Stats The puzzle page was loaded over 350 times. 95 visitors had a go at it and 45 solvers managed to complete and submit the grid. Of those who submitted, only 13 managed to get the maximum possible score of 166.
Spring Break<<< Click Here for the Puzzle Post
Here is the solution grid:
ACROSS
1 Head of garlic substituted for sample of dill in elephant soup (5)
DUMBO–D+G
4 Ambivalent uncle loses opener to latch on moving train (9)
UNCLE–L+TRAIN*
9 Two relatives live without heading back to Indian mountain (5,4)
NAN+DAD+(LIVE–L)*
10 Our boring genetically-modified hollowed out pumpkin, for example (5)
G(OUR)D
11 Senior citizen toiled regularly for no reason at first, ultimately seeing miserable destiny (3,5)
tOiLeD+FOR–R (reason at first)+GEY (seeinG miserablE destinY)
13 One after another hidden back in Bel Air Estates (6)
beL AIR Estates <
15 Type of leather in green mask (7)
RAW+HIDE
17 Construction worker and alien found in waterway (7)
RIV(ET)ER
19 Run into dog eating dormouse’s head (7)
COLLI(D)E
21 Sea mammal to require drug without needles, essentially (7)
MANDATE+E–D
23 Stop working! Components of later iterations recalled! (6)
latER ITERations<
26 Like a new garden hose, cold and lubricated (6,2)
C+”OILED UP”
29 Booster returning very dry oxygen (5)
BRUT < +O
30 Letters from Rachel: “I’m in a temporary shed” (9)
rachEL IM IN A TEmporary
32 Were teens reformed, honey? (9)
(WERE TEENS)*
33 Circular paths? Goodyear tires lose fittings essentially (5)
G+Y+TIRES–TI
DOWN
1 Wild rousing drink (3,4)
ROUSING*
2 Be in charge of humanity (3)
DD
3 New Zealand council returning to a trial (5)
TO < +A+GO
4 Strings up King Edward, looks exactly like execution at first (7)
Up King Edward Looks Exactly Like Execution
5 Greek character with new feature (4)
CHI+N
6 Swindler to travel back in 14 Down (5)
R(GO<)UE
7 Tennis star Andre replaces mule with Utah rodent (5)
AGASSI–ASS+UT
8 Components of our land consisting of raised areas (7)
(OUR LAND)*
12 Be successful without initiation of lightning rod (5)
DO WELL–L
13 Phrase: “I vow somehow, without power, to be a god” (5)
“PHRASE I VOW”–POWER
14 Feel remorse for spa worker after losing weight from the bottom (3)
(MASSEUR–MASS)<
16 Avoid odd arrangement on counter, for example (5)
ODD+EG<
18 Carried contents of grenade to Toronto from the South (5)
(grenaDE TO Toronto)<
19 On vacation, concierge judges ointments (7)
CE+RATES
20 For Pierre, the one island accessory (3)
LE+I
21 Don’t live in back room, it’s more unstable (7)
DIE in ROOM<
22 Fast talk (7)
DD
24 A number may be there (5)
THERE
25 Decay around extra large home for birds (5)
RO(OS)T
27 Stretching the truth yieldingly, without profit building (5)
(YIELDINGLY–YIELD)*
28 Plant in safer natural environment (4)
saFER Natural
31 Wind some Austrians up (3)
austRIAns<
Scorecard
| Participant(s) Name | Total |
|---|---|
| Arvind Ramaswamy | 166 |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | 166 |
| Ganesh Nayak | 166 |
| Lakshmi Prakash | 166 |
| Madhup Tewari | 166 |
| Melissa McSeismal | 166 |
| Nick Loader | 166 |
| Prakash Arumugam | 166 |
| Priya Shyam | 166 |
| Ramki Krishnan | 166 |
| Tejas Siddharth | 166 |
| VENKATESAN P. | 166 |
| Venkatraghavan S | 166 |
| Dave Williams | 165 |
| Keith Williams | 165 |
| Mona Sogal | 165 |
| NARAYANAN R | 165 |
| Ratna | 165 |
| Ronan Cullinane | 165 |
| Samit kallianpur | 165 |
| Supriya Mithal | 165 |
| V RATNAKUMAR | 165 |
| Col Deepak Gopinath | 164 |
| Madhusudan H | 163 |
| Al Sanders | 158 |
| anand ranganathan | 158 |
| Geoff Lee | 158 |
| Kabir Firaque | 158 |
| Magi | 158 |
| Nilesh Parmar | 158 |
| sandhya paruchuri | 158 |
| Simon Chillingworth | 158 |
| Sivaram PV | 158 |
| Sree sree | 158 |
| Alison Crutchfield | 157 |
| Arvind Kannabiran | 157 |
| Ashit Hegde | 157 |
| Jyothish Balakrishnan | 157 |
| Krittibas Dasgupta | 157 |
| Max Jackson | 157 |
| R Nagendra Prasad | 157 |
| S Venkatesh | 157 |
| Veera Raghavan | 156 |
| Ganesh Raman | 151 |
| Gayathri | 134 |
Congrats to the 13 solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.06. It got 4 perfect 10s. The minimum score was 6.
Favorite Clues: Here’s the distribution of favorites picked by the solvers.
Here’s the feedback from our solvers
| Comments / Feedback on the puzzle – Please provide specific com |
|---|
| Creation of theme words in telescopic format is lovely. |
| Excellent clues! |
| Ouutstanding Puzzle |
| Enjoyable |
| Superb grid construction. Clues were ok, but surfaces could be improved. |
| Ah! The hidden words excuse the otherwise iffy grid where left & right only join in two places. Very clever theme. |
| Enjoyable grid, simple but good clues , I liked the concept and the bonus was fun. |
| Another fantastic puzzle. Very nice clues. |
| Excellent puzzle. |
| Wonderful theme! Also liked the hidden word clues |
| FUN GRID |
| Liked the grid very much and the bonus questions |
| Did not see the theme as I did it, came as a bit of a surprise to me that there were 8(!) entries related to the theme. Too many hidden clues, leading to a somewhat unbalanced puzzle. However, Mathrix’s puzzles are always a joy, nice tight, concise clues with neat surfaces that read cleanly. |
| Good one! |
| The main grid was pretty simple (took time to anno RUE – was trying to fit in RUTE – T as wordplay, then the penny dropped on who the spa worker is!) Liked the 2 clues with Indian ref, and the long telescopic. The bonus questions made me look at the grid again really hard and provided a nice twist :)Some of the surface stories look contrived, IMO. |
| good one |
| I was able to find AGOUTI for rodent on google. Need to check Chambers for AGUTI. Interesting surfaces. Definitely evil to have put the eighth spring break in a down clue! 😛 |
| nice grid |
| Beautifully crafted puzzle. Very enjoyable |
| Excellent clues. Could not identify the theme. |
| Good one |
| Loved the grid and the Bonus theme 🙂 Good fun |
| Thanks |
| Awesome wordplay and surfaces. Genuinely impressed. I think you’ve improved a lot since I saw your last grid – and it was already very good 😀 Only thing I’d say is that you seemed to use a lot of the same kind of wordplay and it was overall a bit easy. The bonus was brilliant! Took me embarrassingly long to figure out what ‘spring break’ meant. |
| nil |
| Nice puzzle, good idea for hidden words. The non-standard grid with double unching could have been avoided |
| Not bad at all. I could get very picky about some of the synonyms and constructs, but will gloss over those as they didn’t hold me up unduly. |
| Enjoyable. The grid was neither too easy, nor too hard. The bonus question is harder — filled it in with some guesswork. |
| I might have missed something obvious, but could make nothing of the “examples”, so picked answers with most letters from SPRING. |
| NICE CLUES |
| The surfaces need improvement |
| Thanks for keeping it simple |
| I felt the clue types were unbalanced, there was possibly too many hidden words, (forward and backwards), and too few anagrams and word insertion type clues, eg riv(et)er. |
Thanks Mathrix for an interesting puzzle with an A-ha element. Loved the concept and grid construction and look forward to more grids from you in the future.