IXL 2014 Finals, 21 Dec 2014, Bangalore

And so IXL 2014 has also come to an end with Ramki Krishnan taking the honours. The Finals had a 13x13 and a 15x15 in the prelims which were to be solved in an hour. Vinoo Sanjay was amazing, in that he solved both of them without an error in 32 minutes flat. The top 6 from the 19 who attended were Vinoo Sanjay, Ramki Krishnan, Mohsin Ahmed, Arvind Ramaswamy, Kishore Rao and Abhay Phadnis (The others being Shuchismita Upadhyay, Shachii Manik, Sowmya Ramkumar, Rahmat Ali, Sohrab Azam, Dr S Venkatesh, Jose De Abreu, Padmashree Ramabhadran, Vinod Raman, Anish Madhavan, Lahar Appaiah, Vinayak Rao Ekbote and Prasenjit Sarkar)

In the final onstage round the top six had to go through a 13x13 and a 15x15 at the end of which Kishore, Arvind and Ramki were tied at 90 points each. Ramki was declared the winner as he was the first amongst the three from the preliminary round.

For more details and interviews await Shuchi's report at Crossword Unclued.

Below are some snaps.

 Kishore, Sowmya, Anish and Shuchi

 Arvind, Rishikesh and Ramki

 Prasenjit and Arvind

 Sowmya, Anish, Shuchi and Kushagra

 The lady finalists Padmashree, Shuchi, Sowmya and Shachii

 Vinoo in the foreground and Shuchi in the background trying to get a selfie with Shachii and Kishore

 Sowmya, Arvind and Ramki. Padmashree and Vinayak are also seen in the background

 Shuchi taking another selfie while trying to fit in Sowmya, Arvind and Ramki as well

 The finalists engrossed in the prelims
L to R First row - Anish, Venkatesh, Sowmya, Abhay, Arvind, Padmashree
Second row - Lahar, Vinayak, Ramki, Vinoo, Prasenjit, Sohrab, (Jose not in frame)
Third row - Mohsin, Kishore, Shuchi, Shachii, Vinod (hidden behind the column)
Last row - Rahmat Ali

Arvind, Ramki, Anish, Mohsin, Self, Kishore, Rishi, Bhargav and Shuchi after it was all over.

Ciao till IXL 2015

LINKS to some articles post IXL Finals

Report at CROSSWORD UNCLUED

DECCAN HERALD on 22 Dec 14

THE HINDU on 29 Dec 14