Stats The puzzle page was loaded 484 times. 90 visitors had a go at it and 40 solvers managed to complete and submit the grid. Of those who submitted, 14 managed to get the maximum possible score of 161.
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Here is the solution grid:
BONUS QUESTIONS:
1. Identify the theme which can also be derived from the title of the puzzle (5,5) ANS: BOARD GAMES
2. Any 8 of the themed entries. ANS: Themed entries as highlighted in the Grid include CONNECT FOUR, PLUTONIUM, FONDUE,
CLUEDO, CATAN, HAUBERK, ONUS, GEMINI, MONOPOLY, CANCAN, YAMMER, MR COOL, RISK
3. 2 themed entries that appear elsewhere in the puzzle ANS: SNAKES AND LADDERS and TICKET TO RIDE (as Clue Acrostic – using first letters of clues)
Annotations
| CLUE# | STARTING LETTERS |
CLUE | SOLUTION | ANNO |
| 6A & 7D | S | Study trap to catch conservative at late afternoon hour- strategic game! (7,4) | CONNECT FOUR | STUDY IS CON/ TRAP IS NET/ CATCH IS CONTAINER IND/ CONSERVATIVE IS C/ LATE AFTERNOON IS FOUR |
| 7A | N | Not plain like a river, say (7) | FLOWERY | D / CD |
| 9A | A | American born Japanese backing crime, evil and infamy at first (5) | NISEI | CRIME BROUGHT BACK IS SIN<< EVIL AND INFAMY AT FIRST IS E AND I |
| 10A | K | Killer element Wodehouse perhaps, took in & out, comically(9) | PLUTONIUM | WODEHOUSE PERHAPS IS PLUM/ TOOK AS CONTAINER INDICATOR/ INOUT* DANGEROUSLY AS ANAGRIND |
| 11A | E | Exotic animal swallowed a bit of unusually but fine ceramic material (7) | ALUMINA | EXOTIC IS ANAGRIND/ ANIMAL SWALLOWED U/ FINE CERAMIC MATERIAL IS DEF |
| 13A | S | Some Freud? no fraud rejected this swiss dish (6) | FONDUE | SOME AS TELESCOPIC INDICATOR/REJECTED AS REVERSAL INDICATOR/ frEUD NO Fraud/ WORD EMBEDDED IN REVERSE |
| 15A | A | A fancy airline flying for a period of twelve months (9,4) | FINANCIAL YEAR | A FANCY AIRLINE* FLYING AS ANAGRIND/ |
| 19A | N | Note: Centre’s ace club get idol a classic mystery entertainment (6) | CLUEDO | NOTE CENTRES IS MIDDLE LETTER PICK UP INDICATOR/aCe cLUb gEt iDOl/ |
| 20A | D | Did Plum’s often used bank erroneously give out a one-time payment?(4,3) | LUMPSUM | LUMP SUM IS MADE OF LETTERS FROM PLUM/ OFTEN USED BANK IS THE LETTER BANK INDICATOR |
| 23A | L | Lawless reign about to return goods obtained illegally for updating machinery at the plant (9) | RETOOLING | LAWLESS IS ANAGRIND/ REIGN* ABOUT IS CONTAINER INDICATOR/ TO RETURN IS REVERSAL INDICATOR/ GOODS OBTAINED ILLEGALLY IS LOOT<< |
| 24A | A | At first, champions advance towards a new parlour adventure (5) | CATAN | AT FIRST AS THE ACROSTIC INDICATOR/ FIRST LETTERS OF THE FODDER |
| 26A | D | Defensive armour from a bygone era? lol, you overheard fool! (7) | HAUBERK | LOL IS HA/ YOU overheard isU/ FOOL IS BERK |
| 27A | D | Desirous, in a frenzy- use a room, remove last piece of lingerie!(7) | AMOROUS | IN A FRENZY IS ANAGRIND/ USE A ROOM- E*/ REMOVE LAST PIECE OF LINGERIE IS E |
| 1D | E | Ease bishop from extra duty (4) | ONUS | Eliminate IS DELETION INDICATOR/ BISHOP IS B/ EXTRA IS BONUS/ -B/ONUS |
| 2D | R | Ray and this pair of twins misappropriated aid in Germany?(6) | GEMINI | RAY AND+ GEMINI=AID IN GERMANY/ MISAPPROPRIATED IS ANAGRIND |
| 3D | S | S.Watson’s device for testing times? (9) | STOPWATCH | SAMUEL WATSON IS S WATSON/ HE INVENTED STOPWATCH/ FOR TESTING TIMES IS THE CRYPTIC DEF |
| 4D | T | Tricky contest on my polo ground (8) | MONOPOLY | ON MY POLO*/ GROUND AS ANAGRIND |
| 5D | I | Instigating locals serving time (6,4) | BEHIND BARS | INSTIGATING IS BEHIND/ LOCALS IS BARS |
| 6D | C | Characters of Tuscan cancelled a lively dance(6) | CANCAN | CHARACTERS OF AS TELESCOPIC INDICTOR tusCAN CANcelled/ EMBEDDED WORD |
| 7D&6A | same as 6 across | CONNECT FOUR | ||
| 8D | K | Kick up a fuss! pound husband for a yellow top(6) | YAMMER | POUND IS HAMMER/ HUSBAND H FOR YELLOW TOP Y |
| 12D | E | Ecumenical Union Bank of India, in short left nothing with country (10) | UBIQUITOUS | UNION BANK IN SHORT IS UBI/LEFT IS QUIT/ NOTHING IS O/ COUNTRY IS US |
| 14D | T | Taxi with the French girl hit a wire (9) | CABLEGRAM | TAXI IS CAB/ THE FRENCH IS LE/ GIRL IS G/HIT IS RAM |
| 16D | T | Testosterone say, (denied to us)is funnily not dangerous(8) | ANDROGEN | DENIED TO US IS DELETION OF TO US FROM NOT DANGEROUS*/ FUNNILY AS ANAGRIND |
| 17D | O | …or break Supreme Court and Church, hurry! (6) | SCORCH | OR GETS IN BETWEEN SC AND CH |
| 18D | R | Rewrites commercials about dads and uncles, say (6) | AMENDS | COMMERCIALS ARE ADS/ ABOUT IS CONTAINER INDICATOR/ DADS AND UNCLES SAY IS MEN |
| 21D | I | Iceman say prepared room to host company head on 5th of April (2,4) | MR. COOL | ROOM* PREPARED AS ANAGRIND/ TO HOST AS CONTAINER INDICATOR/ COMPANY HEAD IS C/ 5TH OF APRIL IS L |
| 22D | D | Don Bradman, say bounces back, takes fourth wicket. That’s a gamble!(6) | RISK | DON BRADMAN IS SIR/ BOUNCES BACK IS REVERSAL RIS/ FOURTH WICKET IS K/ |
| 25D | E | Estimate set back after losing husband’s trust (4) | TROW | ESTIMATE IS WORTH/ SET BACK IS REVERSAL INDICATOR/ AFTER LOSING HUSBAND IS DELETION OF H/ WORTH-H<< |
Scorecard
| Sno | Participant(s) Name | Total | Grid | Bonus |
| 1 | Arvind Ramaswamy | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 2 | Ashit Hegde | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 3 | Debasmita Basu | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 4 | Lakshmi Prakash | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 5 | Madhup Tewari | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 6 | Madhusudan H | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 7 | Narayanan Rangamani | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 8 | Prakash Arumugam | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 9 | Ramki Krishnan | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 10 | Ratna Rao | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 11 | Samit kallianpur | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 12 | Supriya Mithal | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 13 | VENKATESAN P. | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 14 | Venkatraghavan S. | 161 | 149 | 12 |
| 15 | Anantakrishnan N. | 160 | 149 | 11 |
| 16 | Himanshu Rajurkar | 160 | 149 | 11 |
| 17 | Jyothish Balakrishnan | 160 | 149 | 11 |
| 18 | Aashwina Mouli | 159 | 149 | 10 |
| 19 | Bhalchandra Pasupathy | 159 | 149 | 10 |
| 20 | Dave Williams | 159 | 149 | 10 |
| 21 | Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | 159 | 149 | 10 |
| 22 | Tejas Siddharth | 159 | 149 | 10 |
| 23 | Usha Ramesh | 159 | 149 | 10 |
| 24 | Veera Raghavan | 159 | 149 | 10 |
| 25 | Max Jackson | 158 | 149 | 9 |
| 26 | Ranjani Srikanth | 158 | 149 | 9 |
| 27 | Rathnakumar V | 158 | 149 | 9 |
| 28 | sandhya paruchuri | 158 | 149 | 9 |
| 29 | Ganesh Nayak | 157 | 146 | 11 |
| 30 | Krittibas Dasgupta | 157 | 149 | 8 |
| 31 | Aaron Riccio | 156 | 149 | 7 |
| 32 | Avtaar SSv | 156 | 148 | 8 |
| 33 | Ian VanderSchee | 156 | 147 | 9 |
| 34 | Harish Kamath | 149 | 149 | 0 |
| 35 | Nagendra Prasad R. | 149 | 146 | 3 |
| 36 | Ramesh Swaminathan | 149 | 149 | 0 |
| 37 | Sparsh Sinha | 149 | 149 | 0 |
| 38 | Sree Sree | 149 | 149 | 0 |
| 39 | Narayan Mandyam | 148 | 148 | 0 |
| 40 | Deepak Gopinath (Col.) | 147 | 147 | 0 |
Congrats to the 14 solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got an excellent score of 8.32. It got 9 perfect 10s (26% of those who rated). The lowest score was 5.
Favorite Clues: The Top 3 clues were
A fancy airline flying for a period of twelve months (9,4) – 13 votes
Ease bishop from extra duty (4) – 9 votes and
Not plain like a river, say (7) – 8 votes
| Comments / Feedback |
| Lovely grid .Fairly easy to solve with lots of variety. |
| Incredible grid |
| Wonderful concept ,entertaining grid .Very satisfying to solve including the bonus games , the title ,and I’m amazed at the lengthy, themed words hidden in the clues themselves. |
| Super puzzle. Nice clues. Theme words are neatly placed in the grid and the clue lines. Enjoyed solving. |
| Great creativity in designing the grid around the theme |
| Designed to perfection. |
| Very enjoyable. Lots of aha moments. Board games were a bit hard to find |
| reminder of childhood |
| EXCELLENT |
| Wonderful puzzle! Very enjoyable. Beautiful clues, as well. |
| Good puzzle. Liked letter bank clue and CA clue. Mixed difficulty level. |
| Enjoyed it! |
| Very enjoyable puzzle with a playful theme. |
| Lovely themed grid. Enjoyed solving! |
| Super |
| Well crafted puzzle and a pleasure to solve |
| Nice theme and mostly well-clued words. Enjoyed solving them. Could see the additional challenge imposed by the clue acrostic – well done! |
| Good grid..Had fun solving it! |
| Nice theme and gridfill |
| Nice puzzle |
| Some very nice stuff. I can’t parse 3d, but it’s probably just me failing to see something clever going on. |
| Enjoyed the puzzle, nice clues! |
| Nice theme! |
| Clear wordplay and solvable. Good mix of easy and tricky clues. Theme escapes me but I have put in something (which is most likely wrong) |
| Very nice and challenging clues! |
| Nice Puzzle |
| Very ingenious puzzle, the clues were a mixed bag (Understandable given the limitations imposed by the bonus puzzle) |
| Learnt a few board game names. Good puzzle. |
| Nice puzzle |
| Great effort in populating the grid with so many thematic entries. Some elements of wordplay not convincing |
| NIL |
| I struggled to find eight games, so picked some answers that sounded plausible. Various web searches didn’t help. |
| I’ll write more about specific clues in my weekly roundup, but I didn’t love the overly vague (e.g., “strategic game,” “parlour adventure”) definitions for the board games. Some of the surfaces also felt unnecessarily long and vague like 21D.
I did, however, like the variety of wordplay, including a letter bank (20A) and letter swap (8D), and found most of the words (both final fill and charade parts) to be accessible or inferable even for someone unfamiliar with British slang (like BERK) or less common definitions (like CON). Remember that a 5 is average, so this puzzle is above average. |
| Interesting theme. |
Thanks to “Pixie Dust” for a fun puzzle that brought a bout of nostalgia and memories of hours spent playing games with our extended family. It was awesome that the setter managed to include so many themed entries (did you leave any game out:) as well as a Clue Acrostic while maintaining a fine standard of clueing. Looking forward to more puzzles with interesting themes from you in the future as well
Readers – do leave us your comments about the grid and your favourite board games. We would love to hear from you all.