Stats: The puzzle page was loaded 388 times. 50 visitors had a go at it. 41 solvers completed the puzzle and the bonus forms. The remaining solved it partly. Only 15 solvers got the full score.
Starstruck<<< Click Here for the Puzzle Post
Here is the solution grid:
Bonus Questions:
Q1 and 2: Two entries associated with the same Bollywood superstar
Ans:DARR and ARMY, associated with Shahrukh Khan
(Other answers that were accepted were KING (also for Shahrukh Khan) and SWAMI (SWAMI and DARR both connected with Juhi Chawla)
Q3: An entry associated with an actor who’s played 007
Ans: ROBIN and MARIAN
Annotations
| # | CLUE | SOLUTION | ANNOTATION |
| 7A | Lovers fabulously fitting Brando in Armani (5, 3, 6) | ROBIN AND MARIAN | BRANDO IN ARMANI* (Def: Lovers fabulously) |
| 9A | About time Gere and Theron made an action movie (5, 3, 6) | ENTER THE DRAGON | GEREANDTHERON* about T |
| 10A | So Gadot is trained in stage acting? Splendid! (2, 4, 2, 2, 4) | AS GOOD AS IT GETS | SOGADOTIS* inside STAGE* (Def: Splendid) |
| 17A | A coin Kournikova flipped… or not? (4) | ANNA | DD with reversal (reads the same both ways) |
| 18A | Beloved princess cycling somewhere in West Bengal (5) | NADIA | DIANA cycling |
| 19A 13D | There’s aggressive footwork in this special knock against spin (4, 5) | SLAM DANCE | S LAM against DANCE |
| 20A | A French collection most oddly shed a book on slavery (5, 4, 4) | UNCLE TOM’S CABIN | UN + C_L_E_T_O_M_S + CABIN |
| 21A | Can’t Fellini do a complex neo-noir? (1, 1, 12) | L.A. CONFIDENTIAL | CANTFELLINIDOA* |
| 27A | Oprah movie’s on schedule, after ‘Aline’ (1, 7, 2, 4) | A WRINKLE IN TIME | ON TIME after A WRINKLE (A line) |
| 1D 12D | Sweetheart of a rector penning article on Catholic saint (4, 2, 3) | JOAN OF ARC | JO OF AR penning AN + C |
| 2D | See 14D | ||
| 3D | Essential ingredient of taste, key ingredient of food (4) | SALT | S + ALT |
| 4D | Some nuclear radiation around ill-fated mine in Pennsylvania (4) | DARR | Hidden in reverse |
| 5D 21D | Audible sneer after Knight Bachelor walks out of Crosby’s play (4, 4) | KING LEAR | LEAR (HP of LEER) after K BING (–b) |
| 6D | Write article about Renoir’s belly once in a while (4) | ANON | AN about NO (Def: once [formerly] in a while) |
| 8D | Doctor Strange likes to sled in smart clothes (7, 2, 4) | DRESSED TO KILL | DR LIKESTOSLED* (Def: in smart clothes) |
| 11D | Samson’s opening in each season (and not Jaydev Unadkat!) (5) | SANJU | Acrostic |
| 12D | See 1D | ||
| 13D | See 19A | ||
| 14D 2D | The fellow slyly drinks at Oslo’s Heart Institute, can’t be helped (5, 4) | THAT’S LIFE | THE F* contains AT SL I (Def: can’t be life) |
| 15D | Coming up within days: a European film featuring Emma Stone (4, 1) | EASY A | Hidden in reverse |
| 16D | Start to sing regularly, wow me as a music guru (5) | SWAMI | S + wo(W) me(A)s a (M)us(I)c (Def: guru) |
| 21D | See 5D | ||
| 22D | Preserve old city in present era (4) | CURE | UR in CE |
| 23D | 17A’s eccentric grandmother (4) | NANA | ANNA* |
| 24D | Touchstone Pictures screening ‘Ben-Hur’ perhaps? (4) | EPIC | Hidden in plain sight |
| 25D | It’s up to the Yugoslav leader (4) | TITO | <IT + TO |
| 26D | Soldiers dream of real money every now and then (4) | ARMY | Dre(A)m of (R)eal (M)one(Y) |
Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)
Out of 50 solvers, only 41 completed fully and 15 got the full score. Each of the following scored 142 points (Grid Score – 139, Bonus – 3).
Arvind Ramaswamy
Himanshu Rajurkar
Ian VanderSchee
Madhup Tewari
Melissa McSeismal
Mona Sogal
Nagendra Prasad R.
Narayana Swamy D
Nilesh Parmar
Prakash Arumugam
Ramki Krishnan
Rathnakumar V
Tulika Das
Veera Raghavan
Venkatraghavan S
Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good rating of 8.15. It got 6 perfect 10s (15% of those who rated). The lowest rating was 6.
Favorite Clues: The Top clues were
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- Doctor Strange likes to sled in smart clothes (7, 2, 4) – 12 votes
- Can’t Fellini do a complex neo-noir? (1, 1, 12) – 11 votes
- About time Gere and Theron made an action movie (5, 3, 6) – 9 votes
- So Gadot is trained in stage acting? Splendid! (2, 4, 2, 2, 4) – 9 votes
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Thanks Aquifer for a fun puzzle which was a treat for movie buffs. Amazed at how you manage to create grids with 100% themed entries every time. Here’s what our solvers said..
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | Great work in finding all the titles to fit into the grid and the cinematographic references in many a clue. Unfortunately my knowledge of films is rather limited, so it was mainly an exercise for Google! |
| Mukundala Balasubramanyam | Enjoyable cinematic grid |
| Rathnakumar V | Lovely puzzle |
| Sandhya Paruchuri | Entertaining one! |
| Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | Nice puzzle . |
| Madhup Tewari | The quality of clues in this delightful puzzle is quite extraordinary. The puzzle itself was not that difficult but choosing the best three clues was a very hard task. Bravo! |
| Veera Raghavan | Fairly easy one. |
| Venkatesan P. | Nice grid. Enjoyed. |
| Venkatraghavan S | Lovely as usual. Am always amazed at the gridfill. 🙂 |
| Anantakrishnan N. | Lovely grid. As usual great job getting so many movie names in. |
| Arvind Ramaswamy | Had fun solving this. |
| Ashit Hegde | Fun grid but the clues were a bit contrived (that’s the problem with theme based puzzles) |
| Krittibas Dasgupta | Enjoyable grid with a clear movie theme. |
| Madhusudan H | Nice blend of cryptic clues with a movie theme. Learnt a few new movies while solving. |
| Mona Sogal | Good fun… abundance of anagrams made the puzzle a tad predictable, perhaps.. but amazing how many theme words were accommodated 🙂 |
| Nagendra Prasad R. | GOOD FOR MOVIE BUFFS |
| Nilesh Parmar | Nice |
| Prakash Arumugam | Not very hard but a delightful puzzle to solve |
| Ramki Krishnan | Nice grid. |
| Samit Kallianpur | Nice and easy grid! Felt a couple of clues had root issues. |
| Arun Hiregange | Loved the movie content! Especially Robin and Marian, LA Confidential, As Good As It Gets etc. I’m amazed how you got such smooth anagrams. |
| Harish Kamath | Decent |
| Koteswar Rao | GOOD |
| Max Jackson | I guessed the first two bonus questions. Would it help to be from India? |
| Melissa McSeismal | A very fair crossword in terms of the clues and their solutions. The bonus form was unfair on non-Indians as it’s very India specific (apart from the 007 questions) and not about aspects that are known internationally such as food or cricket. To achieve these answers, one needed to do a lot of googling of each answer to find an Indian connection then narrow down two of these with the same Indian connection. It was very tedious. |
| Narayana Swamy D | Difficult for persons not conversant with movies |
| Narayanan R | good one |
| Ramesh Swaminathan | Great job of almost all grid entries as movie titles. Seemed like three small grids linked in the middle. Should enum for 14Dn be 4’1? |