Stats: The puzzle page was loaded 559 times. 56 visitors had a go at it. 36 solvers completed both the puzzle and bonus forms. 6 solvers did not submit the bonus form. The remaining 14 solved it partly or fully but did not submit. 20 solvers got the full score.
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Here is the solution grid:
BONUS QUESTIONS:
Q1.Which two entries can combine into a themed entry (total 7 letters)? ANS: I SEE YOU
Q2.2 movies by the same director? ANS: STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and FRENZY (Both HITCHCOCK movies)
NOTE: The grid is 100% themed and all the entries are name of movies (including Bosc which is a Spanish movie).
Annotations
| Ref | Clue | Solution | Annotation |
| 9A | Forest ranger Sonat Raina has a tale of murder (9, 2, 1, 5) | STRANGERS ON A TRAIN | Hidden in plain sight |
| 10A | Goddess drives evil king and son away (4) | DEVI | DRIVES* – R – S |
| 11A | Neo-noir’s seriousness reduced by bits of extreme raciness (3, 4) | SIN CITY | SINCERITY – ER |
| 12A | Every fop essentially wants a mirror (4) | ECHO | EACH + O – A |
| 13A | Vaccination refused by South Indian state? That’s twisted! (4) | SPUN | S + PUNJAB – JAB (vaccination) |
| 14A | Dad taking support to net year’s return on investment (7) | PAYBACK | (–s)PA(Y)BACK; topless resort: (–s)PA; spine:
BACK |
| 17A | Cash may be deposited here and withdrawn from Peddapalli town (4) | TILL | Hidden in reverse |
| 18A | Insanely hot Travolta dances in this comedy (5, 12) | HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA | INSANELY H TRAVOLTA* |
| 21A | Al Pacino film ‘Valleys’ enthralling Kasparov and singer Diana (9, 4, 4) | GLENGARRY, GLEN ROSS | GLEN(GARRY)GLEN + ROSS (singer Diana) |
| 25A | Exists on weed essentially? Ah, ha! (1, 3) | I SEE | IS + EE |
| 26A | Course regularly consumed by many voracious eaters (7) | LOCUSTS | LO(C_U_S_)TS |
| 29A | Skipper Pataudi’s issue: South Africa’s leading run average (4) | SARA | SA + R + A |
| 30A | Rambo’s curious about what a pear variety’s called in America (4) | BOSC | Hidden in plain sight |
| 31A | Horror film sadly hobbled; director fired by TriStar’s head (3, 4) | THE BLOB | HOBBLED* – D by T |
| 33A | Old Chinese leader very loud in temper (4) | HUFF | HU + FF |
| 34A | These are drastic steps mares use (9, 8) | DESPERATE MEASURES | MARES USE= MEASURES; reverse anagram |
| 1D | Public in running metros, honey, is what pickpockets eye (5, 7, 5) | OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY | PEOPLE (public) in METROS HONEY* |
| 2D | ’Rain Man’ shot on top of Eiffel, an iconic symbol in France (8) | MARIANNE | RAIN MAN* + E |
| 3D | Girls in Europe initially suppressed urges (4) | EGGS | E(GG)S |
| 4D | The Reverend’s Asian sect for love and passion (6) | FRENZY | Spoonerism of ZEN (Asian sect) FREE (for love) |
| 5D | Cold, lonely, bigoted and occasionally precocious girl (6) | LOLITA | Every third letter of co(L)d l(O)ne(L)y b(I)go(T)ed (A)nd |
| 6D | Comfortable transport out of CST (4) | EASY | ECSTASY – CST |
| 7D | Having saved first match, new XI getting something to drink (5, 3) | GREEN TEA | GREEN (new) + TEAM – M |
| 8D | Western movie (Alfred Hitchcock’s first) quietly hiring its cast (4, 6, 7) | HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER | ALFRED H P HIRING ITS* |
| 14D | PFA pressing appeal by students in difficulty (7) | PITFALL | P(IT)FA + LL |
| 15D | Abe Lincoln finally dumping A Johnson, perhaps? (3) | BEN | ABE + N – A |
| 16D | Kansas infiltrated by more evil hitmen (7) | KILLERS | K(ILLER)S; (iller = more evil) |
| 19D | Virat endlessly ragged SKY (3) | AIR | _IRA_* |
| 20D | Oddly smoggy, boggy land in Britain (3) | SOG | S_O_G_ |
| 22D | An action film Capone’s produced, packed with energy (2, 6) | NO ESCAPE | CAPONES* around E |
| 23D | The person being addressed is said to be a beast (3) | YOU | Homophone: EWE & YOU |
| 24D | Peak traffic time detaining the Pope in Russia’s old, old city (4, 4) | RUSH HOUR | RUS(HH)O UR |
| 27D | Swindlers in Munich eat Schweinshaxe (6) | CHEATS | Hidden in plain sight |
| 28D | Biblical character Moses largely reformed hiding criminal (6) | SALOME | MOSE_* hiding AL |
| 31D | Bitter traitor turns up before court at last (4) | TART | RAT>>TAR before T |
| 32D | Funny British character and blonde American, both on vacation (4) | BEAN | B____E + A______N |
Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)
Each of the following scored 196 points (Grid Score = 192 and Bonus points = 4)
Arvind Ramaswamy
Ashit Hegde
Bhalchandra Pasupathy
Deepak Gopinath (Col.)
Himanshu Rajurkar
Ian VanderSchee
Lakshmi Prakash
Max Jackson
Mona Sogal
Mukundala Balasubramanyam
Narayanan Rangamani
Nilesh Parmar
Prakash Arumugam
Ramki Krishnan
Rathnakumar V
Ratna Rao
Samit Kallianpur
Tejas Siddharth
Venkatesan P.
Venkatraghavan S.
Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a score of 8.14. It got 9 perfect 10s (25% of those who rated). The lowest score was 5.
Favorite Clues: The Top clues were
- Forest ranger Sonat Raina has a tale of murder (9, 2, 1, 5) – 9 votes
- Insanely hot Travolta dances in this comedy (5, 12) – 9 votes
- Vaccination refused by South Indian state? That’s twisted! (4) – 8 votes
- Rain Man’ shot on top of Eiffel, an iconic symbol in France (8) – 8 votes
Thanks to Aquifer for the entertaining puzzle. The amazing grid construction with 100% themed entries got a lot of positive feedback.
Here’s what our solvers said..
| Name | Comments / Feedback |
|---|---|
| Venkatesan P. | Beautiful clues. Great surfaces. |
| Srinivas Venkatesh | Entrancing filmy magic brought home |
| Mukundala Balasubramanyam | Superb movies themed grid |
| Veera Raghavan | Well designed grid almost all entries thematic. Fun finding the answers |
| Debasmita Basu | Excellent grid, as always. Bonus questions were a little confusing |
| Jyothish Balakrishnan | A befitting tribute to the movie world. Excellent software support. |
| Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | Enjoyed solving . Nice puzzle & theme |
| Rathnakumar V | Nice thematic Grid |
| Sparsh Sinha | Enjoyable yet tricky |
| Madhup Tewari | Beautiful puzzle! |
| Ramesh Swaminathan | Nice one. Kudos to the efforts of the setter to complie a grid with such theme entries. |
| Mona Sogal | Wonderful how the setter manages to put in so many themed entries every time- absolutely brilliant- I was wondering if grandchild can also be clued as issue? |
| Samit Kallianpur | Nice grid. |
| Madhusudan H | Good one |
| Narayanan Rangamani | very nice |
| Venkatraghavan S. | Lovely as usual |
| Prakash Arumugam | Amazing feat to get so many movies fit in a crossword grid. Enjoyable solve |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | Nice and quite an achievement packing in all those cinematic entries, larger grid notwithstanding. My knowledge of movies is below average, so this was quite a learning process, something I look for and enjoy in a puzzle. Main downside here was that the nature of entries was rather predictable |
| Koteswar Rao | SO MANY WONDERFUL MOVIES AND CLUES. |
| Ramki Krishnan | Quite challenging since I had not heard of many of the movies – Google helped. Nice clues with good surfaces – could not anno 1-2 of them still but going ahead with the submission! |
| Max Jackson | Nice construction to find the interlocking long film names. |
| Ashit Hegde | Fun Grid. Some good clues, the surfaces of the theme related clues however were just passsable (understandably so) |
| Arvind Ramaswamy | Simple grid. Nice theme but some clues didn’t work for me, they seem iffy.. |