“D&I” by Gridzilla was our 16th grid for the season

Stats: 61 solvers attempted this puzzle. 42 solvers managed to complete the puzzle and submitted the bonus forms as well. Only 18 solvers got the full score.

Try the puzzle here (Annotations will be visible on solving the puzzle or on clicking “Reveal Grid”)

Bonus Questions: 4 themed entries connected to the main entry in the grid:

The result of the struggles of the main entry, as indicated from the letter bank of the circled (and shaded) letters (6,12):

Logged in solvers can check their submission Here:

Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)

Out of 61 solvers,  42 completed and submitted the grid and bonus forms, of which 18 got the full score. Each of the following scored 153 points (Grid Score – 147,  Bonus – 6).

Al Sanders
Harish T.K.
Jyothish Balakrishnan
Lakshmi Prakash
Madhup Tewari
Max Jackson
Mona Sogal
Narayanan R
Nilesh Parmar
Panyam Tejas
Paul Henderson
Prakash Arumugam
Ramki Krishnan
Ratnakumar V
Samraat Saxena
Sohil Bhagat
Veera Raghavan Sundararajan
Venkatraghavan S

Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated.

Grid Rating: The puzzle got a superb rating of 8.9. It was rated a perfect 10 by 15 out of the 42 folks who voted (36%). The lowest rating was 6.

Favourite Clues:  The Top clues were

1. 13D Director dares to go topless along with characters in M*A*S*H (9) (13 votes)
2. 1A Leaders of Gujarat honouring one freedom fighter (6) (10 votes)
3. 10D Who started KFC without special utensils? (9) (9 votes)
4. 7D European guide in front giving signal (9) (8 votes)
5. 1D Who shot one bird – a little duck, for sport essentially? (5) (7 votes)
6. 15D Technology found in the loo, but abroad (9) (7 votes)
7. 9A The moon’s spinning away (3,4) (7 votes)

Thanks Gridzilla. Loved the topical themed grid with a variety of clues – the long list of favourites and the comments from solvers show how much the puzzle was loved. Looking forward to more from you. The solvers ratings and the comments in the thread below