CCCWC January competition voters’ comments
Clue no. 15: In Ireland a drink that's caught on is wine
Back to competition result |
All the comments |
Other competitions
A clue to TOKAY.
2 comments refer to this clue (from 2 competitors, 0 others)
Move your mouse pointer over any bold clue number to see the clue.
Here is the text
| Comments on the competition |
|---|
| 1. |
|---|
| I don't know about MCJOB, but TOKAY certainly defeated the anagram fiends – just a single one, which must be a first. T + OKAY was the most obvious treatment, so a clue using this wordplay needed something special to distinguish it, and only 36 managed this in a sufficiently misleading, if rather closed-shop, sort of way. I liked 17 for its several puns and coherent surface, and 24 was the best of the Tays. 33 won me over with a clever idea, though I guess a gecko's tail is attached to a gecko's bum rather than a whole gecko. Finally 15 and 41 were the most satisfying of the rest. A couple of devices I couldn't accept: "A drink, we hear" for the letter T (it doesn't sound like 'tea' when it's in 'tokay'); "pieces of Bartok and Kodaly" (much too vague); and "right out of Tolkien" for to(l)k(ien) (very indirect). |
| 2. |
|---|
Apart from discounting a few for unsoundness and some others for being a little bland or too convoluted, it was quite hard work to decide on the best clues. In the end for my top place clues I chose ones where the definition was more precise than simply ‘drink’ or even ‘wine’, as well as the usual criteria such as surface reading.
Top place was 5. Although ‘ka in toy’ was an obvious treatment used by several entrants (and one I’d considered myself), this clue was elegant – sound with a good surface reading and a fuller definition. Next was 4, with a slightly amusing surface reading and a clever construction. For third place I chose 35, although the surface reading I thought was very slightly strained.
Honourable mentions (1 point each) go to 33 which made me laugh and seems to be sound enough, although a slightly strange way to present the definition; to 14 for a brave attempt at an &lit. (although I’d say slightly unsound unless Bartok was known to have drunk Tokay – a ? and leaving off “beloved of Hungarians” would have made it better, in my opinion); and to 39 for an interesting ‘picture’.
I also quite liked 1, 15 and 19, but the weaker (although sound) definitions moved them down my list. I appreciated the topicality of 36, but the ‘it’s’ used for linking I thought also diluted it. The use of 'essence' at 9 was an interesting idea but did not quite work for me in the way the clue was written. |
