The Crossword Centre Clue-Writing Competition

CCCWC October competition voters’ comments
 
Clue no. 13: Bankers unite following Gordon's grief.

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A clue to DOOLALLY (Misprints).
3 comments refer to this clue (from 3 competitors, 0 others)
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Here is the text

 
Comments on the competition
1.
I must have spent more time composing this clue than any other. I could only see the options DOOL+ALLY and OOL in DALLY apart from the anagrams (not many). And yet surprisingly there were some good clues. Favourite was 13 which, despite the lack of explanation was easy to work out, and 17 was probably the best of the anagrams. The remaining points were shared among the also- rans.
2.
As I think someone said last month a good clue should have a sound, credible 'surface'.For this reason I discarded quite a few of this month's offerings. I am also not too keen on a reliance on topical references to recent events (e.g. 3 "as just shown" and 13 "Gordon's grief" etc…).

Other comments:

10 A bit contrived in my opinion. B(ritain) is added only to be removed again. This seems to me to be against the principles of good cluewriting and brevity. Why is it there? In this case, in my humble opinion, Britain's inclusion would only be justified to make up the sense, if it were in part retained after the 'removal'.

40 "Mental state of many". Surely this is defining a noun not an adjective? Likewise 15 "Carp fever", although I do have a soft spot for Maddocks' obsessive pursuit.

42 Dopey. Is this a definition of 'doolally'? I don't think so.

45 "John". As with some of the other clues I had this idea. However I decided that to be sound it needed to be at the beginning of the sentence to disguise the fact that john (toilet) does not have a capital J (both my Chambers and OED specify this). As this did not work so well, I dropped the idea. Maybe I am being rather too pedantic.

46 "Round the bend". Have I missed something here? Spelling seems perfect to me!

Anyhow I scored 49 – 5 pts. Clever use of words all round. 48 – 4. Simple with a nice surface. Also 35 – 3, & 38 – 3.
3.
Is this the best ever set of clues for one of these competitions? Many of them would in a normal month have been my top choice. It seems unkind to give some of them so few points.

Perhaps this isn't quite demanding enough: an actual setter will have to compose a misprints clue with a particular letter missing (or the correct one), not any old letter.

My choices: 1st: 32 (2.5 points); 2nd=: 3, 18, 34, 39, 49 (1.5 points each); 7th=: 10, 14 (1 point each); 9th=: 5, 6, 13, 23, 27, 29 (0.5 points each).