Stats The puzzle page was loaded over 500 times. 245 visitors had a go at it and 52 solvers managed to complete and submit the grid. Of those who submitted 37 managed to get the maximum possible score of 145.
Animal Crossing<<< Click Here for the Puzzle Post
Here is the solution grid:
ACROSS
7 *Almost out of breath
PUFFIN: CORRECT LOCATION 4D PUFFIN(-G),
9 Frequently turns unsteady and unemployed (6)
UNUSED: -tU-rN-sU-nStEaDy
10 *Guy admits love for associate
MOLE: CORRECT LOCATION 22D M(-a+O)LE.
11 Rocking moments of party with female admitting all outside initially (5 words)
A WHALE OF A TIME: CORRECT LOCATION 15A: WITHFEMALEAAO
12 *Date Joey’s mom before informal tribunal (2 Words)
KANGAROO COURT: CORRECT LOCATION 8D Kangaroo (Joey’s mom) Court (Date)
14 Every year, princess and friend tour university (8)
ANNUALLY: ANN U ALLY
15*Rogue programmer joining the Spanish left husband to get married
MACKEREL: CORRECT LOCATION 3D (-h+M)ACKER EL,
17 Sporty articles featuring student get noticed essentially (8)
ATHLETIC: A TH(L)E TIC
19 Play mostly intense game (6)
INTENSE: INTENS(-e)*
21 Elaborate piece of soprano bagging gold – actual or fake? (10)
COLORATURA: COL(OR)ATURA*
22 Attack shopping center on radio (4)
MAUL: HP MALL
23 Bright silver metal twisted with hole inside (6)
AGLEAM: AG ME(-t)AL*
24 Cast reel in, easily covering edge of a habitat (4,4)
TREE LINE: Hidden in Plain Sight
DOWN
1 Lead bitter horse round and round (6)
GALENA: G ALE NA
2 Change current over (4)
EDIT: EDIT<
3 *One American country’s not closer to Italy
IGUANA: CORRECT LOCATION 20D I GU(-y)ANA,
4 *50% of guavas inside grate
JAGUAR: CORRECT LOCATION 12A: JA(GUA)R
5 Where one may start tripping but is not as tight (3,7)
BUS STATION: BUT IS NOT AS*
6 Wake-up call from one boring party with the French (8)
REVEILLE: REVEILLE
8 *Support group with King’s very evil guards
AARDVARK: CORRECT LOCATION 7A: AA(R)D(V)ARK
13 In France, one admitted without husband is not honoured (10)
UNHALLOWED: UN (HALL) OWED,
15 Key considered unlimited, but…(8)
ALTHOUGH: ALT (-t)HOUGH(-t)
16 *Relative is with that woman vacating Gulf earlier
KINGFISHER: CORRECT LOCATION 11A: KIN GF IS HER
18 Torture amateur strangely lacking energy (6)
AMATEUR: AMAT(-e)UR*,
20 Went away
NEWT: CORRECT LOCATION 10A: NEWT – Theme No DEF
22 Abandoned tent area
ANTEATER: CORRECT LOCATION 16D TENTAREA,
| Participant | Score |
|---|---|
| Al Sanders | 145 |
| Alison Crutchfield | 145 |
| Arvind Kannabiran | 145 |
| Arvind Ramaswamy | 145 |
| Ashit Hegde | 145 |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | 145 |
| Chris Evans | 145 |
| Codiak | 145 |
| Dave Williams | 145 |
| Debasmita Basu | 145 |
| Ganesh Nayak | 145 |
| Geoff Lee | 145 |
| Hawk | 145 |
| Ian VanderSchee | 145 |
| Keith Williams | 145 |
| Krittibas Dasgupta | 145 |
| Lakshmi Prakash | 145 |
| Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | 145 |
| Madhup Tewari | 145 |
| Madhusudan H | 145 |
| Max Jackson | 145 |
| Melissa McLachlan | 145 |
| Mona Sogal | 145 |
| N Anantakrishnan | 145 |
| Nick Loader | 145 |
| Nilesh Parmar | 145 |
| prakash arumugam | 145 |
| Priya Shyam | 145 |
| Ramki Krishnan | 145 |
| Ratna Rao | 145 |
| Samit Kallianpur | 145 |
| Satyen Nabar | 145 |
| Sriram R | 145 |
| Supriya Mithal | 145 |
| Suresh Dorbala | 145 |
| Tejas SIddharth | 145 |
| Venkatraghavan S | 145 |
| Col Deepak Gopinath | 144 |
| Jyothish Balakrishnan | 144 |
| Narayan Mandyam | 144 |
| R Nagendra Prasad | 144 |
| sandhya paruchuri | 144 |
| Usha Ramesh | 144 |
| V RATNAKUMAR | 144 |
| Avtaar | 143 |
| Irwin Appel | 143 |
| Narayanan R | 143 |
| Sohil | 143 |
| Sree sree | 143 |
| Venkatesan P. | 143 |
| Magi | 141 |
| Anand Ranganathan | 140 |
Congrats to the 37 solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.55. It got 11 perfect 10s. The minimum score was 5.
Favorite Clues: Here’s the distribution of favorites picked by the solvers.
Comments
| Comments / Feedback on the puzzle (Sorted by Ratings) |
|---|
| Excellent grid. Fun, challenging without being too difficult. |
| Liked the grid very much 🙂 |
| I HAD A WHALE OF A TIME- cute puzzle/ excellent surfaces/ fresh challenge |
| Excellent grid |
| Loved the concept and theme ,enjoyable and easier than it looks at first glance ,the crossings helped.Great clues,simple smooth surfaces. Yay no tough Bonus Qs |
| Loved it |
| Excellently designed. |
| Enjoyed it! |
| some of the clues were brilliant |
| Good concept. Wonderful clues. |
| Seemed impossible at the start but once complete looked so simple. A lot of fun overall. |
| Liked a crossword rwist I hadn’t seen before. Disliked obscurity of a couple of answers. |
| Great fun found it difficult to select 3 favorite clues , there were so many |
| Good stuff – level felt pitched about right for me! |
| I didn’t think I would finish this, but the crossings helped a lot! |
| Tricky and challenging puzzle but fun to solve. Couldn’t anno 15AC which is 11AC |
| Enjoyable puzzle |
| lovely and interesting challenge |
| Lovely themed grid. |
| Very entertaining grid! |
| Good clues and surfaces. Overall, excellent puzzle. Only one grouse (since the theme is animals 🙂 ) 1D does not work for me, sorry. NAG becoming GNA does not appeal to me. |
| It is kind of tricky that two of the starred clues are defined, after the instructions say they aren’t |
| Tough one, but enjoyable all the same. |
| not about to tell sachin how to bat 🙂 |
| Challenging but not too difficult. Great fun! |
| Interesting puzzle, a nice workout |
| Very enjoyable theme – though AWHALEOFATIME is 5 words not 4! Had me stuck for a while. I liked the breaking of conventions in a few clues – “princess” not being DI, and using “round” as a cycling indicator. Good stuff. |
| Fun challenge! |
| There are a couple of potential clue issues I think. Is MAUL really a homophone for MALL – depends which part of the world you’re in I guess (MARL being more akin to the US version for example)? Similarly, which Princess is being referred to in 14a, as it can’t be the UK’s Princess ANNE which would require an E – maybe there was a homophone or curtailment indicator missing? Other than that, all good, but it might have been more fun as a complete jigsaw rather than just juggling the creature-themed entries. |
| Very nice clues and a most enjoyable puzzle. |
| Excellent mix of easy and tough clues. |
| One or two clues I don’t quite get, particularly JAGUAR. |
| Enjoyable fare |
| Fun puzzle. Turned out to be easier than I originally expected, since the non-themed clues were mostly cold-solvable. The theme was also quite clear from the title itself which helped. Could not anno one of the clues but submitting anyway. |
| enjoyable puzzle, learnt some new words ! |
| Nice puzzle. Nothing by way of advixce. 🙂 |
| Nice. Did Adi contribute to this too. Way to go |
| Enjoyed solving the puzzle |
| Breezy puzzle though a few rarer theme words were used. Difficult words clued well with decent surfaces |
| Super |
| The copyright line was the best of all! Kudos young man! |
| Great fun! |
| Fun puzzle to do, especially with the unknown placement of some of the clues. Not quite sure of the (placed) answers at 15a or 8d, given that they seem to contain the definition in the clue that is reflected there. |
| Creating the potential confusion between JAGUAR and IGUANA was clever – well, it caught me anyway! |
| Great puzzle. Love all the themed entries! Some excellent wordplays and brilliant surfaces. There was only one definition I disagreed with: galena for ‘lead’, galena afaik is not lead, it is a lead sulphite. I did not agree with the wordplay for this clue either. ‘and round’ does not mean ‘cycle’ imo. Brilliant surface though. Only two other clues did I disagree with the wordplay for: Do not agree with party as anagrind prior to fodder, though again this clue had a lovely surface. Also not a fan of ‘away’ as an anagrind, though surface for this clue was great. Surfaces, of course, are subjective but felt the following phrases were unnatural: ‘turns unsteady and unemployed’, ‘left husband to get married’, surfaces for TREE LINE, EDIT, IGUANA and ALTHOUGH. Some others are questionable but these particularly stuck out to me. Final quibbles: it was said that themed entries would not have definitions yet KANGAROO COURT and A WHALE OF A TIME seemed to. Would have preferred to be told: not all themed entries will have definitions. Would have added to the difficulty, which leads to my final suggestion for improvement – overall a bit easy. Again, hard to please everyone. Some things I really liked: apart from clues I picked as top 3 – COLORATURA was magical, PUFFIN, misleads of ‘rogue programmer’, ‘hole inside’, GUA being in jaguar and iguana, wordplay in KINGFISHER, TREE LINE and IGUANA and having themed entries that included animals but were not just animals. |
| Thank you for the puzzle. The only minor suggestion I would make would be to try to reduce the number of jumbles in clues. |
Thanks to all who participated.
The Credits for the puzzle are jointly shared with my son Adhvik Ramkumar who gave me the list of animals that I could use to seed the puzzle. Though he cant solve cryptics yet, the puzzle has his approval too.
If you have any thoughts you would like to share about the puzzle do leave us a comment in the blog. We look forward to hearing from you,