“Forest Folk” from “Aquifer” is our eighteenth grid for this season. You can check other grids from Aquifer here.

Watch the video for a walkthrough of the puzzle

Stats: 62 solvers attempted this puzzle.  42 solvers completed the puzzle and bonus forms. Only 23 solvers got the full score.

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

Bonus Questions:

1. An entry that is a collection of stories and poems about many forest folk
   
   Solution

   Ans: The Jungle Book

2. Total number of forest-folk entries (proper names only) who appear in the above collection and/or its sequel (Names not required)
   
   Solution

   Ans: Five (SHERE KHAN, BAGHEERA, RIKKI TIKKI TAVI, MANG, MATKAH)
   

3. Combine two entries to get a novel by the creator of the above forest folk
   
   Solution

   Ans: CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS
   

4. Any one of 3 entries that are poems by the creator of forest folk
   
   Solution

   Ans: Any one of GUNGA DIN, AN OLD SONG or ZION
   

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

Out of 62 solvers,  42 completed the puzzle and only 23  got the full score. Each of the following scored 145 points (Grid Score – 141,  Bonus – 4).

Al Sanders
Calvin Christ
Ian J VanderSchee
Koteswara Rao Kolluru
Lakshmi Prakash
Madhusudan H Rao
Max Jackson
Mona Sogal
Mukundala Balasubramanyam
Narayana Swamy D
Nilesh Parmar
Paul Henderson
Prakash Arumugam
Ramachandra Nagendra Prasad
Ramki Krishnan
Samit Kallianpur
Sandhya Paruchuri
Shashwat Salgaocar
Sparsh Sinha
Srinivas Nivarty
Supriya Mithal
Venkatesan P.
Venkatraghavan S

Congrats to the toppers and to all the solvers who participated.

Grid Rating: The puzzle got an excellent rating of 8.71. It was rated a perfect 10 by 11 out of the 42 folks who voted (26%). The lowest rating was 7.

Favourite Clues:  The Top clues were

1. 6A My! City malls are spreading in a lopsided manner (14)- 10 votes
2. 10A Animated ogre pinches tail of docile Chinese tiger (5, 4) – 9 votes
3. 1D Apartment in California is housing national team leaders (8) – 8 votes
4. 12A Audacious wild cougar wanting head of Mickey Mouse (10) – 7 votes
5. 17D Regimental water carrier in Uganda carelessly spilling a gallon at first (5, 3) – 7 votes

A nostalgic theme packed into a puzzle with an enjoyable end game. Great clues, some of which were quite tricky but well constructed. Good fun Aquifer. Your puzzles never disappoint.

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