Stats -The puzzle post was well received with 650 views as on date. We had 48 solvers completing and submitting the grid. Of those who submitted 23 managed to get the maximum possible score of 164.
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The Team of Setters
“Guru Dakshina” which means “an offering to a teacher” was a special tribute to Gridman (aka Rishi / C.G.Rishikesh). The clues were set by me alongside 18 other cruciverbalists from the 1ACross Facebook group viz., Aashwina Mouli, Ajeesh, Amrita Majumdar, Arvind Kannabiran, Bhalchandra Pasupathy, Debasmita Basu, Ganesh Nayak, Kishore Rao, Lakshmi Vaidyanathan, Manish Misra, Mona Sogal, Nicholas Loader, Ramesh Swaminathan, Ramki Krishnan, Santha Ramachandran, SSv Avtaar, Vasant Srinivasan and Vikram Chandrasekhar.
The Gridfill and editing was done by me. I had included several thematic entries and a Clue Acrostic. Some thematic entries were direct such as Gridman Forever, Rishi, Crossword, Frontline + Express (publications where he worked), solvers, examinant, tutor, worldwide, dedicated and It’s too bad. There were also other references which were subtle but intended.
SOLUTIONS
Bonus Questions: 1. The first letters of all the clues is a cryptic clue set by Gridman. What is the solution? (5))
The Clue Acrostic, which was a clue by “Gridman” read “Prone to Saki’s romance at short notice” It had an enum of 5.
The reason for choosing this clue was that it was demonstrative of Gridman’s vast knowledge of literature.
The Answer is “LYING” – Its a Double Definition Clue.
“Romance at short notice” is a well-known phrase that appears in Saki’s “The Open Window”. It is used to refer to a character (Vera) who was notorious at making up tall tales. In addition, the clue had the exact numnber of letters I needed for the Acrostic.
Some of the lights were words that Gridman has used in his grids (given his body of work – it is harder to find those that he has not used). Originally I was thinking of using one of Gridman’s clues as well but then decided to have it as a bonus instead.
2. One of the lights in the grid is a solution to this clue by Gridman. “Committed reserve detectives drawn back to engage in exploit” What’s the annotation for Gridman’s clue?.
The answer is “DEDICATED”. Committed is the definition. CID (“detectives”), TA (Territorial Army for “reserve”) drawn back is a reversal indicator and engage in is the insertion indicator; DEED = exploit; so DE (DIC AT<)ED. Full marks were given only for those who correctly identified all the components and annotated correctly.
Here is the solution grid:
Annotations
| Clue (Across) | Answer | Setter | Explanation |
| 1 Producer of grand images, this sage? (7) | gridman | Sowmya Ramkumar | CA &Lit – GRAND IMAGES* = GRIDMAN SAGE* |
| 5 Return of Spooner perhaps, not final or permanent (7) | forever | Ganesh Nayak | FO< REVER (-end) |
| 9 Oriental gentleman greeting a saint (5) | rishi | Ramki Krishnan | RIS< HI |
| 10 Negotiated win-loss record erasing line in game being played (9) | crossword | Arvind Kannabiran | Deletion – WINLOSSRECORD-LINE* |
| 11 End of Gridman left inner void, no revolutionary at the sharp end? (9) | frontline | Bhalchandra Pasupathy | NLEFTI(-nne)RNO* |
| 12 Tamil aunt consumes some Idiyappam, in American city (5) | miami | Kishore rao | M(I)AMI |
| 13 One bends this repeatedly to have a spiritual experience! (5) | elbow | Manish Misra | CD |
| 15 Student probes geek about getting upper hand for scholarship (9) | knowledge | SSv Avtaar | KNOW<(L)EDGE |
| 18 Ability to stand underground crane operating right outside (9) | endurance | Aashwina Mouli | ENDUR* C(-r)ANE* |
| 19 Knowledgeable man heads to seminar about deteriorating human unity (5) | sadhu | Mona Sogal | Acrostic |
| 21 Informed of seepage detected (5) | paged | Santha Ramachandran | Hidden |
| 23 Sportsman’s hat trick: payback after two centuries are scored (6,3) | jockey cap | Nicholas Loader | JO(C)KE Y(C)AP< |
| 25 Rant after short assessment at home without right investigator (9) | examinant | Ramesh Swaminathan | EXAM IN (-r)ANT |
| 26 Old queen follows old king to school (5) | tutor | Debasmita Basu | TUT + OR |
| 27 Maybe toppers from London School Of Economics regularly succeed Vs. people like you and others (7) | Solvers | Amrita Majumdar | SOLVERS* Acrostic Anag |
| 28 Accumulated wealth ultimately entered ignoring source (7) | Hoarded | Ajeesh V.M. | H + (-b) OARDED. |
| Clue (Down) | Answer | Setter | Explanation |
| 1 New fair within borders of Grenoble featuring strong, gentle giant (7) | giraffe | Ganesh Nayak | G (IRAF* F) E |
| 2 Calamitous! I stood with bat, out of gear (3,3,3) | it’s too bad | Mona Sogal | ITS TOO BAD* |
| 3 Essentially fog covered by spray is damp (5) | moist | Sowmya Ramkumar | M(O)IST |
| 4 Aged cock and hen in run (2,7) | no chicken | Bhalchandra Pasupathy | NO CHICKEN* |
| 5 Troubled Feroz stopped in his tracks (5) | froze | Vikram Chandrasekhar | FROZE* |
| 6 Seems to be surprisingly lesser acceptance of electronic money, Bitcoin initially (9) | resembles | Manish Misra | RES(EM B)LES* |
| 7 Here in France, in-between moon cycles, one bowed (5) | viola | Aashwina Mouli | V(OI.IO) LA |
| 8 Often drunk at dinner, Rex endlessly hugged Edwin (3,4) | red wine | Kishore rao | R(ED WIN)E |
| 14 Remark about learner with setter had initially emerged everywhere (9) | worldwide | Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | WOR(L)D W ID E |
| 16 Tom cuts past Charlie and Henry to get ahead (9) | overcatch | SSv Avtaar | OVER (CAT) C H |
| 17 Not uncommitted, leading diligent Indian crossword aficionado, talented indeed? (9) | dedicated | Debasmita Basu | DE(D I C A T) ED |
| 18 Old lover gets publicity, say (7) | express | Ajeesh V.M. | EX PRESS |
| 20 Took decisions about overcharging deliverymen? (7) | umpired | Ramki Krishnan | CD |
| 22 In confusion a girl got coveted cup (5) | grail | Vasant Srinivasan | GRAIL* |
| 23 Couple of jet-setters’ source of amusement? New small pants! (5) | jeans | Amrita Majumdar | JE A N S |
| 24 Excess of sex trade (5) | extra | Arvind Kannabiran | Hidden. |
RESULTS
| Guru Dakshina – Scorecard | |||
| S.No. | NAME | SCORE | |
| 1 | Anantakrishnan N. | 164 | |
| 2 | Anicha Reuban | 164 | |
| 3 | Anirudh Sahni | 164 | |
| 4 | Arvind Kannabiran | 164 | |
| 5 | Camelia Oberoi | 164 | |
| 6 | Debasmita Basu | 164 | |
| 7 | Himanshu Rajurkar | 164 | |
| 8 | Keith Williams | 164 | |
| 9 | Kishore Rao | 164 | |
| 10 | Kumaresh K R | 164 | |
| 11 | Lakshmi Prakash | 164 | |
| 12 | Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | 164 | |
| 13 | Madhup Tewari | 164 | |
| 14 | Mona Sogal | 164 | |
| 15 | Prakash Arumugam | 164 | |
| 16 | Ramki Krishnan | 164 | |
| 17 | Sandhya Paruchuri | 164 | |
| 18 | Santha Ramachandran | 164 | |
| 19 | Spiffytrix | 164 | |
| 20 | Sree Sree | 164 | |
| 21 | Tejas Siddharth | 164 | |
| 22 | Veena | 164 | |
| 23 | Venkatraghavan S. | 164 | |
| 24 | Ashit Hegde | 163 | |
| 25 | Krishnan Anantheshwaran | 163 | |
| 26 | Narayanan R | 163 | |
| 27 | Nilesh Parmar | 163 | |
| 28 | Sohil | 163 | |
| 29 | Bhalchandra Pasupathy | 162 | |
| 30 | Gayathri Viswanath | 162 | |
| 31 | Ian Vanderschee | 162 | |
| 32 | Jyothish B | 162 | |
| 33 | Max Jackson | 162 | |
| 34 | Nick Loader | 162 | |
| 35 | Raghavan S V | 162 | |
| 36 | Venkatesan P. | 162 | |
| 37 | Viveca Bhatkal | 162 | |
| 38 | Ganesh Nayak | 161 | |
| 39 | Madhusudan Hanumantha Rao | 161 | |
| 40 | Ranjani Srikanth | 161 | |
| 41 | Saurabh Upadhyay | 160 | |
| 42 | SSv Avtaar | 160 | |
| 43 | Raja V | 159 | |
| 44 | Ramesh SS | 159 | |
| 45 | Rathnakumar V | 159 | |
| 46 | Nagendra Prasad R. | 157 | |
| 47 | Priya Shyam | 153 | |
| 48 | Prasad RV | 145 | |
Congrats to all the solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.65. It got 13 perfect 10s – i.e 27% of those who submitted thought it was perfect. The minimum score was 6.
Top 10 Clues: The most favorited clues were those for “Jockey Cap” (By Nick Loader) with 12 votes. “Gridman” (By Me) with 11 votes, “Endurance” (By Aashwina) with 10 votes, “Express” (By Ajeesh) with 7 votes, “Tutor” (By Debasmita Basu), “Umpired” (By Ramki Krishnan), “Frontline” (By Bhalchandra Pasupathy), “Elbow” (By Manish Misra) and “Crossword” (By Arvind Kannabiran) with 6 votes each and “Solvers” (By Amrita Majumdar) with 5 votes.
Comments on the Puzzle
1. No specific comments, overall OK grid
2. lovely tribute to Gridman
3. A wonderful tribute to a truly brilliant man. Thank you to all who contributed.
4. Fantastic tribute with great clues
5. Quite clueless about the bonus questions
6. Happy to be part of this, can’t think of a better way of saying goodbye.
7. Lovely puzzle. Lots of references and economically done.
8. BRILLIANT COMPILATION
9. Wonderful dedication to a legend
10. A typical round robin type puzzle of a general nature. I would have liked more clues or entries referencing Gridman to serve as a memorial or tribute
11. They are good. Should get together more often
12. Great effort
13. Fitting tribute to the revered setter.
14. Nice and easy collection of clues – almost like a Gridman grid!
15. Good
16. Admirable team work – created a gem.
17. Some definitions were iffy “
18. The bonus clue was very tough to Crack. Am still not sure how to annotate KNOWLEDGE, hopefully I get the knowledge by the time solving starts 🙂 Quite a few tricky but fair clues. I suppose one can call 5a a non-spoonerism and 11a a non-deletion clue, they were truly devilish with proper aha moments. Also great grid, very nearly a pangram.”
19. Awesome collaboration.
20. Wonderful tribute with apt gridfill words and clue acrostic!
21. A really nice tribute to Gridman. I like how a lot of words in the grid are related to him. And great job incorporating the clue acrostic and making it a pangram as well
22. Timely tribute
23. Excellent ‘gridman’sque puzzle
24. Nice amalgam of clues. Superb effort to make the tribute grid with the theme words and clue acrostic
25. An excellent grid, considering that the first letter of each clue had to form another clue. A brilliant attempt indeed!
26. OVERCATCH..IF Im right it is sort of vague…… Composite Anagram is nice. .Most of the clues are real good
27. Good fun… happy to be part of it 🙂
28. Nice Tribute
29. some very nice clues. Liked the choice of words for this tribute to Gridman.
30. Uneven quality of clues , probably because the first letter of the clue was already decided
31. 23a: bit unadventurous using assessment to make the word examinant, also surface a bit unusual. 27a: not a fan of a long jumbled acrostic. Just a few too many easy clues. Also, the bonuses were great ideas but the way Gridman clued for dedicated was very similar to the other setter, some difference in approach would have been nice.
32. Great grid and clues! A fitting tribute to the Master Setter by Sowmya.
33. Perfect tribute to the great Master. Well constructed clues.
34. A wonderful tribute to Gridman!
35. A nice tribute with excellent clues.
36. Very nice coordinated effort and a wonderful tribute
37. GOOD ONE
38. Excellent clues, enjoyed solving!
39. Fitting tribute to Gridman! Fun to solve
40. So many good clues–hard to pick 3!–and even though I didn’t know Gridman well I recognized so many thematic entries! A fine tribute to him.
41. A very thoughtfully made tribute grid
42. Lovely grid, fitting tribute. Clue 8 down (i think) has viola as answer whereas here in french should be voila?
43. The first “extra” is a guess.
Tributes to Gridman
Bhishma Pitamah of the Indian crossword community. Someone who naturally drew respect from all crossword lovers. His easy grids on the The Hindu have given me the impression that he must have been a hard taskmaster once, but is now dishing out easy clues just to see the solvers obtain the satisfaction of solving. To the man who displayed elegance in simplicity, Om Shanti !-Madhusudan Hanumantha Rao
Would take the extra effort to complete the Hindu crossword on seeing Gridman as the setter. Will miss seeing his name. RIP gridman -Ranjani Srikanth
Thank you for puzzling and entertaining our brains, Gridman! Goodbye, we will miss you. -Prakash Arumugam
He is words-worth-Prasad RV
An unfailingly courteous and helpful man, even my limited interactions with him were always learning experiences.-Arvind Kannabiran
RIP Gridman-Keith Williams
My limited interactions with him were at the IXL finals at Bangalore, and he came across as very genial, more thrilled with folks solving the clues than with wanting to set too intricate clues. He got on very well with the oldies as well as the youngest whippersnappers around. 🙂-Venkatraghavan S.
Wonderful dedication to a legend-Nilesh Parmar
Enthusiastic but soft spoken, Rishi aka CV aka Gridman was much loved in the Indian crossword community. Apart from his engagement in matters cruciverbal in many a setting, his contributions to the Hindu as a setter, co-ordinator, commentator, and mentor to newbies deserve special mention. Active till almost the very end, his loss leaves an irreplaceable void. I am honoured to have had the opportunity to have interacted with him on several occasions and deeply saddened at his departure.-Bhalchandra Pasupathy
Quero te ver outra vez. Você deixou saudade…-Kishore Rao
It was an honour to have met a humble man in person.-Debasmita Basu
The doyen of Indian crosswords, which got international recognition because of him. He brought new talent into professional setting. -SSv Avtaar
Truly a colossus in the field of Indian cryptic crosswords.-Ramki Krishnan
We miss our mentor . Don’t know what o say, yet to believe that he is no more 🙁-Lakshmi Vaidyanathan
Simplified Cryptic Crosswords for the common man.-Jyothish B
For the past ten years, Gridman was my favorite setter for THC. I always found his clues fair and his surfaces neat, and it was a treat to solve his puzzles. A salute to a great setter.-Tejas Siddharth
Gridman’s dedication to cryptic crosswords – be it setting, critiquing, participating in contests – and fostering its growth in India was exemplary. He was as much learner as he was elder statesman of the Indian crossword universe. Aside from crosswords, I enjoyed his chronicling of everyday life in Chennai and keen observations of the street, with seldom an unkind thought. A gentleman I wish I’d met.-Ganesh Nayak
Friend philosopher guide who had as much passion for the crossword ecosystem as technical brilliance.-Sree Sree
Befitting tribute to a luminary. Thanks to all the setters-Spiffytrix
Always enjoyed your grids sir. You will surely be missed 🙁-Kumaresh K R
I used to enjoy solving Gridman’s grids in The Hindu. He was one of the main reasons I got hooked to crosswords . One of my favorite Gridman clues is: Duck, dis or dat – Eider. A brilliant wordplay.-Veena
A TRUE GUIDE EVER TO APPRECIATE GOOD CLUES EVEN FROM NOVICES.. A GENEROUS GOOD HUMAN-Santha Ramachandran
Will miss his simple, elegant grids-Mona Sogal
Setter Extraordinaire-Nagendra Prasad R.
Much Respect for his erudition ,skill and helpful nature. A wonderful human being and setter.-Viveca Bhatkal
His Grids were just right. Neither so simple that one would get bored nor so difficult that one would get frustrated.-Ashit Hegde
RIP Chaturvasi Sir. The void created by your departure will be very hard to fill.-Madhup Tewari
I am a great admirer of ‘Gridman’ and have been solving his grids in The Hindu right from when his first grid appeared. His puzzles presented enough challenge to me in solving. His clues were very nicely constructed. A master of the art of setting, he was an inspiration to me. His is a loss that has created a void in the Crossword community.-Raghavan S V
CV was a gentle soul, ever helpful, mentor to one and all. Loved his sense of humour and wit. He is gone, but will never be forgotten.-Sandhya Paruchuri
During my fifties I started showing interest in solving “The Hindu” crosswords and Gridman’s puzzles were my favourites for these were neither too hard nor too easy. While solving a Gridman’s puzzle, I came across Col. Deepak Gopinath’s THCC blog and there only I understood the grammar of the art. This blog proved to be learning platform for me. This blog featured a Sunday Special on 19.10.2018 by a new setter Karthik (PSK). Chaturvasi sir commended the setter and commented “…I am sure the Col will excuse me if I also suggest that PSK may join FB: 1ACross group where such special puzzles are put up for individual solving and submission. It is a large group of highly interested solvers and there PSK will get better exposure…”. Though the advice was to PSK, I followed it sincerely and joined this group on 20.10.2018. This is yet another platform for me. The regular competitive grids with bonus questions and group solving are very useful in improving my solving skill. Though I did not have any direct interaction with Chaturvasi sir, I was inspired by his puzzles and his encouraging and guiding comments in the blogs. I salute the great soul.-Venkatesan P
A great setter whose work will be missed tremendously-Lakshmi Prakash
We lost our crossword “guru”.-Narayanan R
As a newcomer to the world of cryptics, I find his grids , with excellent yet simple and interesting clues, to be a great learning experience and a confidence booster.-Priya Shyam
Although I did not have the good fortune of knowing Gridman or his work well, I appreciated his thoughtful comments on 1Across, and last year he was kind and unassuming enough to have an engaging conversation with me (an amateur) on 1Across in which we each shared details of how we got into crosswords! I can see how he would have made a wonderful mentor to many and I am sorry he is no longer with us.-Anirudh Sahni
Prolific setter of great quality. Mentor and guide. He made a great impact to the world of cryptic crosswords and will be missed.-Ramesh SS
Gridman was a valuable contributor to the crossword community. His elaborate explanations on clues were enlightening and a pleasure to read. Pray to God that his soul rests in peace!-Himanshu Rajurkar
There cannot be another GRIDMAN, His CWD grids were very interesting-Rathnakumar V
I still don’t know the answer to the first bonus question. Am I missing something? I’ve never heard the quotation before but it’s not clear how it helps.
Edited the post now. It is “LYING” – a Double Definition clue.