Stats -WOW has become the #1 viewed puzzle in our blog, with 1,238 views as on date – an All time high surpassing the IPL 2020 puzzle which was #1 before this, as well as last year’s Women’s day special grid NOW ME. We had 64 solvers completing and submitting the grid. Of those who submitted 42 managed to get the maximum possible score of 163.
Click Here for the Puzzle Post
The Grid paid tributes to 6 women. In the gridlights, there were Kalpana Chawla, Kamala Harris, Serena Williams, Malala and Greta Thunberg – However the clues for these had been jumbled up and the solvers had to place these answers in their right locations after solving these clues.
In addition, the solvers were asked to identify the sixth woman to whom this grid paid a tribute.
This was not a specific name (though many solvers were misled initially, but “MOTHER” which was spelt out through a Nina at the center of the grid. Incidentally, there was a hint in the title WOW, which is also an Ambigram that reads MOM, when inverted. On this basis, I had planned the Group solving session to conincide with the Arabic Mother’s day – which is today. Happy Mother’s day to all of you who are celebrating it today.
Here is the solution grid:
Annotations:
| Across (with clues in corrected locations) | Answer | Setter | Explanation |
| 1 Good diets breakdown and assimilate (6) | digest | Gayathri Nath | GDIETS* |
| 4 Discharges Reverend saying “Go” to wise men (8) | seepages | Sowmya Ramkumar | Spoonerism of PEE SAGES |
| 9 See 21 Down | |||
| 10 See 7 Down | |||
| 12 Band getting back inspiration is starting again (8) | resuming | Deepa Jhaveri | R(ESUM<)ING |
| 13 Initially men attacked lady activist / student, a Nobel peace prize winner | malala | Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | Acrostic |
| 15 Head of hair or so it’s said! (4) | main | Amrita Majumdar | HP Mane |
| 16 Many hate them changing party – these moles! (10) | proselytes | Qrypt on Y X | M HATE PROSELYTES* = PARTY THESE MOLES* |
| 19 Place in troubled Zaire restricts British Airways by first month (10) | Azerbaijan | Amrita Majumdar | AZER(BA)I* JAN |
| 20 Able man and skipper taking seconds to row (4) | bank | Aashwina Mouli | B A N K |
| 23 See 30 | |||
| 25 Stand and lead pets all over the place (8) | pedestal | Debbie Manber Kupfer | LEADPETS* |
| 27 Behold! Good bishop’s trapped in biblical killer’s cottage (3,5) | log cabin | Mona Sogal | LO G CA (B) IN |
| 28 Discordant opera about one Midwestern city (6) | peoria | Stella Zawistowski | PEOR(I)A* |
| 29 See 22 Down | |||
| 30/23 King’s top aide meets corrupt Air Marshal and President of the Senate | Kamala Harris | Supriya Mithal | K A (AIR MARSHAL)* |
| Down (with clues in corrected locations) | Answer | Setter | Annotation |
| 1 Violate code with odd demeanor (7) | decorum | Usha Srinivasan | DECO* RUM |
| 2 Wings of Goddess Artemis flutter when animals are at pasture (5,4) | grass time | Qrypt on Y X | GSARTEMIS* |
| 3 Mixed masala I switched for a sausage (6) | salami | Chitra Narayanan | MASALA* – A+I, 5 |
| 5 Amazon product owned by tech organization (4) | echo | Stella Zawistowski | Hidden |
| 6 Nachos starter in place, cocktail going around… become as high as you can get! (8) | pinnacle | Juhi Sakhlani | PI(N)NACLE |
| 7/10 Swedish icon’s goods, including burnt heater that needs repair | Greta Thunberg | Shuchismita Upadhyay | G(BURNT HEATER*)G |
| 8 Slang is reflected in clues (7) | signals | Rachel Playforth | SLANG IS<< |
| 11 State of rest or moving in the air that’s not hot (7) | inertia | Debasmita Basu | INTHEAIR-H* |
| 14 Mortified, like bad actor – Helms or Harris perhaps? (7) | ashamed | Rachel Playforth | AS HAM ED |
| 17 Spanish aunt eats exotic tart and pork belly in restaurant (9) | trattoria | Viveca Bhatkal | T(RATT* OR)IA |
| 18 Old boy’s Spanish League? Bring it back. It must be played! (8) | obligati | Aashwina Mouli | OB LIGA TI<< |
| 19 Glowing avalanche remains fluid with oxygen trapped inside (3,4) | ash flow | Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | ASH FL(O)W |
| 21/9 With beginnings from Karnal, a lady pilot, a naturalized American, Congressional Honoree and widely loved astronaut | Kalpana Chawla | Mona Sogal | Acrostic |
| 22/29 Mostly unruffled, a woman winning title – often, one in spectacular slam | SerenaWilliams | Sowmya Ramkumar | SEREN(-e) W (-t)I(-t)L(-e) L(I)AMS* |
| 24 Right time to dredge up lake is August (5) | regal | Viveca Bhatkal | R EGA< L |
| 26 Close association (4) | firm | Supriya Mithal | DD |
Results:
| Woman O Woman (WOW) – Scorecard | |||
| S.No. | NAME | SCORE | |
| 1 | Himanshu Rajurkar | 163 | |
| 2 | Madhusudan Hanumantha Rao | 163 | |
| 3 | Arvind Kannabiran | 163 | |
| 4 | Bhalchandra Pasupathy | 163 | |
| 5 | Prakash Arumugam | 163 | |
| 6 | Dave Williams | 163 | |
| 7 | Madhup Tewari | 163 | |
| 8 | Keith Williams | 163 | |
| 9 | Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | 163 | |
| 10 | Spiffytrix | 163 | |
| 11 | SSv Avtaar | 163 | |
| 12 | Nagendra Prasad R. | 163 | |
| 13 | Supriya Mithal | 163 | |
| 14 | Ranjani Srikanth | 163 | |
| 15 | Sandhya Paruchuri | 163 | |
| 16 | Krishnan Anantheshwaran | 163 | |
| 17 | Mona Sogal | 163 | |
| 18 | Raghavan S V | 163 | |
| 19 | Sohil | 163 | |
| 20 | Mukundala Balasubramanyam | 163 | |
| 21 | Venkatraghavan S. | 163 | |
| 22 | Gayathri Viswanath | 163 | |
| 23 | Venkatesan P. | 163 | |
| 24 | Sree Sree | 163 | |
| 25 | Narayanan R | 163 | |
| 26 | Satyen Nabar | 163 | |
| 27 | Rengaswamy N. | 163 | |
| 28 | Narayan Mandyam | 163 | |
| 29 | Kumaresh K R | 163 | |
| 30 | Anicha Reuban | 163 | |
| 31 | Nick Loader | 163 | |
| 32 | Amrita Majumdar | 163 | |
| 33 | Tejas Siddharth | 163 | |
| 34 | Arvind Ramaswamy | 163 | |
| 35 | Max Jackson | 163 | |
| 36 | Santha Ramachandran | 163 | |
| 37 | Priya Shyam | 163 | |
| 38 | Lakshmi Prakash | 163 | |
| 39 | Samit Kallianpur | 163 | |
| 40 | Anirudh Sahni | 163 | |
| 41 | Ramki Krishnan | 163 | |
| 42 | Debasmita Basu | 163 | |
| 43 | Shrikanth T. | 162 | |
| 44 | Vijay Kutty | 162 | |
| 45 | Neelima Rai | 162 | |
| 46 | Ramani | 162 | |
| 47 | Ganesh Nayak | 162 | |
| 48 | Dr S Venkatesh | 162 | |
| 49 | Abhijit Banerjee | 162 | |
| 50 | Dan Schwartz | 162 | |
| 51 | Ramakrishna D. | 162 | |
| 52 | Camelia Oberoi | 162 | |
| 53 | Suresh Dorbala | 161 | |
| 54 | Ashit Hegde | 161 | |
| 55 | Rhiannon Vivian-Bolt | 161 | |
| 56 | Ian Vanderschee | 160 | |
| 57 | Meera | 160 | |
| 58 | Vasant Srinivasan | 159 | |
| 59 | Hema Ramanathan | 159 | |
| 60 | Harish Kamath | 158 | |
| 61 | Dean | 156 | |
| 62 | Viveca Bhatkal | 156 | |
| 63 | Diwakar Menon | 152 | |
| 64 | Maya Sharma | 141 | |
Congrats to all the solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.49. It got 17 perfect 10s – i.e 27% of those who submitted thought it was perfect. The minimum score was 6.
Top 10 Clues: The most favorited clues were those for “Kalpana Chawla” (By “Mona Sogal”) with 15 votes. “Serena Williams” (By Me) and “Log Cabin” (By Mona Sogal) with 14 votes each, “Resuming” (By Deepa Jhaveri) with 13 votes, “Greta Thunberg” (By Shuchismita Upadhyay), “Proselytes” (By Qrypt on Y X) and “Kamala Harris” (By Supriya Mithal) with 9 votes, “Seepages” (By Me) with 8 votes, “Trattoria” (By Viveca Bhatkal), “Pinnacle” (By Juhi Sakhlani), “Ashamed” (By Rachel Playforth) and “Malala” (By Lakshmi Vaidyanathan) with 7 votes each.
Comments on the Puzzle
1. Enjoyable grid. Happy Women’s Day!
2. Bonus Q&A was the best. Happy Women’s day ! Was eagerly expecting Indian achievers like Pappammal, Nirmala Sitharaman …”
3. Happy women’s day
4. Nice puzzle and good tribute, as always in these cases, can’t acknowledge the so many sung and unsung others
5. Enjoyable puzzle with lovely theme
6. I couldn’t parse the wordplay of 16a, but otherwise really nice. Very kind to have provided a nice easy clue for the one featured woman whom non-Indians might not have heard of!
7. Wonderful clues and very nice and enjoyable puzzle. Way to go, WOW!
8. The grid numbering was all over the place. Also the software is not mobile friendly
9. Generally fun, with some unusual (non-thematic) entries. As I can’t see TERESA anywhere and all of the themed entries are very much alive, I’m assuming MOTHER is all that is required, although this seems a little incongruous with the rest of the theme. Still, congratulations to all involved in this collaborative effort.
10. Loved it
11. Nice easy crossword. Happy woman’s day to all
12. This was the perfect level of challenge for me. And I enjoyed finding answers but not being able to place them in the grid right away. Sometimes though (like in SERENA WILLIAMS), there was no clear definition, and to say that the whole clue is also the definition is a bit of a stretch.
13. What an elegant way to honour women achievers. Theme very well woven into the grid. The twist gave it the challenge though clues themselves were easy. Great effort . Kudos
14. Fantastic Grid incorporating the names of Women Achievers befitting the International Woman’s Day on 8th March.
15. Wonderful grid and clues ,and theme of course.Thanks for making me a part of this Sowmya , We rock ,ladies!
16. Took me a while to get the hang of all the coloured clues. Thought there was a mistake at first! Nice grid. Enjoyed.
17. WoW
18. Great puzzle set by great women! It was very hard to pick only 3 top clues.
19. Great mix of simplicity in clues and the complexity introduced by moving the names around. That said, clues for names were easily guessable without working out the fodder (e.g. president of senate, nobel peace prize winner etc.) so that actually made it easier to solve the gird since you could use # of letters to dispatch the names to the correct positions (without that kind of cheating I might not have been able to complete it). That said I went back and worked out the terrific wordplay in the “name” clues. Wonderful effort!
20. No comments
21. Wonderful tribute …’feel good’ grid 🙂
22. Loved solving this. All excellent clues. Can’t rank them
23. Fairly easygoing. Nice grid.
24. Nice little workout. Not very sure of 16a – filled the only word I knew that would fit the crossers. Looking forward to the solutions to figure out the right answer + annotation
25. Beautiful crossword on the occasion of Women’s Day!
26. Very nice grid. And fitting in all those great women (first name AND last name, mostly) was a superb touch. No complaints
27. Loved the special tribute.!!
28. Great Puzzle. Loved the Nina!
29. Mixed quality of clues but overall a commendable effort, the “twist ” added to the enjoyment
30. Excellent work. Wow!
31. LOVELY GRID – HAPPY WOMEN’S DAY
32. Crisp cluing made good exercise.
33. Great effort! Enjoyed the personalities featured. Not sure how ‘proselyte’ annos (or if it is right)
34. GOOD TEAMWORK BY ALL THE WOMEN
35. Easy but nice.
36. Well Set.
37. Mixed Vegetable curry !!
38. 16A seems to have an “A” extra in the fodder
39. GOOD CLUES. COULD BE BETTER.
40. Excellent grid!
41. Really enjoyable grid. I liked the incorporation of the names of many inspiring women and the apt nina. And I liked reading about all the amazing women who set this grid too 🙂
42. I struggled with 6D and ended up guessing. I found in general that the puzzle combined many straightforward clues with some fairly tortured constructions…a side effect no doubt of having multiple setters. I couldn’t find the connection between the 5 women (apart from their general awesomeness!!) so I guessed on the identity of the 6th woman, ultimately going with the first and only female Fields medal winner. I’m a math teacher, so I felt I needed to represent.
43. maybe a little bit easy and sometimes surfaces a bit unusual
44. I had great time solving the puzzle. The grid has come together well inspite of different setters with varied styles!
45. Nice theme, loved DIGEST, KALPANA CHAWLA, PEORIA and BANK. Learnt a new word in TRATTORIA. The ‘MOTHER’ Nina was well done and tricky to spot.
However, did not like the surface for LOG CABIN, absolutely cannot make sense of PROSELYTES, and the ‘winning’ in SERENA WILLIAMS seems extraneous and contrived, with the Anno {SERENe}{A}{W}{tItLe}{L{I}AMS}*. SIGNALS is a reverse telescopic with all letters included, and was not a particularly fun solve. Finally, why only MALALA, and not the entire name? Leaves an odd taste, since the none of the others were referred to by the first name alone.
To me, this was a puzzle with two main highlights: the incredible acrostic for Kalpana Chawla, and the aha moment after spending more time than the puzzle itself to spot ‘MOTHER’ – a satisfying aha moment.”
46. Nice puzzle. The non-enumerations, made it a bit of challenge.
47. Great Puzzle, Fantastic Grid
48. Amazing Puzzle compilation from Awesome Women! Thanks for the great fun!
49. Great work, thanks! I think there may be an extra a, PROSELYTES = (party these moles)* -thema, unless I have missed something with the annotation
50. Thank you!
“51. Enjoyable, though I was initially confused by the placement of the thematic answers.
16A looks like a compound anagram but I couldn’t make it add up.
18D obligati is plural so doesn’t match “”it must””.”
52. nice
53. SPOONERISM IS JUST ok
54. Excellent grid.
55. Very nice puzzle
56. Very nice grid!
57. ENJOYED THE MISPLACED ANSWERS FEATURE.
58. A great collaboration. Nice variety of clueing styles. Most clues easy, but there were some hard ones.
59. Enjoyable puzzle.
60. N/A
61. Excellent!
62. Couldn’t anno one or two
63. Thank you !!
64. My brain isn’t working in sync with the way the setters see words, not a criticism, just a comment.