Stats – We had 28 solvers completing and submitting the grid. Of those who submitted 20 managed to get the maximum possible score of 158 on the Grid but only 14 maxed the score including the Bonus.
Click Here for the Puzzle Post
Bonus Questions: 1. What is the theme? Clue: Union Survivors to accept new software (7)
2. Identify 5 themed entries
The Grid contained five “themed” entries. Solving the clue yielded the theme which was “Windows” – Union survivors is a cryptic definition for WIDOWS. N is New and “To accept” represents insertion of N in WIDOWS.
The five themed entries were Stained glass, Oriel, Casement, Hopper and Awning
Here is the solution grid:
Annotations:
| Across | Answer | Explanation |
| 1 Stick around, like an architectural feature (8) | casement | C(AS)EMENT |
| 5 Buyer abandons second American artist (6) | Hopper | (-s)HOPPER |
| 9 German rock legend Garland (7) | lorelei | LORE LEI |
| 10 Handled kitchenware fixed to keep waste? (7) | skillet | S(KILL)ET |
| 11 Full of examples (5) | ample | Hidden |
| 12 Service provided by back rows (9) | helplines | HELP LINES |
| 13 Perhaps I may play a supporting role (6,6) | second fiddle | Second letter of Fiddle = I |
| 16 Where you come to in a hospital? (8,4) | recovery room | CD |
| 20 Fashion is tedious and provocative (9) | seditious | ISTEDIOUS* |
| 23/22 Art created for Church instead destroyed girls (7,5) | stained glass | INSTEAD* G LASS |
| 24 Individuals primarily globe-trotting hide new low (7) | ignoble | I G(N)OBLE |
| 25 Protection from the elements at sunrise? Not at first (6) | awning | (-d)AWNING |
| 26 Say girl caught fantasy date lost in drink (3,5) | egg cream | EG G C (-d)REAM. |
| Down | Answer | Explanation |
| 1 Nick, pass note and run (6) | collar | COL LA R |
| 2 Fluids, exercise and something to keep warm (6) | serape | SERA PE |
| 3 New setting for fiction writer (7) | moliere | MO(LIE)RE |
| 4 District hub, region, potentially get cover (13) | neighbourhood | NEIGHBOUR* HOOD |
| 6 Material from Loire College (5) | oriel | ORIEL* |
| 7 Retraction in friend’s current growth (8) | palinode | PAL I NODE |
| 8 Put in, put off, turned up, checked again (8) | retested | DER(SET)ER<< |
| 10 Tell tales about a boy on deck, it may add spice (5,8) | salad dressing | S (A LAD) DRESS ING |
| 14 Perhaps, the drink from Rishi’s travels to England and Austria (5,3) | Irish Sea | IRISH S* E A |
| 15 Air-conditioning exhaust controls one outcome of pollution (4,4) | Acid Rain | AC (I) DRAIN |
| 17 Love and caring can be natural (7) | organic | O RGANIC* |
| 18 Insult that’s a term for a pretty, shallow, woman (6) | barbie | BARB IE |
| 19 Fulfils ultimately profitable returns for value (6) | esteem | E STEEM< |
| 21 Tighten one’s belt for projection (5) | tenon. | Hidden |
Results:
| Opening Salvo – Scorecard | |||
| S.No. | Name | Grid Score | Total Score |
| 1 | Anicha Reuban | 158 | 165 |
| 2 | Anirudh Sahni | 158 | 165 |
| 3 | Bhalchandra Pasupathy | 158 | 165 |
| 4 | Dave Williams | 158 | 165 |
| 5 | Keith Williams | 158 | 165 |
| 6 | Lakshmi Prakash | 158 | 165 |
| 7 | Max Jackson | 158 | 165 |
| 8 | Mona Sogal | 158 | 165 |
| 9 | Narayanan R | 158 | 165 |
| 10 | Prakash Arumugam | 158 | 165 |
| 11 | Sandhya Paruchuri | 158 | 165 |
| 12 | Sree Sree | 158 | 165 |
| 13 | Tejas Siddharth | 158 | 165 |
| 14 | Venkatraghavan S. | 158 | 165 |
| 15 | Dean | 158 | 164 |
| 16 | Dr S Venkatesh | 158 | 164 |
| 17 | Nagendra Prasad R. | 157 | 164 |
| 18 | Nick Loader | 158 | 164 |
| 19 | Debasmita Basu | 156 | 163 |
| 20 | Venkatesan P. | 158 | 163 |
| 21 | Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | 155 | 162 |
| 22 | Madhusudan Hanumantha Rao | 155 | 162 |
| 23 | Raghavan S V | 155 | 162 |
| 24 | Himanshu Rajurkar | 158 | 159 |
| 25 | Ramki Krishnan | 158 | 159 |
| 26 | Nilesh Parmar | 150 | 150 |
| 27 | Ian Vanderschee | 138 | 145 |
| 28 | Sohil | 131 | 136 |
Congrats to the solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.46. It got 7 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 “Second Fiddle” (8 votes), Lorelei (7 votes) and Stained Glass and Retested (6 votes each). 25 clues in the grid got atleast 1 vote each.
Thanks for the interesting theme and puzzle Sideswipe Fabulous attempt for someone who is only on the second grid. Glad that you could take some time out from your busy shooting schedule for some cereberal entertainment. Looking forward to more puzzles from you at the blog.
Comments on the Puzzle
- Very clever set of clues with an interesting theme. Learnt about different kinds of windows.
- MANY NICE CLUES.
- Tough time getting started, but then flew through it. Still unsure of top right corner.
- Very interesting grid
- Thank goodness the internet had heard of HOPPER Windows (although WINDOW-SHOPPER, will probably be justified by some, fortunately, we don’t have t show our workings)! Nice puzzle, somewhat spoilt by the ugly triple unchecked letters in the middle section and the slightly obscure endgame, but fun overall.
- Learned quite a few new words: casement, skillet, oriel, serape, palinode, and perhaps more. 9A was a pleasantly deceptive clue, and 26A had me looking around for all kinds of cream.
However, I’m not sure if five words constitute a theme. The theme hint (windows) was an entertainingly cheeky clue though.
And I guess I find the CD for SECOND FIDDLE slightly vague and iffy.
Otherwise a gripping puzzle!” - Nice grid. Don’t think I have anything constructive to add
- Interesting, though no apparent connection or tribute to Gridman apart from referencing him in one clue. Overall enjoyable puzzle, but can’t see why we persist with triple unching (especially a bit annoying when it comes in a CD type clue with no wordplay) – why not some basic QC before publishing a puzzle? That said, there were several nicely worded clues
- Refreshing
- a couple of anagrinds were iffy/ could not understand Lorelie surface… barbie was a bit offensive
- Some very nice clues. Tricky, but ultimately fair, and able to be parsed. I had trouble picking just 3 to be my favourites! I was stumped on 7D (an unfamiliar word, and I couldn’t truly build it from the word play) and how 3D works (double meaning?)
- Unable to anno few clues.
- Fine; though I spent too long trying to find some significance in the capital ‘s’ on ‘survivors’ in the theme clue!
- On the easier side with few teasers
- Nice puzzle. Some obscure window types I found at wikipedia.
- Excellent grid. Challenging clues.
- SUPER
- Didn’t enjoy this much somehow. Couldn’t figure out how some clues worked (and the entire NW corner eluded me). Even the ones that worked felt a bit too forced for an enjoyable solve.
- Great puzzle
- Lovely clues! IT was very difficult to pick just three.
- Nice construction of clues. Enjoyed solving.
- Nice puzzle overall. Some clues were really good, a few don’t feel right to me. Took me a while to figure out the theme. ‘Union Survivors’ for widows feels like a bit of a stretch. In 12A, shouldn’t it be ‘services’? In 6D, I am not sure what the intended anagrind is.
- Toughie!
- Good
- Interesting – didn’t have time to complete
- I thought the puzzle was very good. I don’t see ‘at sunrise’ as synonymous with ‘dawning’ and being picky but I don’t think ‘is belt for’ is a telescopic indicator, belting or belts I would accept as liberal but ‘is belt for’ is too far I think. The theme felt like a bit of a stretch – if I chose the correct words, ‘awning’ is not really directly related to windows and ‘helplines’ is also a tenuous link. I’m all for disguising theme entries but, like cryptic clues, I think if you look from the right perspective they should become clear (such as the ingenius oriel). Anyway, just my $1/L 🙂
- Excellent, elegant clues, nothing too obvious, some quite hard. Uncommon words made the theme a challenge to find. Nice tribute to Gridman in 14d.
- Puzzle was fairly easy but gave up on the theme, ran out of time!
Note: Results section of the post originally showed only the Grid score. Has been since amended to include the total score.