| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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| 2. A swimmer is put right back into the drink : 5 points, good surface reading, nice play on "drink". 10. Fish in batter, decapitated and fried : 4 points, another good surface reading, with clear and reasonable anagram and removal indicators. 26. Offensive artist displays fish : 3 points, nice clue for TET, British clue for artist is so common in cryptics to be something we Yanks should understand. 22. Lawrence's skill returned with Spenser's plant : 2 points, surface reading is a bit obscure, but TE + (ART reversed) was a nice change. 40. Up late waiter? Not pilau, we ordered fish : 1 point, very clever anagram and removal operation, but I don't understand the intended meaning of "Up late waiter?" - strained. |
| 2. |
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Although TETRA offers many good possibilities for building the word from components, partial anagrams or as a concealed word, I felt that if the clue contained the simple definition 'fish' it made the clue too simple for a five-letter word, however good the surface reading might be. Thus, I ruled out 7-18, 18, 23, 25, 26, 30-33, 40 and 42.
Clue 1 was spared on this score by its clever link to another definition. Similarly, clue 6 with its ambiguous 'fishy' and red nose reference survived the initial trawl.
Clues related to the fish definition that avoided the word 'fish', used oblique references related to tanks, scales, swimming, fishing, small fry, bite and net - with varying degree of success.
Of these, I found clue 5 with its 'chromatic scales', its additional clever 'four' definition reference and entire surface reading the most satisfactory, then clue 34. While clue 28 also had a good misleading surface reading, I found 'one in a tank' a little clumsy.
Of the clues that related solely to the 'four' definition I found clues 4, 20, 17 and 35 the most enjoyable.
I was unfamiliar with the definition used by clue 38, but found the construction somewhat insipid, despite the &lit, while clue 22's surface reading to get to Spenser's plant seemed a little contrived. |
| 3. |
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TETRA offered lots of possibilities as a clue word. There were quite a few clues that had no serious faults in their construction, but were rather flat and humdrum or had feeble surfaces. On the other hand, there were disappointingly few that combined soundness with flair, several of the more interesting approaches being flawed in their execution, even if not always seriously so. In my book, "fish" as the definition needed the zest of an original surface or particularly neat and/or sparkling wordplay to make the grade.
4 points:
37. Tank group offensive, supported by gunners
Simple, but sound, wordplay, and a good (and (quite fairly) misleading) definition and surface. (Clue 28, which used the same idea, has a less convincing surface and includes a word ("counters") that appears to play no role in either definition or subsidiary indication.)
2 points each:
5. Chromatic scales are a feature of this 'retro' quartet? Without question!
The word "are" would have been better omitted or placed at the beginning of the sentence to produce a real question, but otherwise the clue offers sound wordplay and an original definition and surface.
11. Fish paste. Traditional sandwiches!
The neatest of the many "hidden" offerings, with a convincing surface.
40. Up late waiter? Not pilau, we ordered fish
I suspect that some will object to the fact that the letters of "pilau we" do not appear in the same order in "Up late waiter". Personally, I don't strongly object to this variant on the device - and I enjoyed the surface.
1 point each
24. Odd glimpses of The Eternal that could come to those fishing on lake?
An excellent idea, and the wordplay in the first five words is very deftly done, but the rest of the clue does not, unfortunately, quite live up to either. It's odd, since one "catches" both glimpses and fish, that the author should have chosen to use the slightly unsatisfactory "come to", which doesn't really suit the definition: "caught by" would have saved two words and been much more appropriate. And, as far as I can establish, tetra are typically river fish; "on lake" is thus neither really appropriate to the definition nor quite adequate to suggest Lake Galilee in particular.
26. Offensive artist displays fish
This has the edge on the very similar 25, because "displays" has possible overtones of Damien Hirst that "coloured" does not, producing a rather more convincing surface (even if "offensive" is arguably a rather strong descriptor, even for those who don't think much of Brit Art).
34. Site traffic reveals what can be got from net with a search on Amazon
An interesting idea for the surface, but less than totally convincing - would one really cite "site traffic" as the evidence for the variety of what is available on Amazon? And "what can be got from net with a search on Amazon" is both a bit long-winded and rather vague as a definition of "tetra".
0.5 point each:
38. Telecommunications equipment's to regulate ambulances, primarily
I'm not at all sure that TETRA is used "primarily" for regulating ambulances, which makes the &lit slightly dubious, but otherwise this is quite neat. |
