“Rebus” from “Mathrix” is our fifteenth grid for this season. You can also check out other puzzles from Mathrix here.

Stats: 57 solvers attempted this puzzle.  47 solvers completed the puzzle, of which three did not submit the bonus forms. 30 solvers got the full score.

Here is the Grid:
(Annotations will be visible on solving the puzzle or on clicking “Reveal Grid”. Logged in solvers can see their submissions as well)

Bonus Questions:

When the grid is filled, the circled letters will form seven rebuses. The definitions for the rebuses are given below:

1. Breakfast fare (9, 4)
   
   Solution

   Ans: SCRAMBLED EGGS

2. Give a ring (4,2)
   
   Solution

   Ans: CALL UP

3. Flannels (4,9)
   
   Solution

   Ans: LONG UNDERWEAR

4. Follicular woes (5,4)
   
   Solution

   Ans: SPLIT ENDS

5. Gaga (4,4,5)
   
   Solution

   Ans: HEAD OVER HEELS

6. Glum (8)
   
   Solution

   Ans: DOWNCAST

7. Neither gain nor lose (5,4)
   
   Solution

   Ans: BREAK EVEN

Here’s the list of Top Scorers (For the full list, please check the Leaderboard in the Hall of Fame)

Out of 57 solvers,  47 completed the puzzle and 30  got the full score. Each of the following scored 175 points (Grid Score – 168,  Bonus – 7).

Abhay Phadnis
Ashit Hegde
Harish T K
Himanshu Rajurkar
Jose A
Krittibas Dasgupta
Lakshmi Prakash
Madhup Tewari
Madhusudan H
Mona Sogal
Mukundala Balasubramanyam
Nagendra Prasad R.
Narayanan R
Nilesh Parmar
Paul Henderson
Ramki Krishnan
Ranjani Srikanth
Rathnakumar V
Ratna Rao
Samit Kallianpur
Samraat Saxena
Sandhya Paruchuri
Sohil Bhagat
Sparsh Sinha
Steve Gunter
Supriya Mithal
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 fantastic rating of 8.95. It was rated a perfect 10 by 19 out of the 44 folks who voted (43%). The lowest rating was 7.

Favourite Clues:  The Top clues were

1. 9A Escaped in the USA, almost shot, the two of us finished rigorous march above the Ural Mountains finally (6, 4, 5) – 12 votes
2. 25A Good man controls nine crazy hens, finally has evidence for clairvoyance (5, 5) – 11 votes
3. 18A Digs into centerpieces of oldest unsolvable quests (6) – 10 votes
4. 18D Refuses to acknowledge pig noises outside (7) – 8 votes
5. 4D Topless containers returned with pieces of gingham stitched kerchiefs (8) – 7 votes

Thanks Mathrix. What a fun puzzle with an awesome end game. It looks easy when its all done but the grid construction to pull this off is mind boggling. Love your unique end games and how you package them. Looking forward to your next puzzle already.

PS: The solvers comments are in the comments thread in the post.