The competition was fierce, the clues were cryptic, and after four electrifying online rounds-”N”, “I”, “C” and “E” — the curtain has lifted on the National Inter-College Crossword Expedition (NICE) 2025 leader board. Emerging at the very top of the national chart is none other than Adya Singh from Patna, who claimed the All India Rank 1 (AIR-1), even before entering college.
Following closely behind are Bhargav Vinayak (AIR-2), also awaiting college admission and Harsh Raj (AIR-3), currently at IIT Kharagpur. These top three scorers have secured direct entry to the Grand Finale, skipping the zonal rounds altogether.
According to a Press release, each of the five zones has crowned its own crossword champion. While East Zone had Ayush Warsh from GEC Vaishali, West Zone named Samruddhi Salgaonkar from Goa Dental College, Goa.
Aditya Sharma, ACA secured in North Zone, Ashish CT, IIT Madras slotted self for the South Zone. The North-East Zone had Mridul from IIT Guwahati. These zonal toppers demonstrated exceptional wordplay and logic and lead the way to the upcoming zonal finals, said the release.
In addition to the zonal winners, the top 50 performers from each zone, based on cumulative scores from the online rounds, have qualified for the zonal finals, the second stage of the contest. They’ll now compete for a chance to join the Grand Finale alongside the national toppers.
The highest scorers from each state have also been declared. Their outstanding performances have added regional pride to this national quest for crossword glory.
Bihar’s Musarrat Parveen of Government Engineering College, Vaishali, Tamil Nadu Hersh Aditya Samdanut of IIT Madras, Vijval Ekbote from IIIT Delhi and V Krishna Sai Gayatri, BITS Pilani Hyderabad were the scorers within their category.
While Assam saw Om Nitin Ahir from IIT Guwahati, Madhya Pradesh had Tarun Sharma from Swami Vivekanand Govt Commerce College, Ratlam. Jammu and Kashmir: Sudeep Saurav of IIM Jammu and Kashmir was named from the region while Tanmoy Debnath, Maharaja Bir Bikram College, West Tripura scored for Tripura amongst others from Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Punjab.
The complete list of results, including State-level toppers and individual scores, is now available at the official contest website: nice.crypticsingh.com.