Stats: The puzzle page was loaded 440 times. 54 visitors had a go at it. 40 solvers completed both the puzzle and bonus form. 2 submitted the grid but not the bonus form. The remaining solved it partly. 29 solvers got the full score.
April Showers<<< Click Here for the Puzzle Post
Here is the solution grid:
BONUS QUESTION:
Q: Rain at this time of the year? It will soon bring ___ (3,7)
FITB by jumbling the letters circled in the grid
ANS: MAY FLOWERS
Annotations
| Across/ Number | Clue | Solution word | Annotation |
| 1 | Jack’s lawyer ultimately sacked from fraud case (6) | JACKET | J (-R)ACKET |
| 4 | I brush off vanity (6) | HUBRIS | (I BRUSH)* |
| 9 | Somewhat over-intense supine exercises (4) | USES | Rev Tele |
| 10 | Oye! In Scotland, Royal Church misled regularly (10) | GRANDCHILD | GRAND + CH + I L D |
| 11 | Makes room for some of it’s invaluable (4,2) | FITS IN | Tele |
| 12 | Ran and lectured about exercise (8) | OPERATED | O(PE)RATED |
| 13 | Observed about first voyage – each aboard vessel gets to sail here? (5,4) | SEVEN SEAS | SE(V)EN S(EA)S |
| 15 | Assignments missing first ten questions (4) | ASKS | (-T)ASKS |
| 16 | Stop mass broadcast (4) | WAIT | hp WEIGHT |
| 17 | Attempt, that is, to accept Elizabeth even in America (9) | STABILIZE | STAB I.(LIZ)E. |
| 21 | Cultural traits I worried about (8) | ARTISTIC | (TRAITS I)* C |
| 22 | Without a covering too! (6) | OVERLAY | OVERL(-A)Y |
| 24 | Unusualness of wrecked antique ship around eastern coast of Spain (10) | QUAINTNESS | (ANTIQUE* SS)<<N |
| 25 | Forget endless amity (4) | OMIT | (-C)OMIT(-Y) |
| 26 | Sharpest, slickest Yankee replaced. Ugh! (6) | SLYEST | SL(-ICK+Y)EST |
| 27 | Monkey is swaying, scratching head, scratching backside (6) | URCHIN | (-L)URCHIN(-G) |
| Down/ Number | Clue | Solution | Annotation |
| 1 | Firstly, ‘Jhelum’ name is used for a flower (7) | JASMINE | J (NAME IS)* |
| 2 | Launches models (5) | CASTS | DD |
| 3 | English players/hosts popular in GE motors (7) | ENGINES | E N[G(IN)E]S |
| 5 | Pants and comes back to life! (6) | UNDIES | DD/CD |
| 6 | Picks up inspired by actual practice (9) | REHEARSAL | RE(HEARS)AL |
| 7 | You all are, at heart, crossword lovers perhaps (7) | SOLVERS | S (LOVERS)* |
| 8 | Pearl contains extraordinarily small specks (13) | NANOPARTICLES | (PEARL CONTAINS)* |
| 14 | Editor, one initially lacking talent, fit for entrance test? (9) | EDIBILITY | ED I (-A)BILITY |
| 16 | Preps over, entering with guns (7) | WARMUPS | W ARM(UP)S |
| 18 | Veiled eyebrows, ermine robes – a looker! (7) | BROWSER | Tele |
| 19 | Thousands sick in ‘Paradise’ (7) | ZILLION | Z(ILL)ION |
| 20 | Just a tussle within for position (6) | STATUS | Tele |
| 23 | Firstly educate parents on child health, period (5) | EPOCH | Acrostic |
Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)
Out of 42 solvers, 29 got the full score. Each of the following scored 151 points (Grid Score – 149, Bonus – 2).
Al Sanders
Anantakrishnan N.
Ashit Hegde
Bhalchandra Pasupathy
Harish Kamath
Himanshu Rajurkar
Ian VanderSchee
Koteswar Rao
Lakshmi Prakash
Lakshmi Vaidyanathan
Madhusudan H
Melissa McSeismal
Mona Sogal
Mukundala Balasubramanyam
Nagendra Prasad R.
Narayana Swamy D
Nilesh Parmar
Ranjani Srikanth
Rathnakumar V
Ratna Rao
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 8.43. It got 7 perfect 10s (18% of those who rated). The lowest rating was 6.
Favorite Clues: The Top clues were
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- You all are, at heart, crossword lovers perhaps (7) – 12 votes
- Pants and comes back to life! (6) – 12 votes
- Monkey is swaying, scratching head, scratching backside (6) – 7 votes
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Terrific debut Bluejay. Lovely clues and a nice wish in the end game for some respite to the scorching heat in some parts.
Here’s what our solvers said..
| Name | Comments / Feedback on the puzzle |
|---|---|
| Al Sanders | Excellent fill and cluing, a fun challenge! |
| Sandhya Paruchuri | Good one! Keep them coming! |
| Jyothish Balakrishnan | High class debut grid. Blue Jay. |
| Mukundala Balasubramanyam | Simple and elegant puzzle! |
| Rathnakumar V | Another debutant shining . nice puzzle. |
| Sohil Bhagat | Great debut. Very enjoyable puzzle. Really enjoyed 13A, 5D and the 16 twins (which were my last ones in). |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | Very nice. |
| Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | Nice ! |
| Sparsh Sinha | Well constructed, 2 of the clues were pretty convoluted |
| Nilesh Parmar | Nice and smooth grid |
| Ian VanderSchee | Wonderful puzzle!! Looking forward to more from Blue Jay! |
| Ashit Hegde | Great surfaces overall. Very good first attempt |
| Madhup Tewari | It is a remarkable debut with really beautifully crafted clues. Hope to see more from Blue Jay. |
| Veera Raghavan | Very nice and easy puzzle. A pangram but for X, or am I missing something? |
| Veena Venkataraman | Nice, easy grid |
| Harish Kamath | Nice debut grid. Congrats! |
| Venkatesan P. | Enjoyed the April Showers! |
| Prakash Arumugam | Cleverly crafted puzzle with simple yet elegant surface. Very enjoyable |
| Tejas Siddharth | Some very beautiful surfaces 🙂 |
| Samit Kallianpur | Good one for a debut! Very nice clues with smooth surfaces! |
| Madhusudan H | Nice puzzle, congrats on the debut. |
| Ramki Krishnan | Very nice grid – pangram too! Many smooth surfaces. Keep them coming! Suggestion for improvement: Extraneous words could have been avoided in some of the clues e.g. ASKS, BROWSER |
| Nagendra Prasad R. | EASY ONE. |
| Mona Sogal | Good debut Blue Jay! loved the urchin clue..zillion was also very nice! jacket- already has Jack in the clue, this could have been avoided. Did not understand the role of veiled in browser clue? Congratulations! |
| Venkatraghavan S | Breezy grid. Lovely for a debut |
| Anantakrishnan N. | Very nice |
| Supriya Mithal | Enjoyable grid with many good clues with smooth surfaces , some challenging as well . Look forward to many more from this setter |
| Ramesh Swaminathan | Interesting and some clues were challenging. |
| Max Jackson | Not sure about 9 and 22ac, 16dn. |
| Narayanan R | Good one |
| Koteswar Rao | GOOD SHOW |
| Narayana Swamy D | Nice clues |
| Arvind Ramaswamy | Nice puzzle overall but I feel some clues were a bit off (couldn’t anno some of those) |