Stats: The puzzle page was loaded 592 times. 51 visitors had a go at it. 26 solvers completed the puzzle and the bonus forms. The remaining solved it partly. Only 15 solvers got the full score.
Raising The Bar<<< Click Here for the Puzzle Post
Here is the solution grid:
Setter’s Notes: Affected letters (highlighted in the grid) from down entries arranged together with pre-filled letters in the rack give DOWN’S SYNDROME, perhaps a cryptic suggestion that some down entries alone are affected. But more importantly, it refers to the central aspect in the 2016 Indo-Australian documentary film ‘Raising The Bar’ which deals with Down’s Syndrome (or Down Syndrome in the US) in youngsters.
Extra letters in across clues provided the hint ‘Title is Documentary’ to establish context. The World
Down Syndrome Congress was held in Australia in July 2024, and the India International Down
Syndrome Conference (IIDSC) is being held in Kolkata in Sep 2024, while the documentary references
the 2015 WDSC in Chennai
Annotations
| Across | Clue | Entry | Ltr | Xtra Ltr | |||||
| 1 | I elaborate: letter(s) out skipping bar can …? (13) | INTEROSCULATE | – | ||||||
| 10 | Never stole person’s focus in lunchtime affairs (7) | NOONERS | T | S(T)OLE | |||||
| 11 | Houri following sailor boarding when back in Malaysian state (5) | SABAH | I | HOUR(I) | |||||
| 13 | Stick behind opening in trader’s cash counter (4) | TILL | T | S(T)ICK | |||||
| 15 | Plucker binding middle of thumb to carry on (6) | PURSUE | L | P(L)UCKER | |||||
| 16 | Echo, note off adjoining brass vessel (7) | GALLEON | E | NOT(E) | |||||
| 17 | Beat lacking basis to mesh with a track (5) | WEARY | I | BAS(I)S | |||||
| 19 | Left cracking ales to be drunk, randomly selected one (8) | BALLOTEE | S | ALE(S) | |||||
| 23 | Loved partners led by philosopher in small groups for company (8) | PLATOONS | D | LOVE(D) | |||||
| 25 | Fedora on the rocks a foot ahead, Will’s in dread (7) | AFFEARD | O | FED(O)RA | |||||
| 30 | Slow and steady type of clap round disheartened stranger (7) | PLODDER | C | (C)LAP | |||||
| 31 | Spout rubbish about integrated circuit in study of light (6) | OPTICS | U | SPO(U)T | |||||
| 33 | New Grand Master, essentially tactic to wow! (5,5) | GREAT SCOTT | M | (M)ASTER | |||||
| 34 | Lame edentate twisting, contributing to swelling (5) | EDEMA | E | LAM(E) | |||||
| 35 | Adult behind teen to secure a potato (5) | TATIE | N | TEE(N) | |||||
| 36 | Tease all the others (4) | REST | T | (T)EASE | |||||
| 37 | Trespass going over to shared compound (7) | STEARIN | A | SH(A)RED | |||||
| 38 | Grin on face of slimy American governor (6) | SATRAP | R | G(R)IN | |||||
| 39 | Snoopy acts cool on quarry dropping early to German section (7) | PRYINGS | Y | EARL(Y) | |||||
| Down | Clue | Entry | Original | Xtra | Affected | ||||||
| Entry | Def | Letters | |||||||||
| 1 | Batting following toss showing opening pair stuck on (4) | INTO | IN TOW | following | W | ||||||
| 2 | Lies fed to dissenting voters in rackets (6) | NOISES | |||||||||
| 3 | Wax swollen boiled green dal (8) | ENLARGED | ENLARGE | wax | D | ||||||
| 4 | Returning suggestive glance in lively dance (4) | REEL | |||||||||
| 5 | Examination, just no marks (4) | ORAL | |||||||||
| 6 | Vaulted higher entering passage atop a furnace (6) | CUPOLA | CUPOLAR | vaulted | R | ||||||
| 7 | Rasher element of popular discourse shortening substance (4) | LARD | LARDOON | rasher | OON | ||||||
| 8 | Son gets into a scrap for leave from college (5) | ABSIT | |||||||||
| 9 | Rigid Pharaoh nursing a strain (4) | TAUT | TAUTEN | strain | EN | ||||||
| 12 | Dissent before husband wheels in present (4) | HERE | HERESY | dissent | SY | ||||||
| 14 | Fine line overlooked chokes forest area in raised strip (4) | WEAL | WEALD | forest | D | ||||||
| 17 | Singers with a special pressing criticise covers (8) | WRAPPERS | RAPPERS | singers | W | ||||||
| 18 | Fear of bats on path to turn into wood (8) | AFFOREST | |||||||||
| 20 | Camel in India aware of cycles (4) | OONT | T | NA | OON | ||||||
| 21 | Grim interim measure initially out embodies Thailand making laws (8) | ENACTING | ACTING | interim | EN | ||||||
| 22 | Cross like Arkansas put up in religious school (7) | MADRASA | |||||||||
| 23 | Plume close to fire before Navy Seals (5) | PREEN | |||||||||
| 24 | Messy rocks around stone dams in connected sets (7) | SYSTEMS | STEMS | dams | SY | ||||||
| 26 | Rough heap king deposited in potty (5) | DRAFT | RAFT | heap | D | ||||||
| 27 | Stumble making animal tense right heel (6) | ROTTER | OTTER | animal | R | ||||||
| 28 | Support US exercises with pat on the back for army (6) | UPSTAY | |||||||||
| 29 | Vitamin B doubled, two eggs to one (6) | BIOTIN | |||||||||
| 32 | Education in Artificial Intelligence scales concept (4) | IDEA | |||||||||
Bonus Question:
What is the message from extra letters in across clues?
Ans: TITLE IS DOCUMENTARY
Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)
Out of 51 solvers, only 26 completed fully and 15 got the full score. Each of the following scored 170 points (Grid Score – 167, Bonus – 3).
Anantakrishnan N.
Anirudh Sahni
Ashit Hegde
Harish Kamath
Lakshmi Prakash
Madhup Tewari
Max Jackson
Nagendra Prasad R.
Narayana Swamy D
Prakash Arumugam
Ramki Krishnan
Ratna Rao
Samit Kallianpur
Tejas Siddharth
Venkatraghavan S
Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a fantastic rating of 8.5. It got 9 perfect 10s (35% of those who rated). The lowest rating was 1.
Favorite Clues: The Top clues were
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- New Grand Master, essentially tactic to wow! (5,5) – 7 votes
- Grin on face of slimy American governor (6) – 6 votes
- Tease all the others (4) – 5 votes
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Thanks Bingo for a super tough but spectacular puzzle. The intricacies and mind boggling puzzle construction were amazing and we can only look in awe as you continue to produce very high quality puzzles that the rest of us can only aspire for. Appreciate your doing this and trying to raise us to your level:)
Our next grid is “Starstruck” from Aquifer – which is going to be another treat for movie buffs. It is coming your way tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Here’s what our solvers said..
| Name | Comments / Feedback on the puzzle |
|---|---|
| Anantakrishnan N. | Another brilliant puzzle with multiple layers to be unraveled |
| Anirudh Sahni | An amazing feat of setting, with multiple levels of interlocking hidden messages, and very rewarding to solve. |
| Koteswar Rao | Very tough |
| Lakshmi Prakash | Extremely tough grid -a bit tougher than usual but fun to solve |
| Madhup Tewari | Fabulous puzzle yet again by Bingo! Super hard like the listener but never despairing. The guy is a genius, period. |
| Prakash Arumugam | The bar can’t get higher! A wonderful treat for the solvers. Thank you |
| Venkatesan P. | Tough one. The steps for finding solution to 40A (thematic phrase) is interesting but complicated. |
| Venkatraghavan S | Superb puzzle as always. Good challenge. |
| Ashit Hegde | Another fabulous grid from Bingo. Feel a great sense of achievement on completing his grids. |
| Deepak Gopinath (Col.) | Awesome construction |
| Madhusudan H | Bingo’s grids just keep improving with each new one. It was a sheer delight to solve! I stumbled upon the answer by luck rather than the logic it deserved, but along the way, I picked up plenty of new words and ideas. Thanks for the great puzzle! |
| Nagendra Prasad R. | THE BAR IS RAISED SO HIGH, IT WOULD MAKE SERGIE BUBKA SHIVER IN ANTICPATION. |
| Narayana Swamy D | Even a big pole to vault the raised bar is insufficient |
| Narayanan R | Though the humongous effort by the setter is very much appreciated, the Grid was very tough and took out the joy of solving. |
| Rathnakumar V | Real tough grid, I felt there could have been some hints in Raising the bar technique, with this GRID you have raised the bar of all of us. Thank you . |
| Samit Kallianpur | A tougher grid, but very satisfying to crack! Good concept with a lot of hard work going into setting up this puzzle! |
| Harish Kamath | Very clever and obviously involved a great deal of time and effort to create but took too long to finish, and that took the joy out of it to a large extent. In the end, I was just happy it was over. I’ll give it an 8/10 nevertheless. |
| Ramki Krishnan | Extremely intricate and tough, as is to be expected! |
| Tejas Siddharth | On the tougher side. Immediately thought of oont but didn’t think it was an English word. Had a time parsing a lot of the clues. |
| Max Jackson | Good to see a barred puzzle, and with a twist. I could only make “Down’s sydrome” with 27dn ROTTER which doesn’t make sense to me. A few others not fully parsed. |
| Nick Loader | 1. great find and great clue, 2. Also great 3. Lovely 4. Surface needs work 5. Great clue 6. Surface needs work 7. Great 8. Surface needs work 9. Surface needs work. 10. Surface needs work 11. Surface needs work 12. Great clue 13. Great 14. Great clue 15. Surface needs work 16. Good clue 17. Good clue, better with a , after trespass I think 18. Excellent clue 19. Surface needs work 20. Suface needs work 21. Fantastic clue 22. Maybe this is a cooking process I don’t know but surface doesn’t make sense to me, also don’t understand why wax is needed in wordplay when swollen already means enlarged 23. Great clue 24. Surface needs work 25. Surface is good, why do we need both ‘vaulted’ and ‘furnace’ though? They both mean cupola, right? And aren’t contributing anything extra to wp. 26. Surface needs work, also what’s the point of ‘rasher’ in wp? 27. Great clue 28. Surface is close but needs work 29. Great clue 30. Surface needs work 31. Surface needs work 32. Surface needs work 33. Surface is close but needs work 34. Surface needs work 35. Surface needs work 36. Wonderful clue 37. Great clue 38. Surface needs work 39. Great clue 40. Surface is good but cannot make sense of the wordplay. I feel like once I know the answer, if I still can’t see why it might be overconvoluted. I can see stumble = totter, I can see animal = otter and t = tense, why do we need much more than that for one extra letter? Yes, the surface is great but surely there’s an easier way to get one. 41. Great clue 42. Surface needs work 43. Close but scale is a bit vague, surface needs work. That’s about half the clues needing better surfaces in my opinion. I am a strict marker to be sure but you asked for my perspective haha. The bonus is very nice. I am always impressed when you can put extra letters in order to make a message. Would’ve preferred Title is *a* documentary OR Title’s a documentary. But this is a small thing. I didn’t like the use of Down’s Syndrome as a bit of a shoe in. Yes, it relates to the downs and something different is happening but this feels a bit insensitive regardless of how inspiring the documentary may have been. I would prefer the whole thing have an inspiring feel to it with clues and such or just use touchdowns or something less emotionally loaded. Again, just my opinion. Some impressive vocabulary throughout. The overlapped words were entertaining and fairly impressive. Overall, the end game was a little bit easy though. Although, actually, it seemed a bit flawed(?) Where do the Os come from? The words that overlap with each other are wealDRaft tautENacting intoWRappers and hereSYstems, right? Am I missing something? If not, the preamble is also errant as it says that there are bars that have been completely removed not just shifted. I’ll reserve judgment until I see the answers. Wow what an essay. Sorry. Anyway, loved the challenge and good fun. |
| Melissa McSeismal | I honestly can’t be bothered when there are so many, poorly-explained instructions for extra steps; there is no enjoyment in this. |