Stats: The puzzle page was loaded 349 times. 51 visitors had a go at it. 43 solvers completed both the puzzle and bonus form. The remaining 8 solved it partly.33 solvers got the full score.
Mind Bender<<< Click Here for the Puzzle Post
Here is the solution grid:
Annotations
| Slot | Clue | Solution | Annotation |
| 6A | Cleaner Pam lost in bustling Soho (7) | Shampoo | SOHO* around PAM* |
| 7A | Wasn’t exactly honest – have to rest… (3,4) | Lie Down | LIED ( wasn’t exactly honest) OWN (have) |
| 9A | The greatest swinger’s excuse! (5) | Alibi | ALI BI ali -greatest, bi(sexual) – swinger, the rest is the def. |
| 10A | Party with drunken models abandoning king in Australia (4,5) | Down Under | DO DRUNKEN* -K |
| 11A | Each round item in chest is for plumber’s friend (7) | Plunger | PER AROUND LUNG ( item in chest) |
| 13A | Basically, assistant, biomedical engineer looks into accident in plant (6) | Abelia | Acrostic |
| 15A | The camera can’t be used in a school district (9,4) | Catchment Area | thecameracant* |
| 19A | Witness and watch a 5 day match at Eden garden! (6) | Attest | Punny DD |
| 20A | Student essentially eager to get tattoo in relationship (7) | Linkage | L (-e)AGE(-r) around INK |
| 23A | Female expert’s choice for skin product (4,5) | Face Cream | F ACE CREAM (choice) |
| 24A | Hairy creature from north America loses following & love becoming a narrow minded person (5) | Bigot | BIGFOOT – F O |
| 26A | Swore no one for once finally arrived drunk (7) | Averred | ARRIVED * – I + E |
| 27A | Poem by new college student leaving for university (7) | Eclogue | COLLEGE* -L +U |
| 1D | Heads of states arrived resplendent in Indian attire (4) | Sari | Acrostic |
| 2D | Branch rings in new season (6) | Spring | SPRIG around N |
| 3D | Unfriendly celebrity runs inside to greenhouse (4, 5) | Cold Frame | COLD (unfriendly) FAME (celebrity) around R |
| 4D | Shadow of a writer, extremely unfirm on support (8) | Penumbra | PEN UM BRA |
| 5D | Lord! Glacier all over the place, not good on mountains (10) | Cordillera | LORD GLACIER -G |
| 6D | Cooking without a pinch of turmeric impacts dish (6) | Scampi | IMPAC(-T)S* |
| 7D | Tennis venue where the French win occasionally (4) | Lawn | LA W(-i) N |
| 8D | Standard Agatha Christie novel with criminal (6) | Normal | N OR M AL |
| 12D | On your own? Date staunch liberal not top scientist? (10) | Unattached | DATE STAUNCH* – S |
| 14D | Oscillating pendulum including breadth, too deep to be measured (9) | Unplumbed | pendulum B* |
| 16D | A piece of plastic from Cuba remains on vehicle hood finally (4,4) | Cash card | C ASH CAR D |
| 17D | Head wanting fixed tariff on American yarn (6) | Raffia | TARIFF* – T A |
| 18D | Perhap,lead reported showing resolve (6) | Mettle | METAL (HP) |
| 21D | Bunch of stars with lead characters of Nutcracker exit Broadway under Legal Act (6) | Nebula | ACROSTIC |
| 22D | The french word’s ‘empty’ for blue (4) | Lewd | LE W(-or)D |
| 25D | Bad data? Going to cancel northern order (1,1,1,1) | GIGO | GOING*-N |
Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)
Out of 51 solvers, 33 got the full score. Each of the following scored 149 points (Grid Score – 149, Bonus – NA).
Al Sanders
Anantakrishnan N.
Arvind Ramaswamy
Ashit Hegde
Bhalchandra Pasupathy
Deepak Gopinath (Col.)
Ian VanderSchee
Irwin Appel
Jyothish Balakrishnan
Lakshmi Prakash
Lakshmi Vaidyanathan
Madhup Tewari
Max Jackson
Melissa McSeismal
Mona Sogal
Nagendra Prasad R.
Narayan Mandyam
Narayana Swamy D
Nilesh Parmar
Prakash Arumugam
Priya Shyam
Ramesh Swaminathan
Ramki Krishnan
Rathnakumar V
Samit Kallianpur
Sandhya Paruchuri
Sohil Bhagat
Sparsh Sinha
Supriya Mithal
Tejas Siddharth
Veera Raghavan
Venkatesan P.
Venkatraghavan S
Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got an excellent rating of 8.16. It got 6 perfect 10s (14% of those who rated). The lowest rating was 5.
Favorite Clues: The Top clues were
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- The greatest swinger’s excuse! (5) – 10 votes
- Wasn’t exactly honest – have to rest… (3,4) – 10 votes
- The camera can’t be used in a school district (9,4) – 8 votes
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Delightful grid from Ambrosia. Looking forward to seeing more grids from her.
Here’s what our solvers said..
| Name | Comments / Feedback on the puzzle |
|---|---|
| Jyothish Balakrishnan | Delightful. Each bender a pleasure. |
| Veera Raghavan | Nice puzzle. |
| Mukundala Balasubramanyam | Enjoyable grid |
| Rathnakumar V | Nice simple puzzle |
| Nilesh Parmar | Nice and smooth |
| Avtaar | Good puzzle that was not too easy. Liked many clues. A few pointers, if I may. Finally as tail indicator was used more than once. The French was repeated in WP. More than one acrostic could have been avoided |
| Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | Nice puzzle |
| Venkatraghavan S | Lovely clues and surfaces. |
| Sparsh Sinha | Some of the wordplays were really good |
| Al Sanders | Nice clean puzzle, very enjoyable |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | Good fun, nice clues |
| Samit Kallianpur | Good one! Nice clues with smooth surfaces. Only nitpick -container indicator in 2d (rings..) has most of the letters in same order as the answer |
| Ashit Hegde | Nice mix of clues, overall good surfaces, enjoyable grid |
| Madhusudan H | Very nice puzzle with well crafted clues. |
| Sandhya Paruchuri | Good one! |
| Narayan Mandyam | decent grid |
| Narayanan R | Good one |
| Prakash Arumugam | Clues had a nice surface and were fun to solve |
| Nagendra Prasad R. | walk in the park |
| Madhup Tewari | Nice! |
| Mona Sogal | Overall a fun grid..some very nice surfaces…could not totally understand the annotation for ATTEST…maybe i missed something perhaps, some other container indicator other than RINGS in SPRING… because ring is in the solution…had a lot of fun solving the grid.. |
| Supriya Mithal | Enjoyable ,many good clues and excellent surfaces. |
| Steve Gunter | 13A and 15A have baffled me. |
| Koteswar Rao | Easy fare, thanks |
| Sohil Bhagat | Didn’t complete the NE and SE corners at first go. I was somehow not on the same wavelength at all as the setter. I felt the clues, especially the ones involving anagram following deletion of letters, were a bit too contrived. Liked the surfaces but didn’t enjoy solving the crossword as much. |
| Anantakrishnan N. | Nice puzzle |
| Tejas Siddharth | Nice puzzle. Not sure about the various orders of deletion/ substitution + anind + fodder used. I feel the anind should encompass the operation and fodder: anind + operation on fodder. Also not sure how attest works. |
| Ramesh Swaminathan | Elegant, smooth puzzle. Good effort on compilation of the grid entries. couple of minor comments – 18D typo in first letter of the clue was confusing and hp not so perfect. |
| Max Jackson | Some nice clues. 8dn puzzling. |
| Arvind Ramaswamy | Simple clues and fun solve |
| Narayana Swamy D | Not too difficult |