Comments on the clues |
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1. A brown one? That's crazy! |
1. | Inadequate definition | 2. | A loose definition of a rainbow. |
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2. A brown one’s unnatural: a coloured one’s natural |
1. | Surface would have made sense only if there was indeed a brown rainbow. | 2. | A little better than 1 but still loose. |
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3. A Brownie, all but finished, set to become this? |
1. | A Rainbow becomes a Brownie, not vice versa | 2. | Others will probably say, but Rainbows are the youngest group, then Brownies and then Guides. | 3. | Not quite convinced by the all in one aspect, especially to produce 'rainbow' rather than 'Rainbow Guide' |
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4. A famous London theatre Bowie almost ran originally |
1. | Good effort. Surface bumps at almost. | 2. | The Rainbow’s heyday was before my time, but I like the link to Bowie |
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5. A sign of hope for couples coming out? |
1. | Good clue. | 2. | Nice double meaning | 3. | Brilliant. Very clever. | 4. | Very clever double meaning. |
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6. After a tussle with a brown I caught another trout (7) |
1. | I can’t see what ‘caught’ is doing in the cryptic reading | 2. | Best of the brown based anagrams for me. The first 'a' seems superfluous, but otherwise good surface reading. |
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10. Band with no dimension in broad arch. |
1. | as for the &lit, a rainbow would be considered 3 dimensional |
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12. Bishop gets in a row waving around flag supporting Gay Pride? |
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16. Brown's one that may be combined with a variety of colours |
1. | 's is within the fodder | 2. | The apostrophe s is superfluous to the anagram |
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17. Bruise hip when running into sailor in ruckus |
1. | Complex construction well handled | 2. | Very good surface |
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18. Coalition managed surrender without Independent |
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19. Colourful exhibition from London-based artist? |
1. | The slightly oblique wordplay works well | 2. | deja vu | 3. | Very good clue but 'London-based' seems less fair to the solver than 'cockney' in 20 to indicate 'Bow' |
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20. Colourful exhibition of cockney artist (7) |
1. | This really needs a ? like 19 | 2. | Some indicator for cryptic meaning in wordplay would be ideal | 3. | The use of 'cockney' to indicate 'Bow' seems much fairer to the solver than 'London-based' in 19. Excellent. |
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21. Colourful nation, from whom bandit Afro turned but was not at odds |
1. | ‘Colourful nation’ defines a nation but not a rainbow | 2. | A bit contrived, but the surface reading was so good it deserved points |
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23. Dazzling array of colours puts artist in front. |
1. | I like ‘in front’ for ‘in bow’. I think a rainbow is more vivid than dazzling. | 2. | Nice structure but not convinced 'dazzling' is quite right | 3. | Nice solid charade |
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24. Drunk in bar with woman, imbibing love is a many splendoured thing (7) |
1. | w abbreviates ‘women’, not ‘woman’ |
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25. Highly coloured bands in curly brown hair, cut short on the sides |
1. | Novel structure and different story but doubts about use of 'curly' (rather than curling) and 'highly'. | 2. | Cleverly disguised |
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28. Injured rib now sporting a colourful bruise |
1. | Simple wordplay that works very well | 2. | Enviable example of concise clue-writing with excellent surface story – perfect. |
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29. Iridescent bands with gold finish. |
1. | I’m not keen on cryptic defs, but this is nicely done |
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30. Meteorological phenomenon is mostly Brownian motion |
1. | Cryptically, though, it’s mostly Brownian in motion |
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32. Noah's arc? |
1. | Nice def, but needs some wordplay | 2. | Sophisticated use of pun (are/ark) which has no need of sermonic exegesis; simply give ref. Gen. 9.13 | 3. | Oh dear, I can't help myself being drawn towards the superb wordplay in this decidedly un-Ximenean offering! But why (my pet hate) the lengt | 4. | Made me smile. :) |
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33. Not quite a Brownie? That could be me |
1. | Nice idea, well executed. The near-anagram was a godsend to those who spotted it. |
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35. Quarrel about a recycling bin of many colours |
1. | A good clue – a bit different in its structure and story. |
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36. Raw book, not OK, in upheaval |
1. | The book defined is ‘The Rainbow’ not ‘Rainbow’ |
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41. Seduce brain with love's illusory hope (7) |
1. | Nice idea and image but syntax doesn't quite work (needs to be 'seduceD' vel sim |
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42. Show from East End artist? |
1. | Why define with a TV programme when an artistic definition is so readily available (cf other clued along these lines)? |
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43. Some trout in a brook or wide stream |
1. | I can’t see any evidence for b = brook |
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45. Spectral dawns of red and indigo, not black or white |
1. | I wouldn't normally go for an all-initials clue but this one flows smoothly – only clues 45 and 50 seems to have made the happy 'black or wh |
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47. Starting off in VIBGYOR, regular pattern emerges and endlessly combines to get white (7) |
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49. Vibrant combination of brown with a hint of ivory (7) |
1. | One of the better browns | 2. | Good clue structure but brown and ivory are just not 'vibrant' colours |
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50. What provides glimpses of red and indigo, not brown or white |
1. | It's not easy to produce a coherent surface story using 7 first letters and this is neatly done | 2. | (See comment on clue 45) |
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