“2’s Company” from “Mathrix” was our first grid for 2026.

Stats: 57 solvers attempted this puzzle.  29 solvers managed to complete the puzzle and the bonus forms partly or fully. Only 15 solvers got the full score.

Try the puzzle here
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Here’s the solution grid (Click on the triangle to see it)

Bonus Questions:

1. The Quote by Evenius that is seen in the puzzle (7 words)
   
   Ans

   : The crowd gives the leader new strength.

SOLUTION NOTES The complete expression based on the title is “Two’s company, three’s a crowd.” So, all three-letter synonyms for “crowd”, i.e., MOB, JAM, RAM, SET, SEA, LOT are replaced with the number 3, indicating that “3” is “crowd” (as a noun or a verb) in each of those words.

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

Out of 57 solvers,  29 completed both the grid and bonus forms and only 15  got the full score. Each of the following scored 166 points (Grid Score – 161,  Bonus – 5).

Al Sanders
Ashit Hegde
Lakshmi Vaidyanathan
Lakshmi Prakash
Mona Sogal
Narayanan R
Panyam Tejas
Ramachandra Nagendra Prasad
Ratna Rao
Ratnakumar V
Samit Kallianpur
Sohil Bhagat
Sparsh Sinha
Steve Gunter
Venkatraghavan S

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

Grid Rating: The puzzle got a good rating of 8.6. It was rated a perfect 10 by 7 out of the 29 folks who voted (24%). The lowest rating was 6.

Favourite Clues:  The Top clues were

1. 9A Elijah plans to return holding letter from Corinth (5)
2. 29A Alencon lace covers, say, that ultimately fit costume after cutting bottom of cape (11)
3. 1D Different arrangement of a pair of animals (7)
4. 26A English politician, extremely healthy, suffering same complaint (9)
5. 12A Overcome probing investigation over matching cardigan and pullover (7)

Thanks Matrix for kick starting this puzzle season with a tricky puzzle with a perfect a-ha moment when it clicked. Very entertaining.

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