Matthew Marcus from Portland, USA, has won the 6th Round of the 13th edition of the Indian Crossword League (IXL). Erik Agard from Kansas City followed at No. 2. While Matthew clocked 10 minutes 55 seconds, Erik made it in 12 minutes 54 seconds.

Mohsin Ahmed , a former IXL champion from Bangalore, grabbed 3rd position on the leaderboard, timing at 18 minutes 22 seconds. Madhusudan H and Ramki Krishnan from Chennai and Sohil Bhagat from Bangalore followed.

In the cumulative rankings,after 6 rounds Erik, Matthew and Ramki retain top three positions in that order with 597,596 and 584 points, respectively. With Sowmya Ramkumar from Manama at No. 6, it makes three overseas players in the top 10.Reigning IXL Champion, Sashwat Salgaonkar from Panaji and another former winner Venkataraghavan S. from Mumbai are among the Top 10 in the Overall list.

The seventh of the 10 rounds of the Online Stage will start at 1100 hrs IST on Sunday, the 26th October.

IXL has an online-offline format comprising 10 online rounds and an offline Grand Finale. A fresh grid of clues is uploaded on the website www.crypticsingh.com every Sunday at 11 am (India time) and the time for submission of solutions closes at 11.59 pm (India time) every Wednesday. Contestants are assigned marks both for correctness and speed. After 10 online rounds, the top 30 on the basis of their cumulative scores are invited to Bengaluru for the Grand Finale. The winner takes home the National Crossword Champion trophy.

Contestants can register on the website at any stage during the contest’s run. A round topper, irrespective of the final ranking, gets an automatic entry to vie for the trophy.