Stats The puzzle page was loaded 605 times. 74 visitors had a go at it and 38 solvers completed and submitted both the puzzle and the bonus form. 22 people solved the puzzle in part but did not complete and submit. Of those who submitted, 18 got the full score.
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Here is the solution grid:
BONUS QUESTIONS:
- Circled letters taken along with the title will resolve into the theme of the puzzle. Identify (6,6,6)ANS:PRINCE ROGERS NELSON
- Identify a themed Easter egg that can be spotted in the grid ANS:TAFKAP (The Artist Formerly Known As Prince) ROW 9 (under 16A), Reads L->R)
- Identify the 5 themed entries ANS: PURPLE RAIN, CRYSTAL BALL, BATMAN, PARADE, COME
Annotations
| Reference | Clue | Answer | Annotation |
| 9A | See ad is made introducing design for recreational public space (9) | ESPLANADE | [ES(plan)ADE*] |
| 10 A | Reveal revolutionary focus of grape vine (5) | LIANA | (nail<)+(gr(A)pe) |
| 11 A | Check and stir melt with butter infused (7) | TRAMMEL | [T(ram)MEL*] |
| 12 A | Turtle released close to swamp land (7) | TERRAIN | (terrapin -p) |
| 13 A | Fresh intro to Craig’s List? (5) | CLEAN | (C+LEAN) |
| 14 A | Minuet danced by King at Society for Christian Followers (9) | MUTINEERS | (MUTINE+ER+S) |
| 16 A | Oddly amused about last words being fake (7) | ASSUMED | (AS(s)SUMED*) (amused)*around ’s'(wordS) |
| 18 A | Group of islands in sea at India’s borders (7) | OCEANIA | (ocean+I a) |
| 20 A | Stick to lies about retaining international support (9) | STABILISE | (STAB(i) LIES*) |
| 22 A | Pound with sheer ecstacy (5) | PUREE | (PURE+E) |
| 23 A & 4D | Orchestrated ‘Last Call’ to start a dance tells you what’s coming (7,4) | CRYSTAL BALL | (CRY+LAST*+BALL) |
| 24 A | Rent-A-Party! It will blow you away! (7) | TORNADO | (TORN+A+DO) |
| 25 A | Notes about a city (5) | MIAMI | (Mi(A)Mi) |
| 26 A | Acceptance of retweet about Elon M perversely following English nationalist (9) | ENROLMENT | ( EN+R(ElonM)*T) |
| 1 D | Tantrums over centrepieces of action film outfits (10) | PETTICOATS | PET(-ac(TI)-on)COAT)S |
| 2 D | Some parliamentarians crown king on board ship (8) | SPEAKERS | (S(peak+ER)S) |
| 3 D | Orderly cash dispenser in bar (6) | BATMAN | B(ATM)AN |
| 4 D | See 23A | ||
| 5 D | Illness from lunch in high school meets resistance inspired by a lot of evidence (10) | HEATSTROKE | H(eat)S+T(r)OKE(-n) |
| 6 D | Carriage shows in McLaren Centre (8) | CLARENCE | (m(CLAREN CE)ntre) |
| 7 D | Show cut back limiting active duty (6) | PARADE | (par(AD)e) |
| 8 D | See 22D | ||
| 14 D | Deride film about Socrates, perhaps? (10) | MIDFIELDER | (DERIDEFILM)* |
| 15 D | Victims of kid wearing original superhero clothing accessories (10) | SCAPEGOATS | S+CAPE(goat)S |
| 17 D | Champion is popular after leading tournament averages at the outset (8) | MAINTAIN | (MAIN+T+A+IN) |
| 19 D | Reports having managed climbing costs (8) | NARRATES | (RAN<+RATES) |
| 21 D | A big city custom regardless (6) | ANYWAY | (a+NY+way) |
| 22 D & 8 D | See this film clip compiled from Pleasure Principle (6,4) | PURPLE RAIN | [CA (Pleasure Principle- see clip)] |
| 23 D | Appear beautiful not extremely lazy (4) | COME | (COME(-ly)) |
| 24 D | Cutting open after inception (4) | TART | ((-s)TART) |
Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)
| Participant(s) Name | Grid Score | Bonus Score | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aashwina Mouli | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Al Sanders | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Camelia Oberoi | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Deepak Gopinath | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Hawk Crossword | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Koteswara Rao Kolluru | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Lakshmi Prakash | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Madhup Tewari | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Max Jackson | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Mona Sogal | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| P. Venkatesan | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Prakash Arumugam | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Ramki Krishnan | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| samit kallianpur | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Tejas Siddharth | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Veera Raghavan Sundararajan | 154 | 9 | 163 |
| Venkatraghavan S | 154 | 9 | 163 |
Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.60. It got 7 perfect 10s (18% of those who rated). The lowest score was 7.
Favorite Clues: The Top clues were
- Turtle released close to swamp land (7) – 14 votes
- Deride film about Socrates, perhaps? (10) – 13 votes
- Rent-A-Party! It will blow you away! (7) – 11 votes
Thanks to Sideswipe for an awesome grid packed with a theme and NINA. It was a fitting tribute to TAFKAP / Prince whose death anniversary was on April 21st.
Here’s what our solvers said..
| Participant(s) Name | Comments / Feedback |
|---|---|
| Jyothish Balakrishnan | Engineered to perfection |
| Kabir Firaque | Could not spot the Easter egg, but it’s still an excellent grid |
| Rathna Kumar | Fantastic puzzle |
| P. Venkatesan | The setter has designed the theme and the thematic Easter egg very cleverly. Smart clues. A superb brain teaser. |
| Mukundala Balasubramanyam | Lovely themed puzzle. Thoroughly enjoyable! |
| Ramesh Swaminathan | Excellent puzzle with a rare theme. Some wonderful clues. Found it tough but managed to finish. |
| Meera Nandakumar | Tough but very satisfying to answer! Not 100% sure if some of the answers are correct, didn’t figure out the anno 🙂 |
| Al Sanders | Nice clues and theme, fun puzzle! |
| Prakash Arumugam | Well-crafted thematic puzzle. Tricky but entertaining. |
| Madhup Tewari | An absolutely brilliant puzzle with wonderful clues. The hardest part of the entire exercise was picking the three favourite clues in the bonus form. |
| Ramachandra Nagendra Prasad | NICE CLUES..WAS STRETCHED A BIT |
| Binay Patra | The idea behind the theme and title as well as the clues are really innovative and no less enjoyable to solve. |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | Excellent puzzle with a nice concept and a lot of thematic material packed in. Clues were entertaining and diverse, with well disguised definitions/meanings. Very satisfying solve |
| Veera Raghavan Sundararajan | Interesting and somewhat challenging grid. Good clueing. Theme and Easter egg woven well into the puzzle. |
| Venkatraghavan S | Superb grid |
| Nilesh Parmar | Very nice |
| Ashit Hegde | Fairly devious but fair set of clues. |
| Koteswara Rao Kolluru | GOOD |
| D Narayana Swamy | VERY NICE CLUES….COMPOSITE ANAGRAM IN 22dn & 8dn WAS DIFFICULT TO IDENTIFY |
| Lakshmi A J Vaidyanathan | Nice to see AK again in action. 🙂 |
| Narayanan Rangamani | toughie |
| Ramki Krishnan | Nice puzzle with a theme that was gettable even for someone who has never heard any of the songs! Enjoyed solving it, with quite a few aha moments.Apart from the 3 clues above, liked PURPLE RAIN, PUREE, TART to name a few.Nitpicks: OCEANIA and OCEAN have the same root, which I thought makes the clue a bit less cryptic. Also in HEATSTROKE, “a lot of” to indicate deletion of last character is iffy, again IMO. |
| Ratna Rao | Tough but interesting |
| samit kallianpur | Overall, an enjoyable grid with a great theme! Root issue in 15d? |
| Mona Sogal | Fun theme |
| Max Jackson | Some nice cluing. I had to look up most of the thematic names, and it took me an age to find the Easter egg. |
| Tejas Siddharth | Tough one. Don’t know much about Prince to be … stimulated? … by the puzzle. |
| Arjun Mukerjee | Tough grid for me- I had to google a few things. Enjoyed the clever wordplay and misleads. Most surfaces were smooth, but some like 1d, 5d, 17d, 9a, 10a, 23a were rather clunky IMO. Cool theme! |