By Shaik Zakeer Hussain, TwoCircles.net,
Bangalore: Mohsin Ahmed, a 21-year-old ISRO scientist from Bangalore, secured the first runner-up position in the recently concluded, inaugural edition of the Indian Crossword League 2013. Interestingly, all three toppers, including the winner, 62-year-old Col. (retd) Deepak Gopinath were also from Bangalore.
“A general fascination for puzzles and wordplay,” says Mohsin helped him in the tight competition, where he competed with some of the best Crossword enthusiasts from across the country. “I must have inherited that from my mom, who also solves crosswords regularly, and got me into them (and scrabble too),” says Mohsin about his interest and love for the word puzzle.
Mohsin Ahmed (Left). Photo Courtesy: Indian Crossword League 2013
The competition had 8 weekly online rounds of Crossword Puzzles, and the top 10, he says were decided by the cumulative scores after the rounds, were qualified for an offline finale, which was held in Bangalore last Saturday. He won four of the online rounds and finished second in the offline finals.
Mohsin, who is originally from Kerala, says his dad’s service in the army, took him all over India. Though the major part of his studies was in Bangalore, he did his engineering in the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST, Trivandrum), before he started his work at ISRO. He has participated in literary events, involving wordplay in college fests cross city, in the past.
Apart from Crossword and other similar word puzzles, he is a massive football fan. “I probably inherited my dad’s reverence for sports, and play football, basketball and tennis myself,” he adds.
Around 600 enthusiasts took part in the eight, weekly rounds of online competition. The event was held to mark the 100th anniversary of crossword puzzles, according to Vivek Kumar Singh, a Bihar-cadre IAS officer and key person behind the event.