Stats The puzzle page was loaded over 500 times. 115 visitors had a go at it and 42 solvers managed to complete and submit the grid. Of those who submitted 17 managed to get the maximum possible score of 141 including the Bonus.
Stars and Wars<<< Click Here for the Puzzle Post
Here is the solution grid:
Bonus Question:
What’s the theme? – ANS: MOVIES (Have given points to any one who had MOVIES in the answer)
How many of the 28 grid entries are themed – ANS: ALL
Annotations:
| Across | Answers | Explanations |
| 6. Currently following calypso dance in ‘King Kong’, perhaps? A jungle epic (10, 3) | APOCALYPSE NOW | AP(OCALYPS)E NOW |
| 8. A dud movie rehashing ‘Gilda’, ‘M’ and ‘Red Sun’ (8) | GREMLINS | A DUD GREMLINS* = GILDA + M + RED SUN* |
| 9. Bond’s boss and top spy walk out of famous Egyptian film with Shah Rukh Khan (5) | RAEES | RA(-m)E(-s)ES |
| 10. Leading thespian exits mostly revised British drama (4) | EDIE | EDI(-t)E (-d) |
| 12. Jack beginning to edit feature film originally with Alain Delon (4) | JEFF | J+ E F F |
| 13. Spooky romance opening with DiCaprio shows Winslet finally (5) | GHOST | Last letter Acrostic |
| 16. Comedy remake of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Evil Dead’ without violent scenes eventually bagging first prize (5, 5, 5) | DEVIL WEARS PRADA | Anagram of STARS + EVIL DEAD; deletion of T, S (violenT sceneS eventually); insertion of P (first Prize) |
| 17. ‘Zootopia’ is a version of this Hitchcock film — in our opinion, primarily (5) | TOPAZ | CA: ZOOTOPIA = TOPAZ + I,O,O (in our opinion, primarily) |
| 18. Epic upset Yul Brynner and Tarantino extremely (4) | TROY | Anagram with extreme letters of Yul brynneR and TarantinO |
| 19. From Belgium, a short war comedy (4) | MASH | Hidden in plain sight |
| 21. Loudly played organ, releasing new Frances McDormand movie (5) | FARGO | F + ORGA(-n)* |
| 23. Morning when Garbo removed garment from behind, interrupting my film (5, 3) | MAMA’S BOY | M(AM.AS.(-gar<)BO)Y |
| 26. Horror story by A.R. Ross may be adapted (9, 4) | ROSEMARY’S BABY | {BY A.R. ROSS MAY BE}* |
| Down | Answers | Explanations |
| 1. Oscar winner Demi, perhaps, almost retiring (4) | ROOM | MOOR(-e)<< |
| 2. Queen Latifah’s feature team supporting a model’s rise (4) | TAXI | TA<<+XI |
| 3. Views of large planet capturing mood in murder mystery (4, 2, 5, 4) | EYES OF LAURA MARS | EYES + OF + L(AURA)MARS |
| 4. Atmosphere around small action film (4) | ASURA | A(S)URA |
| 5. Heard singles a long time ago (4) | ONCE | ~ (HP ONES) |
| 6. Film wild tiger of Baroda (1, 6, 3, 3) | A BRIDGE TOO FAR | {TIGER OF BARODA}* |
| 7. Warhead accidentally destroys one set in musical (4, 4, 5) | WEST SIDE STORY | W {DESTROYS I SET} |
| 11. Missed start of ‘Devi’ and half of ‘Taal’ for Madonna movie (5) | EVITA | d(EVI + TA)al |
| 12. Yes, German was heartless in fishy film? (4) | JAWS | JA+W(-a)S |
| 14. Ben Kingsley movie regularly watched by a fan group before meals (5) | HAREM | Every fifth letter of watc(H)ed.by.(A).fan.g(R)oup.b(E)fore.(M)eals |
| 15. Eddie Murphy’s work buried in Nefertiti’s pyramid (1, 3) | I SPY | Hidden in plain sight |
| 20. Old general manager arrested by attorney in Ben Affleck actioner (5) | DOGMA | D(OGM)A |
| 22. Initially losing confidence, suspended film (4) | RUST | (-t)RUST |
| 24. Press loses direction covering second Cher movie (4) | MASK | MA[S]K(-e) |
| 25. Celebrity sailors cycling (4) | STAR | Cycling of TARS |
ScoreCard
| Participant | Grid Score | Bonus | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anantakrishnan N. | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Ashit Hegde | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Keith Williams | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Lakshmi Prakash | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Melissa McSeismal | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Mona Sogal | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Nicholas Loader | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Nilesh Parmar | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Ramki Krishnan | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Rathnakumar V | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Ratna Rao | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Samit Kallianpur | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Sohil Bhagat | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Supriya Mithal | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Tejas Siddharth | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Venkatraghavan S. | 139 | 2 | 141 |
| Dave Williams | 138 | 2 | 140 |
| Debasmita Basu | 139 | 1 | 140 |
| Deepak Gopinath (Col.) | 139 | 1 | 140 |
| Ganesh Raman | 139 | 1 | 140 |
| Geoff Lee | 139 | 1 | 140 |
| Himanshu Rajurkar | 139 | 1 | 140 |
| Ian VanderSchee | 138 | 2 | 140 |
| Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | 139 | 1 | 140 |
| Max Jackson | 138 | 2 | 140 |
| Narayanan Rangamani | 139 | 1 | 140 |
| sandhya paruchuri | 138 | 2 | 140 |
| Veera Raghavan | 139 | 1 | 140 |
| Venkatesan P. | 138 | 2 | 140 |
| Harish Kamath | 139 | 0 | 139 |
| Krittibas Dasgupta | 138 | 1 | 139 |
| Madhusudan H | 138 | 1 | 139 |
| Nagendra Prasad R. | 138 | 1 | 139 |
| Priya Shyam | 137 | 2 | 139 |
| sree sree | 139 | 0 | 139 |
| Kumaresh K R | 138 | 0 | 138 |
| Magi Venkat | 138 | 0 | 138 |
| Narayan Mandyam | 136 | 1 | 137 |
| Usha Dronamraju | 136 | 1 | 137 |
| Krishnan Anantheshwaran | 134 | 0 | 134 |
| Ganesh Nayak | 129 | 1 | 130 |
Congrats to the 17 solvers who maxed the score and to every one who participated. Very well tried.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good score of 7.7. It got 4 perfect 10s. The minimum score was 3.
Favorite Clues: Here’s the distribution of favorites picked by the solvers.
Thanks to Aquifer (Kabir) for a terrific puzzle. Very impressive Grid fill and many clues made it an very enjoyable, as can be seen from the feedback from our solvers. Looking forward to more puzzles from you in the future as well.
Comments on the Puzzle
Stars and Wars
| Comments |
|---|
| Loved the grid especially the theme. |
| Outstanding |
| Wow! |
| Super. |
| Amazing to see that the setter has managed to populate the entire grid with theme words- clue or solution… brilliant.. thoroughly enjoyable grid…keep them coming 🙂 |
| Superb puzzle. Amazing gridfill |
| Excellent effort. |
| Interesting puzzle |
| Brilliant! |
| Nice debut with outstanding clues |
| Very nice. Good effort to ensure all themed entries. |
| Having film as a definition is a bit vague. |
| I’ll add to this later. Fantastic puzzle. So many excellent surfaces and clever, misleading wordplays. |
| great concept |
| Good one |
| Good one! |
| Wow, crazy how every clue had a movie reference. This would have been a very tough grid to set – great work! As not a very big movie buff myself, I had some trouble solving this. Had to Google some words that I thought the wordplay alluded to find out if they were indeed movie names. |
| Great first grid ,amazing to have all grid entries themed .Enjoyed the clues as well ,looking forward to more from Aquifer. |
| I confess I don’t understand 22d at all, so that one was a pure guess. Quite impressive for a 100% themed fill to only have a few obscurities in it. |
| Nil |
| Nice debut. Enjoyed solving the grid . |
| different one |
| Very well crafted grid. Author must have taken much pains to devise the clues. A pleasant solving experience |
| Wonderfully done! Looked up Hollywood movies to figure out some of the answers.. |
| – |
| Very entertaining because of the theme. The setter was limited by the theme quality of grid obviously suffers. Very good first attempt nevertheless. |
| Great job in populating the grid entirely with titles – but it also made it quite easy to know what to look for. Neat clues. |
| The surface for A BRIDGE TOO FAR is very good. Impressive grid-fitting.Not sure about the letter selection in Yul brynneR TaratinO*, if that is the anno – why does extreme mean left end, right end and both left and right end in different words? |
| One or two wordplays not followed, but all entries are films.Bonus probably looking for something more specific which I haven’t found. |
| Loved the movie references in surfaces/answers, although still not clear on the exact “stars and wars” theme – seems a bit vague to me. |
| – |
| Great surfaces and clues. Enjoyed solving the puzzle. |
| Having every entry themed is of course excellent, but unfortunately some of the clues are really ropy (particularly when it comes to indicating compound anagrams), as is often the case when everything is so theme driven, I’m afraid. |
| Nice theme. Could not anno a few clues (Mama’s boy, Harem) and guess based on the theme and crossing letters. |
| A very good first attempt at setting a crossword, particularly constructing a grid of movie names limits the grid-word choices significantly. As a constructive suggestion, some of the clues could have been sequenced better (the spacing of indicators in the clue is important) and some clues appeared incomplete (for e.g. the Zootopia /Topaz clue didn’t have an indicator to exclude i,o,o – if I understood the clue correctly). But a great grid nevertheless. Best wishes, Kabir, for many more to come! |
| Some surfaces need to be improved |
| It is fun when considered as a test of movie knowledge |
| Well done all answers being filmd |