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Journalism of Courage
Nineteen battle-hardened duos comprising India’s brightest linguistic minds converged in Delhi this week for the finals of the National Inter-College Crossword Expedition. Hosted by the AICTE, it seemed the trophy could be anyone’s game — after all, each team had passed months of gruelling eliminators to be there. But after a gripping medley of cryptic clues and tumbling points, IITians Harshul Sagar and Arush Utkarsh emerged on top: a record they have maintained since the inception of NICE in 2022.
This is no mean feat — NICE is a pan-India crossword contest with participation in the tens of thousands, and cryptics are head-scratchers designed to be much tougher than regular crosswords like The Indian Express Mini. Every clue in a cryptic is a word puzzle, which must be deciphered before a puzzler can place their answer on the grid. To do this in limited time requires swift problem solving skills and creativity, not to mention a wide-ranging vocabulary.
Curious how you’d fare? Test your raw potential by revisiting the clues from last year’s Grand Finale:
The runners-up for NICE 2024 were VKS Gayatri from BITS Pilani (Hyderabad Campus), who ranked second, and Abhinav and Sahana from SASTRA University, Thanjavur, who jointly secured the third position. Gayatri received high praise for her skilled solo performance, impressing both the crossword master and arbiters with her reasoning behind each cryptic clue.
The event was attended by Sri S Krishnan, IAS, Secretary (MeitY), who congratulated all the puzzlers and affirmed his support in providing infrastructure and resources to promote the growth of crosswords in India.
Other dignitaries at NICE 2024 included Sanjay Murthy, IAS, Secretary (Ministry of Education); TG Sitaram, Chairman, AICTE; Abhay Jere, Vice Chairman, AICTE; and Vivek Singh, IAS, Chairman, RERA, Bihar. Mr Singh has been the convenor of NICE alongside civil group Extra-C since its creation, and is a cryptics enthusiast and setter himself.
With crossword culture booming, he had shared last year that the ultimate objective was to launch crosswords in Indian languages. A caveat so far has been the use of ‘matras’ (diacritics) in Indian scripts — these make designing and filling regional crosswords difficult. While English grids allow a single vowel or consonant in each block, a Hindi, Bengali or Tamil crossword would need a way for players to enter the digraph (joint character) that makes one sound. Singh has urged youngsters who are interested in language to try and create a new syntax for this, so that Indian games do not trail behind their Western counterparts.
For those who’d like a shot at becoming College Crossword Champion for 2025 (assuming Harshul and Arush retire by then!) can start by familiarizing themselves with classic grids. They may then sharpen their intuition and speed on cryptics on a mini-game site like minutecryptic.com. Finally, one could dive into the traditional conventions for solving cryptics via online tutorials, with practice available on crypticsingh.com and YouTube. Happy solving!
