patna neha susan cherian of iit madras was on sunday declared the national topper of the first scoring round called n of the national intercollege crossword expedition nice 2023 she was followed on 2nd and 3rd positions by omkar joshi of flame university pune and vijval ekbote of the indraprastha institute of information technology delhi respectivelyin zonal rankings while prem thilak of b j medical college ahmedabad has topped west zone shashwat sanjeev of hansraj college delhi occupies 1st position in north shatakshi sarangi again from iit madras has topped south while pankaj kumar of nalanda engineering college chandi bihar is at the top in east the northeast winner is avilasha kumari of s d jain girls college dimapur nagaland rituraj the chief coordinator of nice2023 told toi on sundayin the practice round on april 2 which marked the start of nice 23 omkar and vijval were 1st and 2nd respectively in the national rankings they have been members of the winning school teams in different editions of the nationallevel school crossword contest known as the cccc cryptic crossword contest shashwat has been a recognised name in the online daily challenge for schoolchildren known as aclueaday acadnice 23 is the second edition of the national contest which was inaugurated last year it comprises three stages stage i is an online individual contest consisting of four rounds on the basis of cumulative scores at the end of the 4th online round participants qualify for stage ii which is an offline team contest in this stage five zonal finals are held where qualifying students have to form twomember teams to represent their institutions the winners of the zonal finals then converge on the national capital to play the grand finale to claim the national championship trophythe contest is being organised by the allindia council for technical education aicte new delhi in association with the national institute of industrial engineering nitie mumbai and extrac a patnabased civil society initiative for the promotion of a holistic educational environmentthe freeofcost registration will remain open throughout stage i which ends on april 30