1ACross 7th Anniversary Gridfest – Roundup


Event Sponsors	Puzzle Platform

Stage 1 of the 1 Across 7th Anniversary Gridfest is now complete. During the first stage, 110 of 143 registered participants actively attempted to solve 12 cryptic crossword puzzles.

The crosswords were of varying difficulty and had a number of interesting themes such as Climate Change, Time, Hollywood Movies, the number Seven, NATO codes, Philosophers etc. There were also puzzles with NINAs or hidden messages in the grid, special end games like Fold-in puzzles and even a grid designed with fractals that was based on a book by Christopher Paolini.

Each grid was open for submission for a week and daily leaderboards were published after grids reached their scheduled due dates for submissions.

The actively watched daily leaderboards witnessed a lot of movement and at the end of Stage 1, Mona Sogal from Bengaluru, India emerged at the top of the leader board with a perfect score.

Here are the Top 30. 18 out of the 30 toppers are based in India and 12 are based outside.

1ACross 7th Anniversary Gridfest – Top 30

Participant	Cumulative Score	Strike Rate
Mona Sogal	2014	100.00%
Madhup Tewari	2004	99.50%
Anirudh Sahni	2003	99.45%
Kenny Koh	2003	99.45%
Lakshmi Prakash	2003	99.45%
Prakash Arumugam	2003	99.45%
Samit kallianpur	2003	99.45%
Swathi Ravi	1994	99.01%
Shruthi Ravi	1992	98.91%
Keith Williams	1991	98.86%
Anicha Reuban	1990	98.81%
Aashwina mouli	1989	98.76%
Ashit Hegde	1988	98.71%
Mohsin Ahmed	1986	98.61%
Venkatraghavan S	1984	98.51%
Loks Subrahmanyam	1981	98.36%
Nick Loader	1981	98.36%
Supriya Mithal	1979	98.26%
Camelia Oberoi	1969	97.77%
Harish Kamath	1966	97.62%
Lata Muthanna	1965	97.57%
Ratna Rao	1965	97.57%
Al Sanders	1964	97.52%
Narayan M	1963	97.47%
Kumaresh K R	1962	97.42%
Rajeev Menon	1961	97.37%
Narayanan R	1957	97.17%
Tejas Siddharth	1954	97.02%
Sohil Bhagat	1947	96.67%
Vasant Srinivasan	1947	96.67%

Congrats to all the Toppers in our Leader board and all the best for Stage 2 which begins today, the 5th September 2021.

The Toppers

	Mona used to work in Doordarshan and quit when her daughter was born. She and her husband later started their own company. Her present hobbies include singing and learning Spanish and she describes crosswords as a consuming passion 🙂
Madhup is an officer of the Indian Police Service with more than 25 years of service and is currently posted as Addl. Director General of Police, Andaman & Nicobar Islands. He had been doing crosswords since childhood, but lost touch with them after college until IXL (where he ranked second in 2020) and 1Across rekindled the interest.	Anirudh Sahni is a software engineer in Seattle. He began solving cryptics in high school in Bombay and IIT Bombay and is delighted to have found a community of like-minded solvers online. As seen here, he loves wrapping his hands around a weighty Conundrum.	Kenny Koh, a university student in Singapore considers himself a detail-oriented, analytical person. He loves solving puzzles of different types and his initial introduction to cryptic crosswordss was from puzzle hunts and browsing on Reddit.
Lakshmi, a resident of Bengaluru got hooked on to cryptic crosswords thanks to Mona Sogal. She describes this as a terrific journey and says that she has enjoyed the myriad competitions from 1Across.	Prakash, a molecular biologist living in Singapore says he has enjoyed solving cryptic crosswords since his school days..	Samit, a dentist based in Secunderabd, India loves solving crosswords. He says he has been hooked ever since he saw his late Prof Arunachalam Kumar solving THC grids in the early 1990s and sends his best wishes to 1ACross on our anniversary!