Bangalore tops in word power

Great show

Bangalore has done exceedingly well in the first-ever Indian Crossword League (IXL), which kicked off in Patna on October 5.

The results, which were announced after the first round of the league, saw Kishore M Rao from Bangalore emerging as the top scorer and eventually the top ranker on the IXL 2013 leader board.

“Incidentally, 12 out of the top 25 scorers of the Indian Crossword League 2013’s first weekly round belonged to Bangalore, thereby making the Karnataka capital the front-runner at this weekly war of words. Bangalore is followed by Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, Chennai and finally Kolkata. Trailing at the second and third positions were Mohsin Ahmed and Vinod Raman respectively, both from Bangalore,” said Bihar’s Agriculture Secretary Vivek Singh, the brain behind the league.

The letter “X” denotes “cross” in the crossword playing society, hence the crossword league has been named IXL.

The league is an individual crossword solving competition that is played in a round robin format. The IXL is slated to have eight weekly online rounds of crossword puzzles, open to all who would like to participate, and an offline National Grand Finale for the top 10 performers of the online league. Prizes worth over Rs 5 lakh are to be won in this inaugural edition of IXL 2013.

On the first day of its launch, the league saw over 97,900 hits and more than 100 registrations countrywide.

It has seven more online rounds to go, followed by an offline National Grand Finale. The winner of the first weekly round won a tablet, whereas gift hampers will be given to other lucky winners.

The first known published crossword puzzle appeared on December 21, 1913, in a Sunday issue of the “New York World”. With an aim to celebrate 100 years of crossword, the IXL 2013 has been launched by “Extra C”, a civil society organisation founded to promote extra-curricular activities.