Eric Aagaard of Kansas City, USA, won the 7th round of the 13th edition of the Indian Crossword League (IXL). Matthew Marcus of Kansas City, USA, finished second. Eric took 6 minutes 44 seconds, while Matthew achieved the feat in 7 minutes 46 seconds.

Sohil Bhagat, a deep-tech venture capitalist from Bengaluru, who discovered cryptic crosswords during the COVID lockdown, finished third on the leaderboard with a time of 13 minutes 59 seconds. Senior IPS officer Madhup Tiwari from Delhi narrowly edged out Ramki Krishnan from Chennai for fourth place. Venkatraghavan from Mumbai remained in sixth place.

In the cumulative rankings, Eric, Matthew, and Ramki remain in the top three positions after 7 rounds with 696, 696, and 680 points, respectively. Manama's Soumya Ramkumar's sixth-place finish marks the first three foreign players to feature in the top 10. Current IXL champion, Shashwat Salgaonkar of Panaji, and another former winner, Venkatraghavan S. of Mumbai, complete the top 10 in the overall list.

The eighth round of the 10 rounds of the online stage will begin on Sunday, November 2nd, at 11:00 AM IST.

IXL has an online-offline format, consisting of 10 online rounds and an offline grand finale. A new grid of clues is uploaded to the website www.crypticsingh.com every Sunday at 11:00 AM IST, and the submission time for solutions closes every Wednesday at 11:59 PM IST. Contestants are awarded points for both accuracy and speed. After the 10 online rounds, the top 30 participants, based on their cumulative scores, are invited to Bengaluru for the grand finale. The winner will receive the National Crossword Champion trophy.

Contestants can register on the website at any stage during the competition. Regardless of the final ranking, the participant who tops the round automatically gains entry to compete for the trophy.