Stats The puzzle page was loaded over 350 times. 104 visitors had a go at it and 48 solvers managed to complete and submit. Of those who submitted, 30 managed to get the full scores.
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Here is the solution grid:
BONUS QUESTIONS:
- Rearrange the encircled letters to form a name associated with three of the entries (6, 9) ANS: – ALFRED HITCHCOCK
- Name the three entries mentioned in Q1 ANS: – SHADOW OF A DOUBT, DIAL M FOR MURDER, THE PARADINE CASE
Annotations
| ACROSS | Clue | Answer | Annotation |
| 7 | Enthralling Papa, Mother relates funny story about a monarch (3, 4, 7) | THE LAST EMPEROR | MOTHER RELATES* enthralling P |
| 8 | Remake of ‘Show Boat’, a dud movie from a renowned director (6, 2, 1, 5) | SHADOW OF A DOUBT | OF SHOW BOAT A DUD* |
| 12 | This sci-fi movie is smooth, tense and often hot. Fetch new copies (6, 2, 3, 4) | PLANET OF THE APES | PLANE (smooth) T + [h(O)t (F)e(T)c(H) n(E)w] APES (copies) |
| 20 | Throw Elon out of national group of stars (3) | LEO | ELON* – N |
| 21 | Diamond setter starts to collect emeralds (3) | ICE | I + CE |
| 22 | Communist fought losing battle (3) | RED | WARRED – RED |
| 23 | Famously ‘Green’ eastern state in America (3) | EVA | E + VA (def: famously ‘Green’; ref: Eva Green) |
| 24 | ‘Crazy Heart’, ‘Pieces’ and a Gregory Peck movie (3, 8, 4) | THE PARADINE CASE | HEART PIECES AND A* |
| 28 | Play Mozart; he’s OK for a swashbuckler (3, 4, 2, 5) | THE MASK OF ZORRO | MOZART HES OK FOR* |
| 35 | Wine and drink set back engaging character in classic thriller (4, 1, 3, 6) | DIAL M FOR MURDER | RED (wine) RUM (drink) LAID (set) >> DIAL MURDER engaging FORM (character) |
| DOWN | Clue | Answer | Annotation |
| 1 | Stalemate over holding festival (4) | MELA | Reverse telescopic |
| 2 | A milk producer cycles in Texas city (4) | WACO | A COW cycles |
| 3 | Occasionally sexist, very poor science fiction frightener with two sequels (4) | XTRO | Every third letter of seXisT veRy pOor |
| 4 | Perhaps Watson made Holmes drunk — he sold out (4) | EMMA (perhaps Watson) | MADE HOLMES* – HE SOLD |
| 5 | A number of unknown ores strangely lacking sulphur (4) | ZERO | Z (unknown) ORES* – S |
| 6 | Women wanting nurse at British baby’s original home (4) | WOMB (baby’s original home) | WOMEN – EN + B |
| 7 | Aircraft evaluator set up model project outside India (4, 5) | TEST PILOT | SET>>TES + T P(I)LOT |
| 9 | Maybe Corleone is not quite finished (3) | DON | DON(-e) |
| 10 | An Italian university at centre of Brenner, bordering Austria (3) | UNA (An Italian) | U (university) + N (centre of Brenner) + A (Austria) |
| 11 & 25 | & 25D, At IIT-H, we chat regularly about crime story (3, 3) | THE HIT | A(T) i(I)t(H) w(E) c(H)a(T) >> THE HIT (reversal) |
| 13 | Stripped of crown, notorious gangster is on his own (5) | ALONE | AL CAPONE – CAP |
| 14 | Madonna’s main role in a musical of considerable vitality (5) | EVITA (Madonna’s main role in a musical) | Hidden in plain sight |
| 15 | Uncovered! Lopez removing top, underwear in stage production (5) | OPERA | (-)OPE(-) + (-b)RA |
| 16 | Fickle writer ditches wife for one of twins in ‘The Simpsons’ (5) | TERRI (Ref: twins Sherri and Terri Mackleberry) | WRITER* – W |
| 17 | Turn on the radio — a Murphy, for instance (5) | EDDIE | Homophone; eddy = turn (Collins synonyms) |
| 18 | Depiction of Jesus and Mary in letters from Greece (5) | PIETA | PI + ETA |
| 19 | Good rest cut short at new entrance for theatre actors (5, 4) | STAGE DOOR | GOOD RES(-) AT* |
| 26 | His Holiness axes priest, one who told stories (3) | POE – P | POPE |
| 27 | ‘Coyote Ugly’ drops toy company’s boss (1, 1, 1) | CEO | COYOTE* – C |
| 29 | Mop a piece of furniture? There’s no piece of cloth! (4) | HAIR | CHAIR – C |
| 30 | Energy’s missing in Emil Zatopek’s last exploit (4) | MILK (definition: EXPLOIT) | EMIL – E + K |
| 31 | A little alarm inside small iron container for valuables (4) | SAFE | S(A)FE |
| 32 | Some monster gobbled up this monster (4) | OGRE | Reverse telescopic |
| 33 | Greek God emerges from ebbing waterway in Africa (4) | ZEUS | SUEZ>>ZEUS |
| 34 | Drive away Victor, drive away! Drive! (4) | RIDE | (DRIVE – V)* |
Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)
| List of Toppers |
|---|
| Al Sanders |
| Anantakrishnan N. |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy |
| Binay Kumar Patra |
| Deepak Gopinath (Col.) |
| Ian VanderSchee |
| Koteswar Rao |
| Lakshmi Prakash |
| Lakshmi Vaidyanathan |
| Madhup Tewari |
| Madhusudan H |
| Max Jackson |
| Melissa McSeismal |
| Mona Sogal |
| Narayanan Rangamani |
| Prakash Arumugam |
| Ramki Krishnan |
| Ranjani Srikanth |
| Ratna Rao |
| Sairindhri |
| Samit Kallianpur |
| sandhya paruchuri |
| Satyen Nabar |
| Sohil Bhagat |
| Sparsh Sinha |
| Sree Sree |
| Tejas Siddharth |
| Veena Venkataraman |
| Venkatesan P. |
| Venkatraghavan S. |
Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated. A warm welcome to Satyen Nabar, PV SIvaram, Krishnan Anantheswaran and Suresh Dorbala who were participating for the first time in this season.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.43. It got 9 perfect 10s (19% of those who rated). The lowest score was 7.
Favorite Clues: The Top clues were
- Enthralling Papa, Mother relates funny story about a monarch (3, 4, 7) – 14 votes
- Perhaps Watson made Holmes drunk — he sold out (4) – 12 votes
- Wine and drink set back engaging character in classic thriller (4, 1, 3, 6) – 11 votes
The grid was 100% themed which is an amazing feat of construction and Aquifer has carefully honed the surfaces of the clues to bring in movie connections in most of the surfaces too. An excellent grid overall and an enjoyable solve. Thanks Aquifer.
Here’s what our solvers said.
| Full Name | Comments / Feedback on the puzzle – Please provide specific com |
|---|---|
| Lakshmi Prakash | Lovely thematic grid |
| sandhya paruchuri | Super, thrilling crossword! |
| Venkatesan P. | Wonderful clues. Enjoyed the fun. |
| Jyothish Balakrishnan | Classical wish list beautifully designed. |
| Rathnakumar V | Lovely thematic grid, easier than expected |
| Binay Kumar Patra | Thriller of a grid. A good reminiscence of things past. A solve worth- remembering for quite a long time. Thanks Aquifer! |
| Veena Venkataraman | Interesting theme and very nice clues |
| Nagendra Prasad R. | ENTERTAINING PUZZLE |
| Ramesh Swaminathan | Lovely. Such an interesting puzzle. As gripping as the theme word. Brilliant word plays and grid fill. Kudos. |
| Krishnan Anantheswaran | Very fair clues given the length and letter combinations in solutions when proper nouns are in play. Well done! (I may have made a few guesses, e.g. 3d) |
| Sreelakshmi | I realised I got a clue wrong after submission, so I know I couldn’t get them all, but I know I did have fun! Good crossword, might have been challenging with the theme; things kept falling into place after an initial difficulty! |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | Nice, a lot of movie related stuff packed in, even if not all thematic. It does become a bit of a give away though when you know what to look for. All clues worked well, possible exception may be 21a where I felt the definition needs to be in the plural |
| Deepak Gopinath (Col.) | Good construction |
| Mona Sogal | Good fun! nice theme- some very good surfaces |
| Prakash Arumugam | Entertaining puzzle with a nice theme |
| Ramki Krishnan | Nice and smooth, with a pretty easy theme to spot. Loved all the long (part) anagram clues, as well as some of the short ones like HAIR, MILK. 22A – “fought losing battle” seems a bit weak since warred and war have the same root. Could not account for the second E in Planet of the Apes. |
| Samit Kallianpur | Good one! |
| Venkatraghavan S. | Lovely grid construction. As always keep improving surfaces |
| Arvind Kannabiran | most entertaining! |
| Narayana Swamy D | Finding names of films for a person who is not a film buff is difficult indeed |
| PV Sivaram | Enjoyable puzzle to recapitulate old time movies. Would have liked some later day classics too |
| Veera Raghavan | Well constructed clues. With movies as theme, many solutions could be guessed even on a partial reading of the clues. |
| C Varun | Very nice movie references, though some were quite obscure (Xtro) and some quite dated (1940s and 1950s) |
| Anantakrishnan N. | Nice theme |
| Max Jackson | Quite easy once the theme emerged. I’m not sure of 23ac; I had ECO = green; E + CO; until it didn’t check. |
| Tejas Siddharth | Interesting idea, but I am not a fan of movies. This puzzle requires me to know Evita is a character played by Madonna, or that XTRO was a series of movies in the 80s. I found a lot of the proper nouns uninteresting. My favourite clue, perhaps, was WOMB. Maybe this puzzle is not suited for someone who is not a movie buff. |
| Ashit Hegde | Fun puzzle mainly because of the theme. |
| Raja | Good puzzle and made me recollect the movie names |
Other Comments (names withheld)
| Comments / Feedback on the puzzle – Please provide specific com |
|---|
| Fun grid |
| Loved the theme grid |
| A lovely puzzle, thanks. It was hard to choose only 3 favourite clues. The Hair clue was rather clever and the Mask of Zorro, and several others, as well as the 3 I ended up choosing. |
| Loved it |
| Some new words but cluing was smooth. |
| Fun grid. Liked the bonus question. |
| Nice grid with lots of long entries |
| Fun puzzle for a Sunday morning |
| GOOD ONE BUT NEEDED GOOGLE HELP |
| Nice |
| SUPERB |
| This was a fun one, with nice long themed answers. |
| Easy, nice theme. Well done. |
| Test of movie knowledge. Anagrams were well constructed. Appreciate the uniqueness of the grid theme. |
| Nice puzzle. The surfaces for the long entries were very impressive. By virtue of the grid layout having to support long across entries, the down entries were very short, which were not super fun to do. |