The Crossword Centre Clue-Writing Competition

CCCWC January competition voters’ comments
 
Clue no. 6: Chain stores like nothing more than a desirable fabric

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A clue to CASHMERE.
6 comments refer to this clue (from 5 competitors, 0 others)
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Here is the text

Comments on the clue
1.Misleading wordplay and a fluent surface. Very good.
2.Convincing surface and an original construction. Everything I'm looking for.
3.Solution beautifully encrypted in a statement straight out of a 1950s Woman's Weekly. Superb clue, well done.
4.Very clever wordplay and convincing surface.
5.A good construction which leads the solver to think that 'Chain stores' could be the definition.
 
Comments on the competition
1.
A lot of clues to judge this month! Some very fine clue-writing was in evidence for the first competition of the new year and it was tough to pick out my favourites. I dished out a plethora of merits to clues which I enjoyed but didn't quite make it to my top half-dozen.

Understandably there were a plenty of CASH + MERE clues (7, 13, 24, 25, 28, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41 and 52 – and I might have missed one or two). While almost all of them were sound, clues really had to stand out to score – so much direct comparison was possible. I chose 7, 28 and 41, mainly for the strength of their surface readings.

There was a smaller number of CAS(HMER)E clues and again I felt I could only reward the top two. This time 29 and 26 earned the points – I particularly liked 29's cheeky surface!

We also saw some very good attempts at the &lit clue (19, 20, 32, 53, 54, 57), many of which I thought were very worthy entries, all scoring at least a merit. 54 really did feel exceptional and earned my highest score – a clue of the highest calibre.

More original ideas included 6, 8 and 11 and 18 which all earned points from me. I enjoyed the two clues (18 and 41) which used "butter" as a definition (which I thought was fair enough) – particularly 18 for its general neatness.

Interestingly, Chambers lists cashmere as only the fabric (the goat listed only under Kashmir), but even the briefest of references to the Internet shows that the goat can most definitely be spelled both ways.

The only difficulty I had was sharing out my points among all the worthy clues! Unfortunately it really couldn't be done whilst still awarding the best sufficiently highly, so some had to make do with only a merit.

What a super start to the year – I hope all the competitions continue at this standard!