CCCWC March competition voters’ comments
Clue no. 37: Republican press: "How Trump is going to win"
Back to competitor’s clues | All the comments | Other competitions
A clue to IMARI (Printer’s Devilry).
5 comments refer to this clue (from 4 competitors, 0 others)
Move your mouse pointer over any bold clue number to see the clue.
Here is the text
| Comments on the competition |
|---|
| 1. |
| No. 57 wins it for topicality combined with a nice 'shifting along'. Then 16 provides another pleasing topical reference using 'pressure' (which I used myself). No.4 was surprisingly the only 'Lima riot' clue (which was my own first idea)and slots in as my third choice. 37 and 20 slip in for the final places. A number of clues unfortunately make little sense in both devilled and undevilled versions, and clues that need to be accompanied by pleading essays rarely impress. |
| 2. |
| 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. |