CCCWC March competition voters’ comments on Clue no. 1

CCCWC March competition voters’ comments

Clue no. 1: A miniskirt for a little old lady.

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A clue to IMARI (Printer’s Devilry).
6 comments refer to this clue (from 5 competitors, 0 others)
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Comments on the clue

1.	Undevilled reading should at least be grammatical.
2.	A little old lady could be named anything – why Maria?
3.	It fails in so many ways e.g. 1. "for I" 2. Not split in middle of word 3. Makes no real sense
4.	No split in any word, just an insertion, bit too easy
5.	Gap not closed after removal of IMARI. Nothing in devilled version to guide solver to bland and ungrammatical full version.

Comments on the competition
1.
It was quite difficult to pick potential winners because there are no really outstanding candidates, perhaps a reflection of the limited options for hiding IMARI. The best devilry results in a a complete change of meaning or at least a striking change at some point in the clue. Unfortunately almost all of the PRIMARIES clues fail in this respect because there is little or no contrast in subject matter or tone between the undevilled and the devilled versions, though many of them have smooth and plausible surfaces in both versions. Only 9 and 46 have devilled versions that are significantly different from the full versions. Among the rest, 16,37 and 57 have the smoothest surfaces in both versions, but the closeness of meaning rules them out as major contenders. Several of the clues based around CLAIM have potential, but simply starting with ‘Claim’ as a verb does not make for a very smooth sentence (11, 12, 13, 14, 15) and reads more like a conventional clue. Clues that exhibit an attempt to create a more natural sentence are more successful — 5, 7, 43. In some cases the sense of the undevilled version is unnatural, bizarre or verging on nonsense (13, 14, 33, 49, 52, 55) so that a solver would have difficulty in solving the clue, or being sure that he/she had solved it. Several clues display the weakness of a gap before or after the clued word, either before or after its removal: 1, 3, 23, 26, 31, 44, 45, 48, 55. This might be overlooked if there are compensating strengths, but that was not the case in these examples.

Comments on the competition

It was quite difficult to pick potential winners because there are no really outstanding candidates, perhaps a reflection of the limited options for hiding IMARI. The best devilry results in a a complete change of meaning or at least a striking change at some point in the clue. Unfortunately almost all of the PRIMARIES clues fail in this respect because there is little or no contrast in subject matter or tone between the undevilled and the devilled versions, though many of them have smooth and plausible surfaces in both versions. Only 9 and 46 have devilled versions that are significantly different from the full versions. Among the rest, 16,37 and 57 have the smoothest surfaces in both versions, but the closeness of meaning rules them out as major contenders.

Several of the clues based around CLAIM have potential, but simply starting with ‘Claim’ as a verb does not make for a very smooth sentence (11, 12, 13, 14, 15) and reads more like a conventional clue. Clues that exhibit an attempt to create a more natural sentence are more successful — 5, 7, 43.

In some cases the sense of the undevilled version is unnatural, bizarre or verging on nonsense (13, 14, 33, 49, 52, 55) so that a solver would have difficulty in solving the clue, or being sure that he/she had solved it.

Several clues display the weakness of a gap before or after the clued word, either before or after its removal: 1, 3, 23, 26, 31, 44, 45, 48, 55. This might be overlooked if there are compensating strengths, but that was not the case in these examples.

CCCWC March competition voters’ comments Clue no. 1: A miniskirt for a little old lady.

CCCWC March competition voters’ comments

Clue no. 1: A miniskirt for a little old lady.