CCCWC October competition voters’ comments
Clue no. 32: Lock outside toilet up while away
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A clue to DOOLALLY (Misprints).
4 comments refer to this clue (from 4 competitors, 0 others)
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| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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I'm bored with the financial crisis, so the bankers/bonkers clues would have had to be exceptional for me to vote for them, and I didn't think any were. There were, however, some real gems to enjoy. Thanks to the composers of the following five:
First, for five points, I choose clue 48; it's terse, the surface is immaculate and the misprint is hard to spot as both 'toy' and 'bath' offer scope. Brilliant.
In second place I put clue 29. A masterpiece of brevity, in which the misprint could appear at either end. I only put this second to clue 48 for its use of 'dictionary' words/definitions.
As third I choose clue 32. The use of 'while away' is wonderful and the surface is entirely plausible. 'Lock' could be a number of things (and 'away' could be 'sway').
Fourth place goes to clue 35. A simpler clue than the above three, and with an easier-to-spot misprint, but I'm swayed by the convincing surface and the clue's brevity.
In fifth I put clue 26. It's rather stop-start, but I enjoyed 'McCoist'=ALLY and the image is a pleasing one. |
| 2. |
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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. |
| 3. |
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An excellent collection of clues this month. I had to discount clues that in an average month I would have given 4 or 5 points to. First place I decided had to go to 49 for its originality, completely misleading yet natural surface reading and interesting misprinted definition.
Apart from that I found it impossible to choose between another seven clues and so had to dilute votes accordingly. Of the BANKERS clues, 11, 18 and 23 were the best for their topicality and neat surface readings. Clue 10 was over-complicated and clue 9 irrelevant, but all of the others with BANKERS would have had a vote if I'd had enough to go round! Of the LOO clues, 30 and 32 were most natural. For originality packaged soundly and neatly, 34 and 48 also shared my second-tier votes. |
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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). |
