“Gentlemen” from “Avtaar” is our twenty-first grid for this season.

Stats: 65 solvers attempted this puzzle.  38 solvers completed the puzzle and bonus forms. Only 28 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. What phrase made from the extra letters in clues is the theme of the crossword (2 words):
   
   Solution

   Ans:CRICKETING HEROES

2. Any 8 of 9 theme words (Min. 4 letters):
   
   Solution

   Ans:ROOT, ASIF, MURALI, GILL, WARNE, WARNER, JONTY, KANE, ROACH, AIDEN (not in the original list but accepted as valid)
   

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

Out of 65 solvers,  38 completed the puzzle though only 28  got the full score. Each of the following scored 165 points (Grid Score – 155,  Bonus – 10).

Bhalchandra Pasupathy
Binay Patra
Harish T K
Ian VanderSchee
Koteswar Rao
Krittibas Dasgupta
Lakshmi Prakash
Madhup Tewari
Max Jackson
Mona Sogal
Mukundala Balasubramanyam
Nagendra Prasad R.
Narayana Swamy D
Narayanan R
Nilesh Parmar
Prakash Arumugam
Ramki Krishnan
Rathnakumar V
Samit Kallianpur
Sandhya Paruchuri
Shashwat Salgaocar
Sohil Bhagat
Sparsh Sinha
Srinivas Nivarty
Supriya Mithal
Tejas Siddharth
Venkatesan P.
Venkatraghavan S

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

Grid Rating: The puzzle got an excellent rating of 8.9. It was rated a perfect 10 by 12 out of the 38 folks who voted (32%). The lowest rating was 7.

Favourite Clues:  The Top clues were

1. 19D Conscious of showing age, masking onset of spots – 9 votes
2. 5A Monarch’s self-reference in fight with Queen about backing wager – 7 votes
3. 13A Mom starts to explain incoherently about losing stuff – 7 votes
4. 14A Alluded to avoiding a fool in general – 7 votes

Super puzzle with great quality of clues. Easier than an average Avtaar grid and impressive grid fill and execution of a neat idea. Looking forward to one on the Women’s Cricket Teams.

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