| HARRISON | The protagonist's stern and harsh guardian in 13 Down (surname only) |
| CORI | First woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her role in the discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen (surname only) |
| SPINSTERS | "___ are rarely the protagonists in the English novel, but they are oddly abundant in its margins." (2017 essay in The Conversation) |
| UTHAPPA | India's league match vs. Pakistan was tied and saw a bowl out to decide the winner. Sehwag, Harbhajan, and which player (surname only) bowled for India in the bowl out? |
| BOLT | At the 2016 Olympics, who won both the 100-metre and 200-metre races for the third consecutive Olympic games, becoming the first to achieve that feat? (surname only) |
| ABDUL | Co-founder of the Taliban and "undisputed victor" (The Guardian) in the Afghan war (5,5,7) |
| HERTZ | Founder of the Yellow Cab Company in Chicago; his name lives on as a popular car rental company in the U.S. (surname only) |
| ASHRAFUL | Bangladesh's player of the match in their upset win over West Indies in the group stage (surname only) |
| BUSH | The artist (surname only) behind "Wuthering Heights" the song, released in 1978 and inspired by Emily Bronte's novel (4) |
| ROOSEVELT | U.S. president who won the Prize in 1906 for mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese war (surname only) |
| AFRIDI | Player of the series in the 2007 T20 Cricket World Cup (surname only) |
| SPAGHETTI | Foodstuff shared by the protagonists in Disney's 'Lady and the Tramp' when they first share a kiss (9) |
| AISLE | What the protagonists walk down, at the end of many romance novels |
| MOREL | Family name of the protagonists in Sons and Lovers (5) |
| RHETT | First name of one of the protagonists in Gone with the Wind (5) |
| FOSBURY | In 1968, who won the high jump with the revolutionary ___ Flop named after him? (surname only) |
| RESSA | Cofounder of Rappler and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her efforts to safeguard freedom of expression (surname only) |
| BROOKES | Which English educator tried to revive the Olympic Games, ultimately successfully holding the British Olympiad in 1866? (surname only) |
| BAUM | The yellow brick road appears in a novel by this author (surname only) |
| HOLMES | Detective who cracked the case of the Red-Headed League (surname only) |
