Stats – Although it was not one of our competition grids, we had 39 solvers completing and submitting the grid. Of those who submitted 29 managed to get it fully correct.
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Aptly named Hindsight, the Grid had numerous references to the year 2020 both in the lights as well as in clue surfaces. Many of the clues were well constructed and it was a great debut overall.
Here is the solution grid:
Annotations:
| Across | Answer | Explanation |
| 1 A preserve folded in Dad’s 2020 fashion (6) | pajama | P(A JAM)A |
| 5 Holiday curtailed, empty charge (8) | vacation | VACAT(-e) ION |
| 9 Wellness from tracheal therapy (6) | health | Hidden |
| 10 Military retiree put back in charge by crazy heartless villain (8) | civilian | IC< VIL(-l)AIN* |
| 11 Audibly chomp bit eight times (4) | byte | HP bite |
| 12 Film kid’s theatre performance (5’1-4) | child’s-play | DD |
| 13 Royal guards at length just chaps not maintaining social distance? (9-2-4) | gentlemen-at-arms | GENTEMEN AT ARMS (-LENGTH) |
| 16 Popular celebration for 2020 winner (10,5) | democratic part | DD |
| 20 Yorkshire town’s at bottoms of steps? (10) | stairfoots | DD |
| 23 Fiddler making a comeback in Florence (4) | nero | Rev T |
| 24 Happy lover takes in brother in law given time (8) | jubilant | JU(BIL)AN T |
| 25 Stain bearing metal sent by mail in 2020 (6) | ballot | B(AL)LOT |
| 26 Special teacher’s viral event (8) | spreader | SP READER |
| 27 Alternately in Oz, it was screen pulled back to reveal sham (6) | ersatz | Rev Alternative |
| Down | Answer | Explanation |
| 2 Welding fuel can eyelet breaks! (9) | acetylene | CANEYELET* |
| 3 Bizarrely melt in a sickness (7) | ailment | MELT IN A* |
| 4 One dim-witted listener’s punishment (1,5,3) | a thick ear | DD |
| 5 Shot awkwardly caught in cave (7) | vaccine | C IN CAVE* |
| 6 Echo TV died oddly lacking virus (5) | covid | Letter Selection |
| 7 Today I learned about prehistoric invertebrate animals originally becoming fish (7) | tilapia | TIL APIA |
| 8 Old goat in conversation about maiden ex-president (5) | obama | O BA(M)A |
| 14 Culpable criminal cocaine cabal? Sue! (9) | accusable | CCABALSUE* |
| 15 Tom mounted a robot assembled for craft (5-4) | motor-boat | MOT< OR BOAT* |
| 17 Bull I cut up heard to turn red (7) | oxidise | OX I DISE HP DICE |
| 18 Trained horse played retro table-tennis (7) | trotter | RETRO TT* |
| 19 Ends marriage involving you via text, returns ring (7) | annulus | ANNUL(U)S |
| 21 Surpass 2020 president… (5) | trump | DD |
| 22 … his election claim principally spreads Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt about God (5) | fraud | F (RA) U D. |
Results:
Amongst those who solved, the following got it fully correct. Bhalchandra Pasupathy, Prakash Arumugam, Keith Williams, R Nagendra Prasad, Ian VanderSchee, Narayanan R, Krishnan Anantheswaran, Mona Sogal, S V Raghavan, Avtaar, Debasmita Basu, Venkatraghavan Sahasranaman, Sohil, Himanshu Rajurkar, Viveca Bhatkal, Lakshmi Vaidyanathan, Madhusudan Hanumantha Rao, Madhup Tewari, Ramesh Swaminathan, Sandhya Paruchuri, Veena Venkataraman, Tejas Siddharth, Ramki Krishnan, Venkatesan P, Anirudh Sahni and Lakshmi Prakash
Grid Rating:The puzzle got a good score of 8.08. It got 6 perfect 10s – i.e 16% of those who submitted thought it was perfect. The minimum score was 6.
Top 3 Clues: The most favorited clues were those for “Democratic Party” (11 votes), Vaccine, Pajama and Ersatz (9 votes each) and Nero, Gentlemen-at-arms (7 votes each). 25 clues in the grid got atleast 1 vote each.
Cracking debut Silicon Gent. Congrats. Looking forward to more puzzles from you at the blog.
Comments on the Puzzle
- Could give surfaces a little more attention to make them more meaningful and plausible
- Enjoyable puzzle. Best to avoid synonyms of words in the wordplay
- Entertaining enough. I’d struggle to support STAIRFOOT as a Yorkshire town, as online sources suggest it is only a village in the larger Barnsley borough and simply a named ward, rather than anything more substantial.
- Fairly easy one to solve
- Nice clues, easy solve. Looking forward to more from Silicon Gent!
- very good considering that this is his debut
- Too many anagrams made the grid easier to solve. Clues of varying quality with some surfaces not making too much sense. OTOH brilliant clue for ersatz
- Great debut.. theme words and clues woven nicely.. very entertaining. Vacation, root issue perhaps?
- Well crafted puzzle. Was looking for clues on cricket.
- Excellent debut. Wordplay is precise and even unfamiliar words would be worked out from WP. Keep it up Silicon Gent. Seems like you are happy at the change in US Presidency
- Neat clues
- Knowledge of clue construction is fine. However, surfaces need to improve drastically.
- This is a very nice debut puzzle! Liked all the topical references. 17A has 2 variant spellings though – and it can’t be disambiguated through crossers (Note: Both variants have been given full scores -Ed)
- Good puzzle
- Nice attempt though was not too enthused about some clue surfaces
- Good
- Good clues
- Nice puzzle.
- Excellent especially for a debut. Some innovative clues. Some word plays may need a bit of tweak but overall very fair and good.
- Good debut! Keep them coming!
- Good one for a debut
- An easy puzzle overall. However, some of the surfaces were difficult to understand. Shouldn’t 20a also have an apostrophe in the enumeration?
- Good debut. Some clues had root issues (solutions and the charade component both sharing the same root or meaning), which made them less cryptic.
- Enjoyable Grid.
- A very good debut grid. Mostly quick and easy clues, yet still entertaining. Loved the 2020 allusions. In 6d, the virus is confused with the disease. In 17d, the homophone is questionable (dice/dize).”
- Very nice effort
- Sorry, I’m not really at the stage of giving critique.
- Easy and enjoyed
- Quite easy; perhaps too many full anagrams.
- Some nice clues
- good effort, keep at it. one criticism, watch your homophones– the 2nd part of 17D is not a homophone of ‘dice’ (cut up) which I assume is the attempt, z/s difference vocally. Easy check is the phonetic spelling provided in every dictionary. But on the whole, good one. Hindsight is always 20/20 🙂
- didnt look like a fresher grid
- Nice clueing for a beginner. Shows promise to become a challenging setter.
- Easy grid, good fun solving
- Excellent debut. Wishing you a bright future.
- Very interesting