Stats: The puzzle page was loaded 395 times. 54 solvers had a go at it. 42 solvers completed the puzzle and the bonus forms. The remaining solved it partly. Only 19 solvers got the full score.
What the ___!<<< Click Here for the Puzzle Post
Here is the solution grid:
Bonus Questions:
1. Fill in the blank in the title with the theme of this crossword
Ans: Dickens
2-12. 1st to 11th of 11 themed entries (some of which are split across two or more lights)
Ans: DAVID COPPERFIELD, OLIVER TWIST, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, HARD TIMES (all novels/novella), ESTELLA, PIP, ORLICK, MAGWITCH (characters from ‘Great Expectations), THE ARTFUL DODGER (from ‘Oliver Twist), MISS PROSS (‘A Tale of Two Cities’), ROSA BUD (‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’)
Note: The clue for 25D had an error. It yields TUBE instead of TUBA. All participants have been awarded points. The error is regretted.
Annotations
| No. | Clue | Solution | Annotation |
| 6A | My nursing kit for protective health is reddish brown (6) | COPPER | CO(PPE)R
|
| 8A | Charles, tell Aquifer about this manipulative young woman (7) | ESTELLA | Hidden in plain sight |
| 10A | Who wrestles with Madame Defarge? One probes manuscripts for lists of sumos (4, 5) | MISS PROSS | M(I)SS PRO S__S |
| 11A | Old king and female singer withdrawing behind far side of wood (5) | DAVID | AVID (<<DIVA) behind D |
| 12A | Article on Mrs Cratchit mostly, also another story on Scrooge mainly (1, 9, 5) | A CHRISTMAS CAROL | A + MRSCRATCHI_ ALSO* |
| 16A | Petite, svelte and refined at heart (5) | ELFIN | Sv(EL)te + ref(FIN)ed |
| 17A | Victorian protagonist Pickwick’s face on Page 1 (3) | PIP | P on PI |
| 19A | X (originally Twitter) is taking tips from Elon Musk in retreat (5) | TIMES | T I(<<EM)S; definition: X |
| 21A | Drug dealer of Tahiti regularly beats pickpocket of London (3, 6, 6) | THE ARTFUL DODGER | DRGUGDEALEROFT_H_T_* |
| 24A | He wants some more matches after losing national event’s final (5) | TWIST | TWI(– n)S T; definition: he wants some more |
| 26A | Noble repulsed by extremely irregular duke — a worm-catcher, it’s said (5, 4) | EARLY BIRD | EARL <<BY + I__R + D; def: a worm-catcher, it’s said |
| 28A | Edwin Drood’s fiancée starts to retch on sofa after boozing — Ugh! Disgusting! (4, 3) | ROSA BUD | Acrostic |
| 29A | Men, thrash this baddie from ‘Great Expectations’ (6) | ORLICK | OR LICK |
| 1D | Head cook’s deputy shifting his focus from Indian to European (4-4) | SOUS-CHEF | (HIS FOCUS – I + E)* |
| 2D | Rock and doo-wop ultimately outstrip vacuous Asian music (1-3) | K-POP | K P O___P |
| 3D | Lover finally leaves not-quite-strong dude supposed to be good in bed (4) | STUD | STU(– r)D(–y) |
| 4D | Essentially, all told, nix every character who’s named twice in this grid (6) | OLIVER | T(OL)d n(I)x e(VER)y def: character who’s named twice in this grid |
| 5D | Doctor beginning to abuse shrinks behind hospital complex (4) | HARD | ARD (<<DR A) behind H |
| 7D | Uncovered lofts in shoddy elevated part of building (7) | ROOFTOP | _OFT_ in <<POOR |
| 8D | Yes, a kinky adult film featuring Emma Stone (4, 1) | EASY A | YESA* + A |
| 9D | Near one becomes a natural (8) | IMMANENT | I becomes A in IMMINENT |
| 13D | Secret snaps of Nicholas Nickleby emerge in Iran (5) | INNER | I(NNE)R |
| 14D | Large knife of copper that turned out ornamental primarily (5) | CUTTO | CU T___T O |
| 15D | Cop known to Holmes taps startled art seller from behind (8) | LESTRADE | Hidden in reverse |
| 18D | Wind around Rome rocks another Italian city (7) | PALERMO | (LAP>>) PAL ROME* |
| 20D | One secretly observing Pip’s nude image with desire (8) | MAGWITCH | (-i)MAG(-e) W ITCH |
| 22D | Legend of Carthage is eaten by lioness of legend (6) | ELISSA | EL(IS)SA |
| 23D | Catch fellow scratching back of grizzly bear! (5) | FIELD | F + (– y)IELD |
| 24D | Old queen clad in Amy Dorrit’s heels tripping a politician (4) | TORY | OR in TY (<<YT) |
| 25D | Central characters in ‘Bleak House’ catch Snubbin playing this? (4) | TUBA | [(_A_)(_U_)(_T_)(_B_)]* (See Note) |
| 27D | Shout from Nell giving piece of news to lady at the rear (4) | YELL | (– n + Y)ELL |
Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)
Out of 54 solvers, only 42 completed fully and 19 got the full score. Each of the following scored 157 points (Grid Score – 145, Bonus – 12).
Al Sanders
Arvind Ramaswamy
Ashit Hegde
Harish T K
Ian VanderSchee
Koteswar Rao
Krittibas Dasgupta
Lakshmi Prakash
Mona Sogal
Nilesh Parmar
Prakash Arumugam
Ramki Krishnan
Rathnakumar V
Ratna Rao
Roland Rance
Samit Kallianpur
Sandhya Paruchuri
Sparsh Sinha
Venkatesan P.
Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good rating of 8.55. It got 12 perfect 10s (29% of those who rated). The lowest rating was 5.
Favorite Clues: The Top clues were
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- X (originally Twitter) is taking tips from Elon Musk in retreat (5) – 21 votes
- My nursing kit for protective health is reddish brown (6) – 8 votes
- Petite, svelte and refined at heart (5) – 8 votes
- Noble repulsed by extremely irregular duke — a worm-catcher, it’s said (5, 4) – 8 votes
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Thanks Aquifer for a brilliant themed puzzle to celebrate Charles Dickens’ birth anniversary on 7th February. Was a blast to go down memory lane. Here’s what our solvers said..
| Name | Comments / Feedback on the puzzle |
|---|---|
| Srinivas Venkatesh | An amazing cryptic which is stimulating and engaging |
| Al Sanders | Outstanding density of theme content; cluing was a little rough |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | Nice puzzle full of interesting but long forgotten characters etc |
| Sandhya Paruchuri | Good one! |
| Koteswar Rao | GOOD CROSSIE |
| Arun Hiregange | Loved the theme which helped to solve many of the clues |
| Ian VanderSchee | Nice grid! I like how there were plenty of theme words fit into the grid without making the other words too obscure. |
| Avtaar | Excellent puzzle. Definitions were largely straight and hence harder wordplays were easier to get. I could get some proper nouns purely from Wordplay |
| Narayana Swamy D | Nice clues incorporating Dickens’ characters |
| Nagendra Prasad R. | Enjoyable Crossword. |
| Venkatraghavan S | Nice one, Aquifer. A bit strange not to see a bunch of movies in the grid. 🙂 |
| Paul Henderson | Good thematic collection. Some clues stretching interpretations of their indicators to make them work. |
| Mona Sogal | Most enjoyable grid on my favourite author 🙂 splendid clues…each one of them..Real fun revisiting the legendary characters..bought back a lot of happy memories… thank you for this Aquifier 🙂 |
| Narayanan R | Good one |
| Krittibas Dasgupta | Very nice puzzle with a clear theme which leads to a bit of monotony. Tricky and well-set clues, although I didn’t particularly like 5D and 17A |
| Samit Kallianpur | Nice one,with a good theme |
| Venkatesan P. | Entertaining puzzle. Excellent clues. Liked the two long anagrams. |
| Ashit Hegde | A mixed set of clues. Often got the solution from the definition itself and then parsed (less fun) |
| Mukundala Balasubramanyam | Delightful grid |
| Prakash Arumugam | Excellent theme puzzle. It was fun solving it. |
| Ramki Krishnan | Nice grid with an easy theme, though I had to google to confirm one of the characters. Many clues to like. Thanks Aquifer! |
| Ramesh Swaminathan | Some clues were tough to crack. A marvellous effort to set such a themed grid. Kudos. |
| Supriya Mithal | Wonderful theme and themed clues , and so many themed words fitted in,made a mistake in HARD, wrote WARD instead.Challenging and enjoyable |
| Arvind Ramaswamy | Nice theme and easy puzzle. Not sure if I got 1 or 2 clues right though |
| Veera Raghavan | Good grid. Anno for couple of clues not clear, crossings helped. |
| Jyothish Balakrishnan | Beautiful introduction of theme entries. |
| Sparsh Sinha | Nicely executed theme |
| Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | Nice puzzle |
| Lakshmi Prakash | Very nice grid with a very different theme |
| Max Jackson | Nice selection of themed entries.23dn Field = catch? Remainder unclear.25dn One can play a tuba; I’m not so sure about a tube. |
| Anantakrishnan N. | Excellent puzzle with a nice theme |
| Rathnakumar V | I did like the theme but honestly some of the clues were odd, still a superb grid, brought back the golden school days back… |