CCCWC October competition voters’ comments
Clue no. 27: Had boring delay on Circle Line
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A clue to DOOLALLY (Misprints).
2 comments refer to this clue (from 2 competitors, 0 others)
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| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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| Misprints clues are a gift for the setter – a huge choice of definitions and all of them misleading – so with a word like DOOLALLY to clue I was expecting something special, and I wasn't disappointed. My initial shortlist ran to nearly 20 clues. 'Bankers' was an ideal definition and very popular, and I chose 3 and 6 as the best of about 10 very good clues that used it, both with topical and fluent surfaces. My other points went to clues that read well and took full advantage of the misprint. 48 and 49 both read naturally and had a nice cryptic twist, and 27 and 32 had good images. I was less keen on clues where the misprint didn't alter the clue much, such as 2 (bad play/mad play – it's much the same), and also on ones where the wordplay was unnecessarily convoluted such as 19 (the solver has enough to do decoding the misprint without the Wikipedia seach for Mars=iron in order to discard it from 'molars'). 22's Dolly the sheep takes the award for the most DOOLALLY clue, but I don't think its author was expecting to win the competition. |
| 2. |
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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). |
