Stats: The puzzle page was loaded 425 times. 64 solvers had a go at it. 52 solvers completed the puzzle and the bonus forms. The remaining solved it partly. As many as 44 solvers got the full score.
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Here is the solution grid:
Bonus Questions:
1. Synonym of the title formed from the circled letters (13)
Ans: METAMORPHOSIS
2. Synonym of the title formed after replacements (13)
Ans: TRANSMUTATION
Circled letters in clue order:
MIASOSRTPOHME à METAMORPHOSIS
Changes
Old word New word Old Letter New Letter
WHIMPERING WHISPERING M S
STICKY STOCKY I O
SARONG STRONG A T
SUSPICIOUS AUSPICIOUS S A
WORSHIP WARSHIP O A
REVERSE REVERIE S I
CONVERT CONVENT R N
DETAILED DERAILED T R
COMPUTERS COMMUTERS P M
MORALISTS MURALISTS O U
SHOWY SNOWY H N
SMARTER STARTER M T
IMPOSES IMPOSTS E T
New letters in clue order:
SOTAAINRMUNTT à TRANSMUTATION
Annotations
| Ref | Clue | Answer | Annotation |
| 1A | Crying leads to wet handkerchief in my pocket, eventually resulting in nasty garment (10) | WHIMPERING | Wet Handkerchief In My Pocket, Eventually Resulting In Nasty Garment |
| 6A | Adhesive starts to smell terribly repulsive (6) | STICKY | Starts To + ICKY |
| 11A | Recovers very early at the start, involved in additional tests (9) | RETRIEVES | RETRIE(Very Early)S |
| 12A | Without beginning to vomit, casually lean over her (7) | ELEANOR | (LEAN OVER – V)* |
| 13A | Wheelbarrow along with automobile in evacuated hut (8) | HANDCART | H(AND CAR)T |
| 15A | Composed men in different class making peace (8) | CALMNESS | CLA(MEN*)SS* |
| 17A | Geometric shape’s soft edge containing a point (5) | PRISM | P+RI(S)M |
| 18A | Support for artist renewing lease (5) | EASEL | LEASE* |
| 20A | Honey badger irately sheds skin (5) | RATEL | iRATELy |
| 21A | Take for granted before having revolutionary inspiration (7) | PRESUME | PR(MUSE<)E |
| 23A | Fools replace quiet Republican with Democrat in introductions (7) | DELUDES | PRELUDES – P R + D |
| 25A | He is ordinarily content returning to get her (5) | ROSIE | (hE IS ORdinarily)< |
| 27A | Midday class regularly works in a natural setting (5) | IDYLS | mIdDaY cLaSs |
| 29A | Japanese dish is returned having American horseradish on top (5) | SUSHI | S(US+Horseradish)I |
| 31A | Spreads around steamy photograph (8) | SNAPSHOT | SPANS<+HOT |
| 32A | “Deep Slumber in Bedfordshire” – Ms. Lee published (3, 5) | REM SLEEP | bedfordshiRE MS LEE Published |
| 34A | Mr. Carney is on cover of “The Entertainer” (7) | ARTISTE | ART+IS+ThE |
| 36A | Almost everyone settled in around a small group of dogs (9) | ALSATIANS | ALl+SAT+I(A)N+S |
| 38A | Tune about a king’s garment (6) | SARONG | S(A+R)ONG |
| 39A | Dubious consumer essentially digested soups around here in Montreal (10) | SUSPICIOUS | conSUmer+SOU(ICI)PS* |
| 1D | Praise handicraft after king and servant leave (7) | WORSHIP | WORKMANSHIP–K–MAN |
| 2D | Detailed event is in fragments (9) | INTENSIVE | (EVENT IS IN)* |
| 3D | Spartan character’s dislocated hip (3) | PHI | HIP* |
| 4D | Contrary student abandons drunken revelers (7) | REVERSE | REVELERS* – L |
| 5D | One’s unusual facial feature (4) | NOSE | ONE’S* |
| 7D | Secure twice, regularly (3) | TIE | TwIcE |
| 8D | Secret about new disciple (7) | CONVERT | CO(N)VERT |
| 9D | Unlicensed markets confused dealers, say, after last of merchandise was taken away (4, 5) | YARD SALES | (DEALERS SAY – E)* |
| 10D | Full back indeed! (8) | DETAILED | DE(TAIL)ED |
| 14D | Devices placed in advance essentially oversell (9) | COMPUTERS | COM(PUT)E+oveRSell |
| 16D | Ethical people have spoken in films (9) | MORALISTS | M(ORAL)ISTS |
| 19D | Why so deplorably ostentatious? (5) | SHOWY | (WHY SO)* |
| 21D | Some of the French air is mixed in containers (9) | PARISIANS | P(AIR IS)*ANS |
| 22D | TV segments take a look back, hosting constant recurrent parties (8) | EPISODES | E(PI+DOS<)ES |
| 24D | Bandit’s pocketed merchandise finally spread out close to Mexico (9) | DESPERADO | pocketeD merchandisE + SPREAD* + mexicO |
| 26D | In uncertain terms, there’s a right to be more intelligent (7) | SMARTER | A+R in TERMS* |
| 28D | Good man records first signs of unexpected population increases (5, 2) | STEPS UP | ST+EPS+Unexpected Population |
| 30D | Medicine uncapped after mischievous child bursts in (7) | IMPOSES | IMP+DOSES–D |
| 33D | In France, you boxing a sailor is forbidden (4) | TABU | T(AB)U |
| 35D | Star hidden in parts unknown (3) | SUN | partS UNknown |
| 37D | Jerk took information confidentially at first (3) | TIC | Took Information Confidentially |
Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)
Out of 64 solvers, 52 completed fully and 44 got the full score. Each of the following scored 203 points (Grid Score – 201, Bonus – 2).
Al Sanders
Arun Hiregange
Arvind Kannabiran
Arvind Ramaswamy
Ashit Hegde
Bhalchandra Pasupathy
Debasmita Basu
Harish T K
Himanshu Rajurkar
Jose A
Jyothish Balakrishnan
Kumaresh K R
Lakshmi Prakash
Lakshmi Vaidyanathan
Madhup Tewari
Madhusudan H
Max Jackson
Mona Sogal
Mukundala Balasubramanyam
Nagendra Prasad R.
Narayan Mandyam
Narayana Swamy D
Narayanan R
Paul Henderson
Prakash Arumugam
Ramki Krishnan
Rathnakumar V
Ratna Rao
Rengaswamy N.
Roland Rance
Samit Kallianpur
Sampath Srinivasan
Samraat Saxena
Sandhya Paruchuri
Sparsh Sinha
Srinivas Venkatesh
Steve Gunter
Supriya Mithal
Suresh Dorbala
Tejas Siddharth
Usha Dronamraju
Veera Raghavan
Venkatesan P.
Venkatraghavan S
Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated.
Grid Rating: The puzzle got a top notch rating of 8.79. It was rated a perfect 10 by 16 out of the 52 folks who voted (31%). The lowest rating was 7.
Favorite Clues: The Top clues were
-
-
- Crying leads to wet handkerchief in my pocket, eventually resulting in nasty garment (10) – 12 votes
- Take for granted before having revolutionary inspiration (7) – 12 votes
- Fools replace quiet Republican with Democrat in introductions (7) – 9 votes
- Spreads around steamy photograph (8) – 9 votes
- Some of the French air is mixed in containers (9) – 9 votes
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Thanks Mathrix. Terrific concept and excellent execution. Loved solving it and watching the metamorphosis. Can’t wait to see your next grid. 🙂
Here’s what our solvers said about the puzzle.
| Name | Comments / Feedback on the puzzle |
|---|---|
| Arun Hiregange | Fantastic puzzle! I’m amazed at the creativity needed to set a grid like this. |
| Gita Iyer | love the theme, and the idea of synonyms |
| Jyothish Balakrishnan | Excellently designed high calibre creation on an enlarged playing field. |
| Mukundala Balasubramanyam | Quite an entertainer! |
| Rathnakumar V | Another entertaining grid from Mathrix, |
| Sandhya Paruchuri | Enjoyed solving it! |
| Sparsh Sinha | Wonderful clues |
| Srinivas Venkatesh | The two answers (13 letter word for CHANGE) were clear even before starting to solve. |
| Steve Gunter | A brilliant construction that deserves 13 exclamation points !!!!!!!!!!!!! |
| Supriya Mithal | Enjoyable grid and bonus ,Excellent clues , difficult to select 3 favourites , A 10 letter acrostic-impressive |
| Veera Raghavan | Very nice, fairly simple clues. |
| Venkatesan P. | Wonderful idea. Great clues. |
| Al Sanders | Nice clean grid, some very good clues. Not a fan of random anagramming, but getting both synonyms from the two sets of letters was pretty cool |
| Arvind Kannabiran | that was a very entertaining puzzle, including the bonus qs. pleasure to solve. thank you! |
| Lakshmi Prakash | Wonderful grid.Loved the bonus questions |
| Lakshmi Vaidyanathan | Nice puzzle |
| Mona Sogal | Innovative and fun 🙂 enjoyed myself thoroughly |
| Nagendra Prasad R. | NICE CONCEPT. |
| Narayan Mandyam | rem sleep is actually the opposite of deep sleep. other clues perfect. The concept of “change” is fantastic and must have taken a lot of work. Way above my level |
| Prakash Arumugam | A brilliantly crafted puzzle. It was fun to get the two synonyms of changes. |
| Suresh Dorbala | Loved it |
| Tejas Siddharth | Very nice idea and execution |
| Venkatraghavan S | Superb grid, and the theme puzzle as well |
| Arvind Ramaswamy | A beautifully crafted theme puzzle with simple and lovely clues. |
| Debasmita Basu | Liked the endgame |
| Koteswar Rao | THOROUGHLY ENJOYED |
| Kumaresh K R | Grid was fairly easy; really liked the second bonus question and the concept |
| Madhup Tewari | Very enjoyable puzzle! |
| Madhusudan H | Well constructed. Convert can change to convent/convect ? |
| Max Jackson | Nice construction, words and clues; not too tricky. 8dn what about “convect”? |
| Narayanan R | Super setting of Bonus questions |
| Paul Henderson | Trickier to set than immediately apparent, though there were plenty of places where an alternative grid entry was usable. Modifications largely in the down entries – was that deliberate. Nice to see AUSPICIOUS/SUSPICIOUS but pity there was no HIDEOUT/HIDEOUS. |
| Ramesh Swaminathan | Great effort to set a 21 square. Most clues very nicely set. A few like 14A, 22D, 30D I had difficulty in fixing definition or had to work back for parsing. Tricky bonus 2nd question. |
| Ramki Krishnan | Very nice puzzle. Bonus much easier than usual compared to earlier Mathrix puzzles!Didn’t much like the defs in 12A and 25A though they were easily gettable. |
| Roland Rance | There are two possible alterations to 8 Down. I originally inserted CONVECT, before realising that this would not produce an appropriate anagram. |
| Samit Kallianpur | Good grid with smooth clues! Nice bonus too! |
| Sampath Srinivasan | Changing the circled letters to come up with a second synonym is a novel idea. |
| Usha Dronamraju | Excellent clues. Enjoyed solving the puzzle very much. |
| Ashit Hegde | Clever bonus puzzle , Some good clues but too many clues with letter selection for my liking. |
| Bhalchandra Pasupathy | Good effort in finding a combination of required letters to match the game requirements despite constraints. Easy largely, but even then 3 continuous unches probably a bit OTT |
| Binay Patra | Not sure about 2nd bonus question. Otherwise it’s a great grid. |
| Krittibas Dasgupta | Nice puzzle. Liked the idea of letter replacements to get another synonym of the theme. |
| Narayana Swamy D | NICE CLUES WITH GOOD SURFACES |