Stats – We had 36 solvers completing and submitting the grid. Of those who submitted 24 managed to get the maximum possible score of 162. Welcome to those of you who are new to the blog.
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The Grid contained seven across “themed” entries in which one letter was used consecutively three times. When these repeating letters were from top to bottom, they spelt “TRIPLES”.
Here is the solution grid:
Annotations:
| Across | Answer | Explanation |
| 1 Former British prime minister, strangely tethering toy up (4,3,7) | pitt the younger</td | (TETHERING TOY UP)* |
| 8 American sporting event using first class ball (5,4) | super bowl | SUPER + BOWL |
| 9 Expressions used when cold bishop occupies British Royal Society (5) | brrrs | RR in (B + RS) |
| 11 Early pope, lion with independent ego indeed (3,3) | leo iii | LEO I I I |
| 12 Batsman seconds those engaging in hartal, perhaps (8) | strikers | STRIKER S |
| 14 Papa’s punchier when arranging method of buying online (2-3,8) | in-app purchase | PAPASPUNCHIER* |
| 16 “Rowdy Seamen Hurt Nit” is the content of news story (5,8) | human interest | SEAMEN HURT NIL* |
| 21 Topless model going back in to work in an elegant way (8) | prettily | (s)ITTER in PLY |
| 22 Not very bright, I will upset sesame (3-3) | ill-lit | I’LL + (TIL<) |
| 25 Malevolent people lived by perpetrating spite, primarily (5) | wasps | WAS + initials P S |
| 26 Yeomen of the guard losing loud birds with bright plumage (3-6) | bee-eaters | BEE(f)EATERS |
| 27 Grass gets beaten with scull in social conflicts (5,9) | class struggles. | (GRASS GETS + SCULL)*. |
| Down | Answer | Explanation |
| 1 Grinder is a nuisance to the French (6) | pestle | PEST + LE |
| 2 Stop over following kind, mostly, that delivers a violent blast (7) | typhoon | HO + ON after TYP(e) |
| 3 Bones playing sitar (5) | tarsi | SITAR* |
| 4 Cupid’s opposite number turns angry (4) | eros | SORE< |
| 5 Efface old boy that’s educated (10) | obliterate | OB + LITERATE |
| 6 Blunder after beak upset about perpetual victim (9) | nebbisher | BISH after NEB + RE< |
| 7 Profitable ventures, say, where students do not start (7) | earners | (l)EARNERS |
| 10 Belt up god, belt up (4) | sash | SA< SH |
| 13 They are concerned with sight tool biceps exercised … (5,5) | optic lobes | TOOL BICEPS* |
| 15 … visions of hearts in long jumbled mass (9) | phantasms | P(H)ANT ASMS* |
| 17 As being Italian for the knife, say (7) | utensil | UT ENS IL |
| 18 Experienced sailor turns over shelter for hoary rope’s end (4,3) | salt eel | SALT EEL< |
| 19 Special energy women ooze (4) | spew | SP E W |
| 20 Arrest in street just the same (6) | stasis | ST + AS IS |
| 23 Old Chinese currency initially invested in Scots pine (5) | liang | I in LANG |
| 24 Bit of hesitation in the wake of French I taunt? (4) | jeer. | ER after JE. |
Results:
| One Two – Scorecard | |||
| S.No. | Name | Score | |
| 1 | Anicha Reuban | 162 | |
| 2 | Anirudh Sahni | 162 | |
| 3 | Arvind Kannabiran | 162 | |
| 4 | Ashit Hegde | 162 | |
| 5 | Bhalchandra Pasupathy | 162 | |
| 6 | Dave Williams | 162 | |
| 7 | Dean | 162 | |
| 8 | Himanshu Rajurkar | 162 | |
| 9 | Kumaresh K R | 162 | |
| 10 | Lakshmi Prakash | 162 | |
| 11 | Madhup Tewari | 162 | |
| 12 | Madhusudan Hanumantha Rao | 162 | |
| 13 | Max Jackson | 162 | |
| 14 | Michael Debenham | 162 | |
| 15 | Mona Sogal | 162 | |
| 16 | Narayanan R | 162 | |
| 17 | Prakash Arumugam | 162 | |
| 18 | Ramki Krishnan | 162 | |
| 19 | Sandhya Paruchuri | 162 | |
| 20 | Sohil | 162 | |
| 21 | Spiffytrix | 162 | |
| 22 | Vasant Srinivasan | 162 | |
| 23 | Venkatesan P. | 162 | |
| 24 | Venkatraghavan S. | 162 | |
| 25 | Derek Harrison | 161 | |
| 26 | Jyothish B | 161 | |
| 27 | Tejas Siddharth | 160 | |
| 28 | Priya Shyam | 159 | |
| 29 | SSv Avtaar | 158 | |
| 30 | Ian Vanderschee | 156 | |
| 31 | Nagendra Prasad R. | 156 | |
| 32 | Ranjani Srikanth | 156 | |
| 33 | Ganesh Nayak | 154 | |
| 34 | Prasad RV | 144 | |
| 35 | Nilesh Parmar | 143 | |
| 36 | Rathnakumar V | 140 | |
Congrats to the 24 solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.07. It got 9 perfect 10s – i.e 25% of those who submitted thought it was perfect. The minimum score was 5.
Top 3 Clues: The most favorited clues were those for “Prettily” (10 votes), Obliterate (7 votes) and Class Struggles (7 votes). 25 clues in the grid got atleast 1 vote each.
Thanks for the challenging puzzle Eclogue The grid fill was pretty mind boggling especially being able to form the “TRIPLES” with the triple fill. Looking forward to more puzzles from you at the blog.
Comments on the Puzzle
- Great effort
- Sadly I didn’t enjoy the puzzle all that much. Too many obscure and/or British references with uninspired clueing. Nebbisher for instance, an arcane word clued using neb and bish with a surface that made no sense(to me atleast) is one among the lot. I plodded on awaiting a penny drop or a grand theme reveal which unfortunately never materialized. Maybe it’s just me being grumpy or dense.
- Very enjoyable puzzle.
- Unknown bonus answers
- Interesting puzzle
- Excellent puzzle, though a bit more straightforward than a barred puzzle with a twist I was expecting from Eclogue. Nice mix of clues, some crafty (Utensil and Sash in particular), but the long anagrams made solving rather less strenuous than one is used to. Very enjoyable. Theme word of course could easily be identified with the enumeration, but ‘What is the theme?’ gave me pause – could potentially be answered in a number of ways. Unless there is another theme that I’ve missed!
- happy easter
- Very well constructed with a good mix of well-known words and more obscure words. Very easy to get the theme after a couple of answers, but the theme word took some careful observation. Thank you for a fun puzzle!
- Nice to have a quick solve after last month’s!
- challenging but a lot of fun. Great grid. Kudos
- good fun
- A nice idea, though BRRRS and LEOIII were rather giveaways. 17D Italian is usually IT not IL. 19D surely SPEW and OOZE are not synonymous.
- Neither too easy nor too difficult. Creative theme.
“14. A lot of the surfaces just don’t make sense. 22a, 26a, 27a, 2d, 6d, 10d, 17d, 18d, 24d, to be specific.
I also never thought I would see something like BRRRB in a crossword puzzle (assuming it is right). It’s understandable that it was done for the RRR, but I wonder if it’s kosher.
The theme was evident after getting two of the triplets, and the word triples after the third. Save for the fact I knew there had to be an RRR sequence, I would never have considered BRRRB.
To add to this, many definitions were vague. How are wasps malevolent ‘people’? Human interest = content of news story? AB = God? The connections once made are understandable, but they are either redundant or vague.
I also have no idea how to annotate TYPHOON, SALT EEL, NEBBISHER, and UTENSIL either partially of completely, assuming of course that they are right.” - nice, simple theme. good fun
- Many Obscure words, otherwise a nice grid with reasonable degree of difficulty
- Couldn’t parse a couple of clues (10d and 17d), but otherwise found this fairly smooth. The theme is nice, but it did limit the kind of words that could be used, leading to some weird solution words like 9a and 11a. Overall – didn’t enjoy this one as much as I’ve enjoyed the last few puzzles on this site
- Wonderful theme. Arrangement of themed words in the rows in a sequential order made it easy to spot the theme word. Brilliant idea.
- Fun solving the puzzle.
- Nice and simple grid.
- Really enjoyable, clever use of the theme letters to spell a relevant word
- Good fun…found some of the definitions a little vague..otherwise very entertaining
- Nice Puzzle
- Nice Puzzle
- Not as fond of this one as some others. I feel like there may be some regional conventions that I’m missing in the word play because I’m Canadian.
- Complicated by enjoyable.
- A fun and inventive theme. Mostly good and challenging clues; a few seemed stretchy (25a WASPS=malevolent people? 2d HO=stop? 23d LANG is not a verb in Scots per an online dictionary, and the currency is actually Ban Liang). Clues for the 4 longest words were all anagrams; would have preferred more variety.
- Tough puzzle but satisfying to solve
- Superb
- Easy theme to spot and fun solve.
- Many surfaces are not plausible
- Nice puzzle and theme! Found some of the clues difficult, especially the ones that use slang, and haven’t managed to anno a couple even after looking things up.
- good one!
- Good puzzle. Well constructed but some surfaces don’t mean much
- Interesting
- EXCELLENT