CCCWC January competition voters’ comments
Clue no. 5: Doctor, cutting very softly, led lame and crippled to marvelous outcome
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A clue to MIRACLE.
2 comments refer to this clue
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| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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I thought this was a deceptively tricky word to clue; the letters seemed promising, but the word was surprisingly difficult to define in any satisfactorily misleading way. As often seems to happen with the stiffer challenges, a fair amount of unsoundness was evident amongst the entry as clue-writers struggled to inject that little bit of extra zest into their clues.
I went with #8 as my winner for a well constructed comp. anag. & lit. even though it failed to adhere to my preference of there being an equal or lower number of extra letters added to make the composite anagram than there are in the clue-word itself. 2nd place went to #48 for a good solid &lit., though the surface is not wholly satisfactory (original relic?). 3rd place went to #32 for one of the more imaginative definitions and a nice, misleading surface. I gave #18 two points - not the greatest surface, but it does hold together as a possible, if unlikely, real-world sentence. I gave #20 5th place - again one of the better definitions (perhaps, even the best), but let down by the lack of a convincing thematic connection between the definition and the wordplay (anyone could be reversing a vehicle, why particularly a law-breaker?)
A couple that came close to the points were #3 and #5, which both displayed some nice wordplay; however, both contained an entirely superfluous word between the definition and wordplay parts. I also thought #41 was a good contender, but, for me, 'club' was far too vague an indication of RAC. |
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| I was surprised to find that in contrast with some of the more difficult words, this fairly easy one seemed to cause so much trouble. There were many clues where the definition, if it could be found at all, was either vague (eg 2's 'to expect this is a bit much' (what, soup in a basket perhaps!) or 25's reference to Millwall, which is just fatuous opinion) or completely inaccurate (eg 4's 'breaking the natural law', which points to a verb, not the noun required). Apart from the spelling mistakes (5's 'marvelous and 31's 'message drom God' (I never actually received the clues; I had to search them and paste them into 'Word', so it is possible that these typos occurred then, in which case I humbly apologise), there was a fair bit of gibberish: 29 'One darner ultimately stopping monstrous camel achieving this' or 33 'Play with sermonical son parts'.(Uhh..!?) Come on, guys; if we're playing tennis, put the football away! A very disappointing lot! |
