What’s even more ironic is that participation numbers from his state of Bihar is always low. And now that we are organising it, we can’t participate,” Vivek reasons. What’s ironic is that while all are crossword nerds, none of them has ever sat for a big contest. Other members include Kushagra Singh who is an assistant general manager with a media house, and is Vivek’s nephew Bipul Kiran Singh runs a PR firm Sanjeev Singh is a startup entrepreneur, and Amitabh Ranjan an English professor. While some started young, following in the footsteps of their parents and siblings, others wanted to test their skills of Scrabble and quizzing at once, Vivek picked up the hobby during a college strike to fight boredom. He has copyrighted a third kind of crossword, a hybrid of quick and cryptic, known as ‘Crymple’, and has even authored Understanding Cryptic Crosswords – A Step By Step Guide. Their chief mentor Vivek Kumar Singh, to begin with, is the principal secretary for the departments of Environment & Forest, and Revenue & Land Reforms in the Bihar government. It thrives on self-investment, and sponsorship. To some, a cryptic crossword is as simple or difficult as cracking a code.ĭriving these initiatives single-handedly is a not-for-profit organisation in Patna, called Extra-C. The other is Cryptic, which is riddled with wordplays (anagrams, homonyms, double definition, acrostics, etc), and requires a basic grasp of current affairs, general knowledge, and a healthy dose of lateral thinking. One is Quick, which puts your English vocabulary to test. Held online since 2014, this one requires school-goers to crack one cryptic clue a day.įor the uninitiated, there are two kinds of crosswords. Starting with 1,500 schools in 2013, it had over 15,000 schools from 42 cities and towns face off in the war of words this year. After 10 weekly prelims online, IXL pits top 20 players against each other as well as two wild-card entries who are culled from Toronto and New Jersey in an offline competition.Įqually worthy of mention is the All-India Inter-School Crossword Contest. Of the Crossword, which appeared first in the New York World paper. The numbers have shot up drastically since the 400-count in 2013 when it was launched to mark the 100th year More than one lakh Indians, living in the country and abroad, have registered for the fifth and latest edition of the championship, and some of them can finish a 15X15 grid in eight minutes flat. Gopinath is not alone in this quest of Down and Across clues, of which the ongoing Indian Crossword League (shortened as IXL) is proof. He has been solving crosswords since the 70s when he was in college, and almost unfailingly since his retirement in 2006. They send their puzzles to me for feedback or to upload them on my blog, so I always have a reserve,” says the 64-year-old Bengaluru-resident. “Many people compile crossword puzzles in the country (they’re called setters). And if his newspaper doesn’t turn up as it happened during one of the recent press holidays, he resorts to plan B. In case he can’t crack one, he posts whatever he can, and lets 500-600 of his followers decipher the rest. By 8.30am, the solutions go up on his blog. That’s at 6.15am, and it can take him as less as 15 minutes to as long as an hour to complete it. The first thing retired colonel Deepak Gopinath does every morning is solve a crossword puzzle. Play Best Daily American Crossword today! Arkadium's online crossword puzzles offer a classic experience with a digital twist.Bangalore Mirror does a deep dive into the sub-culture This will get you out of a tricky situation by uncovering a letter, word, or even the whole puzzle. If you're still struggling to fill in the grid, accept a helping hand by hitting the Reveal button.
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