IIT Kharagpur girl tops 3rd online round of National Inter-college Crossword Contest – Times of India

Shashwat Sanjeev of Hansraj College, Delhi University, stood second and K Gouri of Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College, Coimbatore, stood third. Shashwat was the National topper in the previous round.


This three-stage contest is being organised for the first time jointly by University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) as part of the celebrations of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’. The objective is to showcase India’s rich learning heritage by leveraging the beautiful mind-game of crosswords.

Among regional toppers are Harshul Sagar of IIT Delhi for North; Joyal Biju of Government Engineering College, Thrissur, for South; Harshvardhan Tripathi of Acropolis, Indore, for West; Salman Khan of IIT Kharagpur for East; and Murchana Mahanta Barman of Scholars Institute of Management and Technology, Guwahati, for Northeast.

While Harshul had stood 3rd at the National level in the previous round, Joyal and Murchana had topped their respective zones. Joyal was 3rd at the National level in the first round.

The first stage is open to all students from colleges and higher education institutes to play individually. It involves solving crossword clues online for four successive Sundays which started April 3, 2022.

The contest is being conducted by the Patna-based Extra-C, a civil society initiative for promoting knowledge-based co-curricular activities. The online rounds are being hosted on its official website www.crypticsingh.com.

“After the fourth Sunday online round on April 24, a cumulative Leaderboard will decide the top two participants from each institute who will form the institutions’ teams for the two subsequent offline stages – five zonal finals and a national Grand Finale”, Amitabh Ranjan, chief operating officer of the Extra-C said here on Sunday.