Voting Information

Voting is open until Midnight GMT Friday 20th January.
 
Please award FIVE points maximum to the clue you judge best: FOUR points for second, THREE for third, TWO for fourth, down to ONE point for fifth; but otherwise you may distribute your votes as you see fit including ½ marks for split voting – as long as you award no more than 15 points IN TOTAL and no more than 5 points to any one clue…
 
…and of course you may NOT VOTE for your own clue!
 
COMMENTS:
 
Your comments in general and on individual clues, however much or little you write, are always most welcome! Please remember that if any particular clue or clues do not find favour with you, it is more helpful to offer constructive criticism – many of our members are keen to learn and hone their clue writing skills through our competition – feedback may be useful for their future efforts!

Entry Information

Something a little different for this year's CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE.
 
Your task is to give us a PARTRIDGE in a PEAR TREE. This can be ANY bird inside ANY tree, so that the resulting string of letters can be split to form TWO new words.
 
For example, KITE in ELM, which can form ELKITEM splitting into ELK & ITEM. Please note: the split MUST occur "within" the bird element.
 
Your clue must then comprise of 2 definitions of the two new words, plus a letter mixture of the whole string (beginning with the beginning or ending with the end of a word in your clue – but not overlapping with the definitions). The letter mixture aspect will allow a certain amount of "padding", but I suspect judges will rate conciseness highly!
 
The three elements of your clue may appear in any order – but again, may not overlap.
 
Hope that this is not too complicated; here is a crude effort at cluing my example above:
 
KITE/ELM – ELK/ITEM
 
News article: large deer has milk teeth
 
[Defs. "News article", "large deer": letter mixture, MILK TEEth]
 
PLEASE STATE YOUR CHOSEN BIRD/TREE COMBINATION IN THE EXPLANATION OF YOUR CLUE.
 
Good luck and seasonal best wishes to all!!