Stats – We had 48 solvers completing and submitting the grid. Of those who submitted 34 managed to get the maximum possible score of 171 including the Bonus.
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Bonus Questions: 1. Calvin’s friend takes interest in pastimes (7)
2. Identify 6 words in the grid that can be linked to the answer to the bonus question above
Calvin’s friend is HOBBES and Interest is I – So the answer to Bonus Qn 1 – yielded HOBBIES, which was the theme for this puzzle.
The Grid contained 7 “themed” entries viz., GLIDING, GAMING, MUSIC, PHILLUMENY, BAKING, BREWING and ANIMATION. There were also 7 related entries viz., RECIPES, YOGI, VOCALIST, POLITICS, KNITTER, GARDENS and TASTERS.
Originally we had planned to give points only if the answer was one of the themed entries. However, the setters have been generous and have allotted points for all answers which included either a themed or a related entry.
Here is the solution grid:
Annotations:
| Across | Answer | Explanation |
| 1 Distraught of curse, change priorities (7) | refocus | REFOCUS* |
| 5 Hat on girl mixing gin is slipping (7) | gliding | G LID ING* |
| 9 Trickster with a French instrument: a poser (9) | conundrum | CON UN DRUM |
| 10 From the right tally, choose middle score (5) | music | MUS<(-p)IC(-k) |
| 11 Greek character deliberates inconclusively over converting yen for interest (10) | phillumeny | PHI MULL (-s)< YEN* |
| 12 Young soldier protecting ring for Hindu philosopher (4) | yogi | Y(O)GI |
| 14 Plan escape to the West after school (8) | schedule | S(C)H EDULE< |
| 15 Express displeasure at king and queen’s agent (6) | booker | BOO K ER |
| 17 Pastime, relaxing remove stress primarily (6) | baking | BA(-s)KING |
| 19 In charge,leader of statesman behind most civil government (8) | politics | POLIT(-e) IC S |
| 23 English prince oddly gives a long narration (4) | epic | E P(r)I(n)C€ |
| 24 “Cancel meet later at home, near Vatican city” Lia ordered (10) | invalidate | IN V ALI* DATE |
| 26 Conference with no prospect is put to rest (5) | inter | INTER(-VIEW) |
| 27 I am in a state of elation (9) | animation | A N(IM) ATION |
| 28 Kid comes back and studies at nurseries, sort of (7) | gardens | GAR< DENS |
| 29 Samplers test a little rioja and sherry cocktails (7) | tasters | Test ras* |
| Down | Answer | Explanation |
| 1 Rewrite precise sets of instructions (7) | recipes | PRECISE* |
| 2 Japan, say, adopts National language from Europe (7) | finnish | FIN(N)ISH |
| 3 Winding up council formed without Democrat, no good (10) | concluding | CONCLU(D)I* NG |
| 4 Small child starting to babble and crawl (8) | scramble | SC RAMBLE |
| 5 German targeting,missing first one in casino activity (6) | gaming | G A(-ii)MING |
| 6 Doctrines from one text (4) | isms | I SMS |
| 7 Trendy hose a bit torn inside is available for sale (2,5) | in stock | IN S(T)OCK |
| 8 Slimier cure king used had no trace of nitrate (7) | guckier | CUREKI(-n)G* |
| 13 Friars produce small containers (10) | dominicans | DO MINI CANS |
| 16 Very old composer and lyricist initially is top opening singer (8) | vocalist | VO C A L IS T |
| 17 Transport boxes you and I returned for beverage making (7) | brewing | BR(EW<)ING |
| 18 Garment maker designed trinket (7) | knitter | TRINKET* |
| 20 Picture setter with paper missing a last letter (7) | imagine | I MAG(-A Z) INE |
| 21 Earth shades, Iodine lining plants (7) | siennas | S(I)ENNAS |
| 22 Article on North America’s leading local supermarkets for journals (6) | annals | AN NA LS |
| 25 Unrestrained price? About right (4) | free | F(R)EE |
Results:
| S.No. | NAME | SCORE |
| 1 | Anantakrishnan N. | 171 |
| 2 | Anicha Reuban | 171 |
| 3 | Anirudh Sahni | 171 |
| 4 | Arvind Kannabiran | 171 |
| 5 | Arvind Ramaswamy | 171 |
| 6 | Ashit Hegde | 171 |
| 7 | Bhalchandra Pasupathy | 171 |
| 8 | Deepak Gopinath (Col.) | 171 |
| 9 | Gayathri Viswanath | 171 |
| 10 | Harish Kamath | 171 |
| 11 | Himanshu Rajurkar | 171 |
| 12 | Ian Vanderschee | 171 |
| 13 | Keith Williams | 171 |
| 14 | Kishore Rao | 171 |
| 15 | Krishnan Anantheshwaran | 171 |
| 16 | Kumaresh K R | 171 |
| 17 | Lakshmi Prakash | 171 |
| 18 | Madhup Tewari | 171 |
| 19 | Magi Rajagopalan | 171 |
| 20 | Max Jackson | 171 |
| 21 | Mona Sogal | 171 |
| 22 | Nick Loader | 171 |
| 23 | Nilesh Parmar | 171 |
| 24 | Prakash Arumugam | 171 |
| 25 | Ranjani Srikanth | 171 |
| 26 | Sandhya Paruchuri | 171 |
| 27 | Shashwat Sinai Salgaocar | 171 |
| 28 | Sohil | 171 |
| 29 | Sree Sree | 171 |
| 30 | Tejas Siddharth | 171 |
| 31 | Veena | 171 |
| 32 | Venkatesan P. | 171 |
| 33 | Venkatraghavan S. | 171 |
| 34 | Viveca Bhatkal | 171 |
| 35 | Nagendra Prasad R. | 170 |
| 36 | Narayanan R | 170 |
| 37 | Raghavan S V | 170 |
| 38 | Ramki Krishnan | 170 |
| 39 | Madhusudan Hanumantha Rao | 169 |
| 40 | Divita Gupta | 168 |
| 41 | Lalitha R | 168 |
| 42 | Prasad RV | 168 |
| 43 | Ramesh SS | 168 |
| 44 | Rathnakumar V | 168 |
| 45 | SSv Avtaar | 168 |
| 46 | Ratna Rao | 167 |
| 47 | Jyothish B | 165 |
| 48 | Maya Sharma | 163 |
Congrats to the solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 8.50. It got 11 perfect 10s – i.e 23% of those who submitted thought it was perfect. The minimum score was 6.
Top 3 Clues: The most favorited clues were those for “Phillumeny” (18 votes), Dominicans (15 votes), Animation and Schedule (10 votes each). 26 clues in the grid got atleast 1 vote each.
Thanks for the lovely puzzle with a nice theme Dynamic Ladies. It was amazing how you managed to weave in so many connected words in the grid. The comments from our solvers are proof for how much they enjoyed solving it. Looking forward to more puzzles from you at the blog.
Comments on the Puzzle
- nice fun grid, thanks LV & DB.
- Nice clues and good fun. Thought ‘most civil’ could have been worded ‘ mostly civil’ .
- Good clues.
- NICE CROSSWORD
- Decent crossword – many thanks. Bit of an open-ended endgame with seemingly many more than the 6 possible hobbies required (maybe qualify with ‘Identify any 6 words …’, but none the worse for that.
- Crosswords is also a hobby
- Nice easy solve for a Sunday morning.
- Quite enjoyed it. Nice mix of easy and complex clues…
- Good
- Simple and Easy Fun grid
- Nice clues. Enjoyable.
- Nicely crafted grid. Good clues. Learned few new words.
- Excellent mix of easy and tough clues. Enjoyed.
- A very nice puzzle, easy though.
- Extremely clever grid. Looked tough initially but could solve because of very fair clues. Some really good clues in here.
- Interesting grid
- Enjoyable creation. Top class.
- Nice Clues. Relaxing and challenging in bits
- Great clues
- Awesome Grid
- Good solve, but definitions could have been more precise
- Good puzzle. My comments are usually about improving surfaces, and that is the same here as well. Also some minor tweaks in clue construction, but that might be me.
- A nice diversion. A couple of surfaces and/or definitions gave some pause, but resolved easily enough
- Nice grid.. good theme… could benefit with a little more variety in the cluing
- 😉
- Very enjoyable clues
- Not too tricky, though the theme didn’t become apparent for a while. Nice construction – many more than six to choose from.
- Really nice puzzle, with a glaring C&H reference. 9 for the puzzle and an additional 0.7 for the C&H reference 🙂 Needles to say, hobbies was the first clue I solved 🙂
Loved vocalist, for a nigh acrostic, it took a long time to solve. Loved phillumeny too, took some time to realise the purpose of ‘inconclusively’; I’d assumed deliberates inconclusively = mulls, and was annoyed with the extra S.
Politics was a tricky clue, as were Dominicans and siennas. Very satisfying to get.
Not sure how I get IC in music, hope to figure it out before the solving session. Also not sure if the purpose of both ‘first’ and ‘one’ in gaming, only one I is to be removed from ‘aiming’?” - Good mix of easy and challenging clues. A few definitions are a bit generic. Some clues word play are bit contrived. Overall enjoyable to solve.
- Fun, breezy solve.
- Several clever clues only wish the surface of some clues was smoother. Overall good fun.
- Great puzzle
- Super team effort by the Ladies
- Good fun, easy grid. Liked the theme!
- Was a nice crossword, had a fun time doing it. Though for us, politics is not equal to government
- lovely crossword
- Fun one!
- VERY NICE PUZZLE
- Lovely grid!!
- EXCELLENT ONE
- Nice one
- Fun grid. Few surfaces didn’t seem smooth (like 21D) but was a nice grid overall.
- A lovely grid 👍🏻
- Some very nice clues but overall a bit easy. Bonus was also a bit easy. I don’t like ‘meet’ = ‘date’ in 24a, wp of def in 27a or young = y in 12a. Though I’ve seen the last two ideas previously so I might have to just start accepting them and looking out for them.
- Very nice puzzle, well constructed clues with no redundancies. Good mixture of easy and some what more difficult clues. Keep it up
- An impressive number of themed words (going beyond those that are actual names of hobbies). Clues were all well formed but some felt a little formulaic due to reliance on standard abbreviations and initial letters.
- Fun puzzle – thanks!
Thanks all for particiapting & feedback. Thanks Sowmya for publishing our grid. Thanks Debs 🙂