Bihar Students Dominate Opening Round of National Crossword Competition

The National Inter College Crossword Expedition (NICE) 2025 kicked off with a bang as the first scoring online round, titled 'N', was held on www.crypticsingh.com, drawing enthusiastic participation from students across the country.
Bihar emerged as a powerhouse in this inaugural round, with Surjeet Kumar, a B.Tech student from Gaya College of Engineering (GEC), Gaya, clinching the top position in the overall category.
Making a remarkable debut, Adya Singh from Patna secured the top spot in the "awaiting college admission" category. A former CCCC 2023 national champion, Adya is also the second runner-up in the overall category of NICE 2025.
Zonal Winners of the NICE 'N' Round:
IIT students have made steller performance throughout the leaderboard. Three out of five zonal winners and many state level and city level winners are from the IIT.
- East Zone: Harsh Raj (IIT Kharagpur, West Bengal)
- West Zone: Samruddhi S Salgaonkar (Goa Dental College, Goa)
- North Zone: Bhargav Vinayak (ACA, Punjab)
- South Zone: Ashish CT (IIT Madras, Tamil Nadu)
- North-East Zone: Mridul (IIT Guwahati, Assam)
'Lucky Winner' Title
Sakshi Rawat, a B.Sc. Microbiology student from Government Arts and Science College, Ratlam (Madhya Pradesh), has been declared the 'Lucky Winner' of the 'N' Round by the organisers.
State Winners
- Bihar: Ujjwal Surya (GEC, Vaishali)
- Haryana: Aditya Sharma (ACA, Faridabad)
- Uttar Pradesh: Kushagra Chandra (IIT Kanpur)
- Punjab: Ram Singh (PCTE Institute of Engineering and Technology)
- Madhya Pradesh: Arvind Tiwari (Govt. Arts Commerce College, Seoni)
- Tamil Nadu: Hersh Aditya Samdanut (IIT Madras)
- Gujarat: Akshay (Surendranagar University, Surendranagar)
- Jammu & Kashmir: Sudeep Saurav (IIM J&K, Jammu)
- Delhi: Isha (JNU, New Delhi)
- Assam: Shria Singh (IIT Guwahati)
- Telangana: VKS Gayatri (BITS Pilani, Hyderabad)
- Tripura: Joynil Saha (Maharaja Bir Bikram College)
- Odisha: Subhashree Majhi (Rajdhani College, Khurda)
- Uttarakhand: Hritik Kumar (Govt. Polytechnic Uttarkashi)
- Andhra Pradesh: Narla Bhargavi (Santhiram Engineering College, Nandyal)
- Karnataka: Shravani Ranganath (ACS College of Engineering, Bengaluru)
- Maharashtra: Riddhi Vikrant Jadhav (Mahavir Education Trust, Mumbai)
- Chhattisgarh: Sushil Ekka (SWA Pyarelal Kanwar Govt. College, Korba)
- Manipur: Om Kumar Jha (NIT Manipur)
- West Bengal: Arijit Chakraborti (Academy of Technology, Hoogly)
City Level Winners
- Manikant (Motihari College of Engineering, Purvi Champaran, Bihar)
- Ananta Mishra (SASTRA, Tanjavur)
- Anjalai Jala (Govt. Nehru PG College, Shajapur, MP)
- Karan Kamal Biswas (GEC Rajkot, Gujarat)
Organised as a joint initiative by AICTE, IIT Madras, IIM Mumbai, and Extra-C, NICE 2025 continues to grow in scale and reach. The second online round, 'I', is scheduled for 25th May 2025 and will be hosted on the same platform (www.crypticsingh.com) between 10:30 AM and 5:00 PM.