Stats: The puzzle page was loaded 540 times. 66 visitors had a go at it. 40 solvers completed both the puzzle and bonus form. The remaining 26 solved it partly or fully but did not submit. 18 solvers got the full score.
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Here is the solution grid:
BONUS QUESTIONS:
A 13-letter entry that belongs to the same theme as the short
ANS: ARABIAN NIGHTS
An actor associated with two entries that are the names of water bodies
ANS: JOHN WAYNE
Annotations
| Slot | Clue | Solution | Annotation |
| 4A | Hurry up and be prepared to pick up English superstar (6, 7) | AUDREY HEPBURN | HURRYUPANDBE* picking up E |
| 8A | Scorsese made this parody boring. Contrived farce! (4, 4) | CAPE FEAR | APE (parody) boring FARCE* |
| 9A | Page from Sidney Sheldon novel returning on women’s magazine (6) | NOELLE | ON>>NO + ELLE Reference: Noelle Page from ‘The Other Side of Midnight’ |
| 10A | Illusion of precious metal buried in mud (6) | MIRAGE | MIR(AG)E |
| 12A | Rocky grounded unfancied contender (8) | UNDERDOG | GROUNDED* |
| 14A | Yemeni director’s biopic of English author (4) | ENID | Hidden in plain sight. Ref: ‘Enid’ is a biopic with Helena Bonham Carter playing Enid Blyton |
| 15A | Teen Curie schooled this Curie, a Nobel laureate. Cute! (5) | IRENE | Composite anagram: TEENCURIE* = IRENECUTE*. Def: This Curie, a Nobel laureate |
| 16A | Man deserts riotous Myanmar militia (4) | ARMY | MYANMAR* – MAN |
| 17A | Herpetologist essentially follows cobra shedding skin in swirling Ravi river (3, 5) | RIO BRAVO | O follows RI(_OBR_)AV* |
| 19A | Haggard’s novel on an English revolutionary is a jungle adventure (6) | SHEENA | SHE + (E NA)<<(AN E) |
| 20A | Suppose wife’s throwing a fit? Husband’s hiding (4, 2) | WHAT IF | H hiding in W (AFIT)* |
| 22A | Tool removing pieces of sawdust, chips and wood flower (3, 5) | RED RIVER | SCREWDRIVER (tool) – S – C – W
Def: flower (for river) |
| 24A | A car Rhett’s arranged with Ola for his wife? (8, 1’4) | SCARLETT O’HARA | (ACARRHETTS + OLA)* |
| 1D | Public skipping work for entertainer with deft feet (4) | PELE | PE(–op)LE |
| 2D | Some swing and turn — grip and turn (4) | SPIN | S and PIN<<NIP (grip, reversed as indicated by turn) |
| 3D | Pride isolates Hollywood’s top director, one with a unique style (6) | AUTEUR | HAUTEUR – H |
| 4D | America and Great Britain evenly distributed things? That’s a bunch of stories! (7, 6) |
ARABIAN NIGHTS | A + (_R_A_B_I_A_N) + THINGS* |
| 5D | Fanatic regularly auditioned Thora for nudie (3, 4) | DIE HARD | Every third letter in au(D)it(I)on(E)d t(H)or(A) fo(R) nu(D)ie |
| 6D | Our helicopter flies a genius with clues (7, 6) | HERCULE POIROT | OUR HELICOPTER* |
| 7D | Political leader from Jaffna led NAM? No, SL envoy flipped! (6, 7) | NELSON MANDELA | Hidden in reverse |
| 11D | Pathological procedure for one of Napoleon’s siblings (5) | ELISA | Double definition |
| 13D | Couples may perform these endlessly for sons (5) | DUETS | For= DUE TO; DUET(–o) + S |
| 16D | New AI at Kremlin seen deleting ten lines randomly in Kafka novel (7) | AMERIKA | AIATKREMLINSEEN* – TENLINES* |
| 18D | Superhero and Lara Croft ultimately getting married inside bar (6) | BATMAN | B(AT M)AN |
| 21D | Trip by gangster in Florida (4) | FALL | FAREWELL – WERE* |
| 23D | Judgment lifted spirit (4) | DOOM | MOOD >> DOOM |
Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)
Each of the following scored 141 points (Grid Score – 137, Bonus – 4)
Anantakrishnan N.
Bhalchandra Pasupathy
Deepak Gopinath (Col.)
Himanshu Rajurkar
Lakshmi Prakash
Lakshmi Vaidyanathan
Max Jackson
Melissa McSeismal
Mona Sogal
Prakash Arumugam
Ramesh Swaminathan
Rathnakumar V
Ratna Rao
Samit Kallianpur
Sandhya Paruchuri
Sohil Bhagat
Tulika Das
Venkatraghavan S
Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got an excellent rating of 8.43. It got 7 perfect 10s (18% of those who rated). The lowest rating was 6.
Favorite Clues:Many people had chosen more than 3 clues. The Top clues were
-
- Rocky grounded unfancied contender (8) – 13 votes
- A car Rhett’s arranged with Ola for his wife? (8, 1’4) – 10 votes
- Tool removing pieces of sawdust, chips and wood flower (3, 5) – 10 votes
- Hurry up and be prepared to pick up English superstar (6, 7) – 10 votes
- Our helicopter flies a genius with clues (7, 6) – 10 votes
Fantastic themed movie treat from Aquifer. Very enjoyable and love the way he has managed to integrate the theme both in the grid and the clues.
Here’s what our solvers said..
| Name | Comments / Feedback on the puzzle |
|---|---|
| Sandhya Paruchuri | Entertaining puzzle! |
| Veera Raghavan | Good puzzle. Had to spend time in googlosphere for getting many entries |
| Narayan Mandyam | FANTASTIC |
| Venkatesan P. | Liked the long anagrams with neat surface. |
| Mukundala Balasubramanyam | Lovely thematic grid |
| Anantakrishnan N. | Excellent puzzle! |
| Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | Nice puzzle |
| Rathnakumar V | First Bonus question is not clear, Shorter entries can be any clue less than 13 letters, |
| Venkatraghavan S | Am constantly amazed at Aquifer’s gridfills. Another superb puzzle. |
| Arvind Kannabiran | that was entertaining. |
| Nagendra Prasad R. | NICE GRID (LATE SUBMISSION OF BONUS FORM FROM MY END) |
| Sparsh Sinha | Great, Some real twisters there. |
| Mukundala Balasubramanyam | Lovely thematic grid |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | Great gridfill, nice clues. Interesting overall. 23d falls in the category of ‘ambiguous’ clues, solution could be either DOOM/MOOD, needs crossings to fix uniquely, generally avoidable |
| Mona Sogal | Like I have said before, I am always amazed at the number of theme entries the setter is able to incorporate all the time. Fun puzzle 🙂 |
| Prakash Arumugam | Nice thematic puzzle with a great surface |
| Ramesh Swaminathan | Very smooth and entertaining. A few trickly clues. good effort to produce so many themed entries. |
| Samit Kallianpur | Nice and simple! ‘On’ as connector in 21d might not be kosher (also, is another anagrind needed for “we’re”? |
| Koteswar Rao | Enjoyable grid. |
| Ashit Hegde | Overall very good surfaces . Many witty clues. Thoroughly enjoyed solving . |
| Madhusudan H | Tough one that requires fine knowledge of the theme (or expert googling skills) |
| Ramki Krishnan | Nice grid. Enjoyed solving. Some of the shorter clues were more tricky to solve and annotate than the longer ones! Not sure about the bonus q’s still. |
| Narayanan R | Good one |
| Narayana Swamy D | Nice clues involving Water bodies and Actresses |
| Max Jackson | I guessed a couple of clues. |
| Arvind Ramaswamy | The puzzle itself was a fun solve. Some clues were very good. But the 1st theme question stumped me! just made a wild guess. |