3 Clues: The most favorite clues were those for “NETWORKING” with 8 votes. “NULLAHS” and “AVERAGE” with 5 votes each and “SHELF”, “EINSTEIN” and “ELFIN” which had 4 votes each. Votes were dispersed across 30 clues.
Thanks to Spiffytrix for a very creative puzzle. Although the grid construction itself must have been extremely challenging the clues were also top-notch which is very tough to achieve within these constraints. Take a bow Spiffy and please do share any additional notes or comments you may have on this.
Comments on the Puzzle
1. Good level of difficulty
2. Quite a common theme this over the years, but an interesting outing despite not all of the low numbers being used in the grid. Some of the clues are excellent like the three nominated, but need to be careful about perfectly legitimate alternatives like CAPE and APEX in 30d, both of which could define HEAD, yielding two equally valid extra letters, which can only be resolved once the message above is resolved.
3. Nice theme. 0 confidence on bonus phrase . Couldn’t annotate a few clues
“4. Brilliantly done! The effort that must have gone into setting this seems unimaginable.
Loved ELFIN and EATEN, they (or rather, a lack of them) had me convinced that something was wrong with my answers – especially EATEN which kept me second-guessing EINSTEIN, which was one of the easier ones.
Lodestone was a new word for me, and I can proudly say I learnt some French!”
5. Interesting ploy using number substitution, which work in different languages in across and down clues where there are crossings. Wish there were more of those than in unchecked cells. Nice workout, thanks for the entertainment
6. Very very enjoyable puzzle with great clues. But could not make out why “1” was used for “El” in “Elfin”.
7. Superb grid. Grid fill must have been a nightmare. Nice theme and construction. And lovely economy of clues – after I didn’t particularly fancy Spiffytrix’s earlier grid (“Headline”)
8. very enjoyable
9. Brilliantly crafted puzzle. Had great fun figuring it.
10. Wonderful puzzle. The clueing was spot-on in terms of difficulty, and the digits were splattered around well enough to provide hints for the tricky crossers. Probably the most fun I’ve had solving a crossword here on 1ac. Looking forward to more such puzzles!
11. Extremely well d1 🙂 so innovative and detailed.. felt a sense of accomplishment on completion. amazed at the execution and the perfection of the grid creation. hats off!
12. Extremely tough! But brilliant in its idea. Very satisfying to have submitted this.
13. 1DERFUL, SETTER SHOULD 1DOUBTEDLY BE PROUD OF HIMS11
14. This is a classic example of a puzzle that requires multiple visits over multiple days. The challenge level is such that I was ready to give up, thinking…well, sometimes a puzzle is just going to get the best of me. The last clue I got was 26: nullahs (0ahs), and it was only after I tried every 4-letter number I could think of. After re-reading the clue for the nth time, I realized that it was a container clue, and right after that I realized that NULL was a four-letter number that I had not considered. I wonder how many others would get that clue last.
Really liked 29: elfin (11in) for a similar reason. I was so fixated on the first character being a 1 (one), I couldn’t get past the UN_I_ letter string. I actually found the phrase in the bonus question, which led me to the discovery that the T should be eliminated from the clue, and the FINEL anagram popped into my head right away.
What an amazing puzzle.”
15. Nice challenge!
16. that was a rewarding puzzle, such fun.
17. A breathtaking grid. Thank you Spiffytrix.
18. Very difficult grid but huge satisfaction on solving it
19. Nice; tricky. 26ac: is “null” a number?
20. Challenging workout. Instructions were mind-boggling at first, but after cold solving some of the clues and fitting them in, slowly everything fell in place!
21. Enjoyable grid and creative idea. The instructions were hard to understand at first but figured things out eventually. Most of the clues were good but a few clues didn’t seem right to me:
30A: Doesn’t “”A stopping/to stop B”” mean A inside B, and not the other way round?
14D: Similarly, doesn’t “”A wearing B”” mean B outside A?”
22. Tough and challenging but very innovative
23. tough workout but kudos to the effort
24. Super concept and quite a feat of setting. Loved how some numerals had one meaning going across and another going down. Good clues despite the constraints. I was stuck on two of them because I only knew how to count up to 10 in German.
UN is used 6 times; can this be reduced?”
25. hard one