IIT Delhi clinches national crossword champion title

Almost 75,000 college students joined NICE 2023, which unfolded as a five-zone cryptic crossword contest across India.

iit delhi team national crossword champion

Crosswords aren't just for Lit students, as the IIT-D team has proven.

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For the second year in a row, IIT Delhi has emerged as the winner of NICE 2023: the National Inter-College Crossword Expedition. At the finals in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj, teammates Harshul Sagar and Arush Utkarsh solved a medley of cryptic crosswords on stage, topping the points table to walk away with trophies and a Rs 25,000 prize. It was a nail-biting finish, as close on their heels were Thanjavur’s SASTRA University and FLAME University, Pune, who were the first and second runners-up respectively.

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Almost 75,000 college students participated in NICE 2023, which unfolded as a three-stage five-zone contest across India. This is compared to the 15,000 solvers last year — indeed, online crosswords seem to be booming.

Congratulations to the 74,045 students who participated in the National Inter-college Crossword Expedition from across the country! This #G20JanBhagidari event is truly novel Initiative for catalyzing excellence and fostering connections. pic.twitter.com/AXV7vGZXOo

— Ministry of Education (@EduMinOfIndia) June 12, 2023

A day earlier, 12 college teams had battled it out with a written prelims and onstage G20 round for a spot in today’s Grand Finale. The top nine went through three onstage quarter-finals, where six of them qualified for two semi-finals. Finally, the top three teams — IIT-D, SASTRA and FLAME — assembled to make a bid for the final trophy. The winner is crowned National College Crossword Champion for a year.

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“There must be a crossword for everyone, at all levels”

Though English crosswords are popular, the ultimate objective was to grow their potential and launch crosswords in Indian languages, said Vivek Singh, the Development Commissioner of Bihar. As NICE’s convenor (and an enthusiast himself), Singh pointed out how the use of ‘matras’ (diacritics) in Indian scripts makes 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 urged youngsters to try and create a new syntax for this, so that Indian lingo isn’t left behind.

As the following for our Mini Crosswords have shown, there is a growing market for word games in India that promote intellectual camaraderie and healthy competition. For more brainy fun, you can follow @iepuzzles on Instagram.

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