Tuesday 18 May 2010

Hindustan Times Crossword Solving Groups

hindustan-times-crossword Good news for HT solvers. Since the time of writing Blog for Hindustan Times Crossword, Anyone? three months ago, two solving communities have come up that are tackling the HT crossword daily.

The HT crossword is the syndicated Times UK crossword (originally published a few years back). It is, in my opinion, the best cryptic crossword being published in Indian paper at present.

Crossword enthusiasts in India: If you aren't doing the latest Times UK crosswords, HT is a very good, free alternative. Do solve, and participate in these solving groups.

XWordClub, Hindustan Times Crossword Community

XWordClub (link): A community for collaborative solving, owned by Badri (Lakshmi Narasimhan).

No login is required to view the community. To post, you can use the OpenID of your choice. Topics can be given "tags" for easy search. There are other fancy features like the ability to vote on responses and badges for active contributors. [This forum is based on the Stack Overflow architecture, and as a huge fan of Joel Spolsky (co-founder of Stack Overflow), the architecture is of special interest for me.]

How it works: One person uploads the clue list each morning, after which anyone posts any number of solutions. [More details here]. XWordClub has a small membership at present. The club is re-thinking its current mode of working in order to support a larger membership.

Orkut Hindustan Times Crossword Community

The Times Crossword of old (Orkut) (link): This is a very organized, dedicated community owned by Chaturvasi

An Orkut account is required to view the community, and admin-approved membership to post in it. Each member contributes a fixed quota of answers to complete the crossword. The best part of this community is the camaraderie among its members. They not just solve the crossword but evaluate, discuss why they liked or did not like a clue, share anecdotes.

Related Posts:

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3 comments

Balaji said...

Thanks Shuchi for this info. I am a recent follower of your blog, which is great, by the way. I used to be a regular with THC years ago and just now getting back in the groove. I have always considered The Times Xword to be the ultimate puzzle. So time to test the waters now.

KArun said...

Shuchi, I can reach the Orkut HT community still cannot see the answers posted. Is membership to the community required for viewing?

Shuchi said...

Hi Balaji,
Enjoy solving!

Hi Karun,
Earlier, viewing was possible for non-members too, as long as they were signed into Orkut. After reading your message I checked again and found content privacy defined as "members only". The good news is, becoming a member is easy - just click the "join" link to submit your membership request.