CCCWC March competition voters’ comments
Clue no. 52: Under pressure to perform? Don't worry, she will.
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A clue to IMARI (Printer’s Devilry).
3 comments refer to this clue (from 2 competitors, 0 others)
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| Comments on the clue |
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| 1. | The undevilled version makes little sense, therefore hard to solve; the devilled version is far smoother. |
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| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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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. |
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It is far from easy to produce satisfactory PD clues, as the (to my mind) rather lacklustre example frequently used for these competitions perhaps suggests. If the exercise is to have any point at all, it is surely essential
(a) that the undevilled version should have a credible and reasonably idiomatic surface
and
(b) that the devilling should produce both plausible sense and a significant[ change in meaning (and preferably in a startling or amusing way)
and desirable that the devilled version too should be reasonably idiomatic – at least by the standards of, say, newspaper headlines or telegraphese. In any case, if one of the two versions is to be slightly less credible and idiomatic, it should always be the devilled version.
After all, there would hardly be much “devilry” in a printer’s omitting a few letters from a passage, but producing a form of words that says very much the same thing.
Unfortunately, the great majority of clues on offer this month fail to satisfy either (a) or (b) above or both. For instance, while 22 does very well with respect to (b), it is hard to imagine a context in which anyone would say or write the sentence in the undevilled version; 27 is a much better take on the same idea, even if Oslo does look a bit out of place in a list with two South American cities. On the other hand, most of the many clues referring to the U.S. Presidential election produce devilled versions that offer very little or no contrast with the undevilled ones. In other cases – eg, 17, 49, 52 – there is a reasonable contrast between the two versions, but it is the undevilled one that fails the credibility test by being unidiomatic – and, in two of these cases, almost nonsensical.
I'm afraid that that there were very few clues that I felt deserved points. |
