Not So Loud – Solutions, Annotations and Results

Stats The puzzle page was loaded 562 times. 125 visitors had a go at it and 39 solvers managed to complete and submit the grid. Of those who submitted, only 21 managed to get the maximum possible score of 161.

Not So Loud<<< Click Here for the Puzzle Post
Here is the solution grid:

Annotations

ACROSS	CLUE	SOLUTION	ANNOTATION
1	Loveless roach somehow captures iron beetle	CHAMFER	FE in (ROACH-O)* – F>>MF
5	Write back and cut down relative (6)	NEPHEW	PEN< + HEW
9	Loiterer led astray in middle of stairway (5)	IDLER	I(LED)*R
10	Encouraged remodel of Ford Comet	COMPORTED	(FORD COMET)* – MF>>MP
13	Exposed false accusations in speech (6)	LIABLE	HP “libel”
14	Crushes team in a group with pellets periodically	SCRUPLES	SCRUM+PeLlEts MP>>P
16	Aquatic plant life’s shell turns up in frozen ocean (7)	NELUMBO	N(LifE<)UMB+O
18	Kolkata triumvirate holds central court (6)	ATRIUM	kolkatA TRIUMvirate
19	Bristle located back in barren wasteland (3)	AWN	(barreN WAsteland)<
21	Japanese ruler’s weapon losing end of hilt (6)	SHOGUN	SHOTGUN – T
22	Popular, more confident underwriter (7)	INSURER	IN+SURER
24	Foolish of us: force lost (two words)	OF COURSE	(OF US FORCE)* FF>>F
25	Vegetable trough overturned by swallow (6)	TURNIP	RUT< + NIP
28	Certain naval officers stand to lose, and ready case for rifles	STRIPPERS	ST(-AND)+RIPE+R(-ifle)S P>PP
30	String ensemble’s overture follows counterpart (5)	TWINE	TWIN+E
31	Inventor returned for end of the match (2-4)	NO SIDE	EDISON<
32	Interfered with current unit found in vacated timberland	TAPERED	T(AMPERE)D, MP>>P
DOWN	CLUE	SOLUTION	ANNOTATION
2	Old charted halls somehow have an advantageous position (4, 3, 3, 5)	HOLD ALL THE CARDS	(OLD CHARTED HALLS)*
3	Lesson plan turned up without header or footer, after additional curtailment (5)	MORAL	MORE-E + (pLAn)<
4	Individually at first, eventually acquiring countless helpers (4)	EACH	Acrostic
5	Raced away from shortened dock (3)	NIP	SNIPPED – SPED
6	A triathlon queen developed a COVID restriction (5, 10)	HOTEL QUARANTINE	(A TRIATHLON QUEEN)*
7	Western in Latin that is furthest off target (6)	WIDEST	W+”ID EST”
8	King provided cast method of shuffling cards	RIFLING	R+IF+FLING, FF>>F
11	Grease monkey put tea in mince medley (8)	MECHANIC	CHA in MINCE*
12	Works regularly done, but very easy (7)	OEUVRES	dOnE bUt VeRy EaSy
15	Gazelle doctor needs to pay a visit (2, 3, 3)	GO AND SEE	GOA + NEEDS*
17	Rob Warner’s first official one with no political preference (7)	MUGWUMP	MUG + W + UMP
20	Complained about being ready for harvest in hollow ground	GRIPPED	G(RIPE)D P>>PP
23	Relative keeps us in frame (6)	COUSIN	CO(US)IN
26	Release disorderly unit to the end of June (5)	UNTIE	UNIT* + E
27	Land mass found in Kumasi airport (4)	ASIA	Hidden
29	Pastry leaders of Pakistan in England (3)	PIE	Acrostic

Scorecard

Participant(s) Name	Score
Bhalchandra Pasupathy	161
Dave Williams	161
Deepak Gopinath	161
Ganesh Nayak	161
Himanshu Rajurkar	161
Josh Audibert	161
Lakshmi Prakash	161
Max Jackson	161
MONA SOGAL	161
NARAYANAN R	161
Prakash Arumugam	161
Ramki Krishnan	161
Ratna Rao	161
RATNAKUMAR V	161
Samit kallianpur	161
Sohil	161
Sparsh Sinha	161
Supriya Mithal	161
Tejas Siddharth	161
VENKATESAN P.	161
Venkatraghavan S	161
Al Sanders	160
anand ranganathan	160
Dr S Venkatesh	160
Krittibas Dasgupta	160
Nick Loader	160
Nilesh Parmar	160
Sree sree	160
Veera Raghavan	160
BINAY KUMAR PATRA	159
Narayan M	159
sandhya paruchuri	159
Ashit Hegde	158
Ramesh Swaminathan	158
Ranjani Srikanth	158
Aashwina	154
Madhusudan H	154
R NAGENDRA PRASAD	149
Jyothish Balakrishnan	143

Congrats to the 21 solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.

We had announced a special prize for this grid. One lucky winner from the “all correct” entries, has been picked to receive a copy of “Letters to Margaret” by cartoonist Hayley Gold and crossword legend Andy Kravis. .

Letters to Margaret, which you can BUY HERE, offers a fascinating peek into the issues facing crosswords today from multiple perspectives with a healthy dose of romcom antics, linguistic banter, and puzzles that the reader can solve alongside the protagonists. So, in a crossword landscape — and a sociopolitical landscape — that’s so starkly divided, can two sides meet and create a whole? That’s the puzzle we offer for you to solve while following the stories of Margaret and Derry, laughing and crying all the way to the last page — or rather pages (a double-sided book has two of those). Although the puzzles in this book are not cryptic, Hayley is already working on her next book which is going to feature cryptic crosswords as well. So I’m sure our readers would look out for that.

The Lucky winner is “Ganesh Nayak”, based in Atlanta in the US. Congrats Ganesh. I’m sure you will enjoy the book.

Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 7.85. It got 5 perfect 10s. The lowest score was 5.

Favorite Clues: The Top 3 clues were

Works regularly done, but very easy (7) – 11 votes
A triathlon queen developed a COVID restriction (5, 10) – 9 votes and
String ensemble’s overture follows counterpart (5)- 8 votes

Comments / Feedback: Here’s the feedback from our solvers

Comments / Feedback on the puzzle
A sound idea. Enjoyed it.
Amazingly constructed.
Another excellent Grid, Kudos , well done
marvelous puzzle
Intricately designed.
Very nice theme and gridfill.
Interesting concept and excellent clues, very enjoyable
A slightly tough grid
Interesting
Fantastic ruleset. Was a lot of fun to do this puzzle. Couldn’t parse a couple, but the definitions point to an answer that I’m quite sure about.
Nice idea and an enjoyable puzzle
Interesting puzzle. Take it that the ‘loud’ clues have no definition too
Nice Puzzle
The themed words were difficult to crack.Rest all were good clues.
Very nicely constructed clues, made a little trickier by the need to change the “dynamics”
Good concept. Clues were nicely worded on the whole. The technical shortcomings were double unches in 2 places and a made up phrase in 15d GO AND SEE which wouldn’t normally qualify as a grid entry, but a good find in gazelle for goa. Nice exercise, variations are always welcome (Note: Comment slightly edited from the original based on Solver’s request)
Good grid!
Good one!
interesting
Fun clues and theme
Very intricately compiled puzzle. While answers were gettable from crossings, it took some careful parsing and interpretation of “Not so loud” to fill them in. Kudos to the setter.
Very fun clues! I don’t understand 5-Down or the first “I” in RIFLING or the “OA” in GOANDSEE (just looked up goa gazelle and there it is! Today I learned). The fill I had trouble with were CHAFFER, SCRUMPLES, NELUMBO, NOSIDE, OEUVRES (this one I thought was fair, though), and MUGWUMP. Some words I didn’t know, and some species I’d never heard of.I think you did a good job of creating good surface-level clues.
different theme
Clever puzzle, the instructions could have been a bit clearer, took me some time to figure out whether the definitions were meant to match the entries or the clue solutions. Ready used twice in the wordplay for RIPE was a rare misstep. “Raced away” should have been “Race away”? Clever to use two different clues for NIP in different clues. Not sure that LIABLE and LIBEL sound alike. Solid Mathrix puzzle, but couldn’t give it the usual 9 or 10 that I usually give them.
It’s annoying not to have the light length given. I appreciate it’s an aid to solvers to know which clues are affected; perhaps put the length in italics or add some other indication.Theme fairly quickly deduced; perhaps the title gave too much away.Generally nice clues though.
Nice
I do not understand the logic behind the ‘dynamic transformation’ at all. Why is M removed from tampered and scruples, but added to chafer? Why are griped and stripers ‘loud’? I thought it was because of the sharp vowel sounds, but then atrium would also be ‘loud.’ It seems very random, unless I am missing something.
nice
Nice gimmick. I couldn’t parse 5d at all though – so the middle letter of that was a guess at the end.
Nice and entertaining
Somewhat tough to handle in parts
Most of the clues were fairly simple. Several surfaces need improvement.
Loveless: s: iron beetle? Write: excellent ‘…back to cut down…’ maybe? Loiterer: s: nice, ‘…loiterer in middle of stairway gets led…’ maybe? Encouraged: great clue; Exposed: not a hp for me but this can happen, Crushes: s: ? Great wp though; Kolkata: cool; Bristle: s: ‘bristle’ is a bit unusual in the surface unfortunately… Okay, just lost my changes and I’m not writing it all again lol so I’ll just say: excellent vocabulary, a little bit easy (if I’ve got it right lol). A couple of unusual surfaces but wp mostly fine. Also some really great clues and surfaces. Dynamics idea is brilliant just a shame that’s where it ended. One or more other twists would’ve been great. I always complain it’s too easy until my mind melts though haha. To find words you could do this for was no easy feat. Maybe a few too many of the same wordplays. Keep up the great work 😀
Mixed bag . Some clues have excellent surface and word play, others not so much. I couldn’t annotate a few and submitted wild guesses. Also, expected more from the bonus questions.
Tough one
started the grid thinking Loud is either addition or deletion of F/ could not really understand the play with P and M/ maybe my bad!