1ACross

·

Dispelling Darkness

Loading

“Dispelling Darkness” from “Metacryptix” is our nineteenth grid for this season.

Stats: 54 solvers attempted this puzzle.  46 solvers completed the puzzle and bonus forms. Only 33 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)

You are currently logged out. Click here to login and access the puzzle.
Here’s the solution grid (Click on the triangle to see it)

”

Bonus Questions:

  1. 1-4: 4 theme words in the puzzle
    Solution

    Ans:Festival, lamp, light, sweets

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

Out of 54 solvers,  46 completed the puzzle though only 33  got the full score. Each of the following scored 151 points (Grid Score – 147,  Bonus – 4).

Aarkay V
Abhay Phadnis
Anu Srikanth
Arun Hiregange
Arvind Ramaswamy
Ashit Hegde
D Narayana Swamy
Harish T.K.
Himanshu Rajurkar
Ian J VanderSchee
Jose A
Koteswara Rao Kolluru
Krittibas Dasgupta
Lakshmi A J Vaidyanathan
Lakshmi Prakash
Madhup Tewari
Mona Sogal
Mukundala Balasubramanyam
NARAYANAN R
Nilesh Parmar
P. Venkatesan
Paul Henderson
Prakash Arumugam
Ramachandra Nagendra Prasad
Ramki Krishnan
ranjani srikanth
samit kallianpur
Sandhya Paruchuri
Sohil Bhagat
Sparsh Sinha
Supriya Mithal
Usha Dronamraju
Venkatraghavan S

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

Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good rating of 8.26. It was rated a perfect 10 by 8 out of the 47 folks who voted (17%). The lowest rating was 5.

Favourite Clues:  The Top clues were

  1. 19A Y chromosome may define this – DNA component describing daughter right (6) – 13 votes
  2. 18D A friend with young girl, in short, BF and GF, say (8) – 12 votes
  3. 6D Your old sister allowed freedom occasionally after a disease (10) – 10 votes
  4. 5D Polish politician – fine one in retrospect, gets into risks perhaps (8) – 10 votes
  5. 17A Government controlled by Los Angeles taxi captains negotiating charge on profits (7,5,3) – 10 votes

A puzzle with a fitting and timely theme with a lovely wish for our readers (in the clue acrostic). Thank you Metacryptix. Hope you had a wonderful Deepavali too.

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

Comments

42 responses

  1. Koteswara Rao Kolluru Avatar
    Koteswara Rao Kolluru

    RIGHT ONE FOR THE OCCASION

    Reply
  2. Abhay Phadnis Avatar
    Abhay Phadnis

    Some very nice clues, but also a couple of clues that perhaps needed tweaking.
    – “Luxuriant side changed in haste” suggests LUSH (wordplay: “side changed in RUSH”) but the grid requires the answer to be RUSH (wordplay: “LUSH side changed”) which renders the “in” superfluous, even misleading.
    – In 13a, “King” is used to supply R in the fodder for the anagram. IMO, that creates a partially indirect anagram.

    Reply
    1. Debasmita Basu Avatar
      Debasmita Basu

      Noted. Thanks

      Reply
  3. Madhusudan H Rao Avatar
    Madhusudan H Rao

    Thanks for the thematic puzzle. Happy Deepavali.

    Reply
  4. Lakshmi A J Vaidyanathan Avatar
    Lakshmi A J Vaidyanathan

    Nice puzzle with theme & Nina!
    WISHING YOU ALL A HAPPY DEEPAVALI 👌

    Reply
  5. Sunday, October 19, 2025 – Daily Crossword Links

    […] 1Across: Dispelling Darkness by Metacryptix. .pdf, online. The Browser: ($) Cryptic 243 by Bob Weisz. Subscribe at link. In Pursuit of Puzzles: No Kings (Acrostic)  by Jeanne Breen. […]

    Reply
  6. Madhup Tewari Avatar
    Madhup Tewari

    Happy Diwali! Very nice festival present. Thanks a lot for sharing.

    Reply
  7. Ramachandra Nagendra Prasad Avatar
    Ramachandra Nagendra Prasad

    NICE GRID

    Reply
  8. D Narayana Swamy Avatar
    D Narayana Swamy

    Nice clues

    Reply
  9. Ashit Hegde Avatar
    Ashit Hegde

    Relatively easy straightforward grid. The clues should have been a bit wittier.

    Reply
  10. Srinivas Nivarty Avatar
    Srinivas Nivarty

    A few challenging clues but helped by the long words that help unlock others!

    Reply
  11. Ian J VanderSchee Avatar
    Ian J VanderSchee

    Nice puzzle, and timely too. I always thought that acronyms were initials that were pronounced as words, like NASA or ASCII, but not abbreviations like BF or GF. Maybe I’m just being picky…. Other than that it was very fun to solve.

    Reply
    1. Debasmita Basu Avatar
      Debasmita Basu

      In retrospect, should have thought of that. Thanks.

      Reply
  12. Binay Patra Avatar
    Binay Patra

    Beautiful grid.

    Reply
  13. Supriya Mithal Avatar
    Supriya Mithal

    Nice theme and grid. Enjoyable clues

    Reply
  14. Sparsh Sinha Avatar
    Sparsh Sinha

    Good puzzle with some tricky ones.

    Reply
  15. Arun Hiregange Avatar
    Arun Hiregange

    Some really nice / tough clues, real fun to work them out slowly.

    Reply
  16. NARAYANAN R Avatar
    NARAYANAN R

    Nice Grid

    Reply
  17. Lakshmi Prakash Avatar
    Lakshmi Prakash

    Excellent grid .Fairly easy to solve.Nice topical theme

    Reply
  18. Mona Sogal Avatar
    Mona Sogal

    Fun grid:)

    Reply
  19. Veera Raghavan Sundararajan Avatar
    Veera Raghavan Sundararajan

    Good puzzle. Some challenging clues.

    Reply
  20. Sandhya Paruchuri Avatar
    Sandhya Paruchuri

    Enjoyed this Deepavali special!

    Reply
  21. Mukundala Balasubramanyam Avatar
    Mukundala Balasubramanyam

    Delightful festival offering!

    Reply
  22. Paul Henderson Avatar
    Paul Henderson

    Diwali is a little beyond my ken, other than I know it as the Festival of Lights, and dredged up from somewhere that sweets were involved as well! So a little less than confident. Nice grid, but 6d took a bit of finding.

    Reply
  23. VENKATESAN P. Avatar
    VENKATESAN P.

    Enjoyed the festival special treat.

    Reply
  24. Sampath Srinivasan Avatar
    Sampath Srinivasan

    Unable to anno clue for 6 Down

    Reply
    1. Debasmita Basu Avatar
      Debasmita Basu

      Yes, it was an oversight. Apologies.

      Reply
  25. Al Sanders Avatar
    Al Sanders

    Nice grid

    Reply
  26. Usha Dronamraju Avatar
    Usha Dronamraju

    Enjoyed solving the puzzle.

    Reply
  27. Sohil Bhagat Avatar
    Sohil Bhagat

    Wonderful puzzle. Great fun to solve

    Reply
  28. Ratnakumar V Avatar
    Ratnakumar V

    Very nice and entertaining grid, good timing too.

    Reply
  29. Venkatraghavan S Avatar
    Venkatraghavan S

    Nice straightforward puzzle

    Reply
  30. Krittibas Dasgupta Avatar
    Krittibas Dasgupta

    Enjoyable puzzle themed on the festival of lights.

    Reply
  31. Arvind Ramaswamy Avatar
    Arvind Ramaswamy

    Simple but nice clues. Had fun solving.

    Reply
  32. Jyothish Balakrishnan Avatar
    Jyothish Balakrishnan

    Excellent puzzle with devious clues.

    Reply
  33. samit kallianpur Avatar
    samit kallianpur

    Nice grid with a good theme. Felt 13d should have had an R in fodder instead getting R from King and then anagramming.

    Reply
  34. Max Jackson Avatar
    Max Jackson

    Appropriate for Autumn here in the UK.
    Athyreosis took a bit of finding

    Reply
  35. Ramki Krishnan Avatar
    Ramki Krishnan

    Nice puzzle with easy-to-spot theme words.

    Reply
  36. Steve Gunter Avatar
    Steve Gunter

    3-down: Ad-lib in film oddly for bit of variety(6). The wordplay gives: fl + pro + v .
    I suggest; Ad-lib in film, even for bit of variety(6). The wordplay is: im + pro + v = improv ,

    Reply
    1. Debasmita Basu Avatar
      Debasmita Basu

      You are right, my bad.

      Reply
  37. Ramesh Swaminathan Avatar
    Ramesh Swaminathan

    Nice puzzle. Last day tried in a rush.

    Reply
  38. Debasmita Basu Avatar
    Debasmita Basu

    Thank you all for attempting and commenting

    Reply

We love to hear from you..Let us know what you think..

Discover more from 1ACross

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading