| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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| I appreciated 46 and 17 for their conciseness and good surface reading. 37's whole surface reading is impressive. |
| 2. |
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Lots of very good ideas this month. Clues 36 and 46 stood out for me, though. Accurate, concise, witty and with believable surface readings. Clues 5 and 13 followed very closely in points with their original workings. Clue 17 stole the last point because of the witty surface reading and original idea, although I was not 100% sure of "as" a joining word. 9 and 39 were also quite nice.
At the other extreme there were some things I did not like. There were rather too many unnecessary exclamation marks! (e.g. 2,18,26) There were a few indirect anagrams (e.g. 11), 'misleading punctuation' (e.g. 16), overlapping parts of the clue (e.g. 19) and such like.
Overall, fun to read through though, and many more ideas it seemed to me than for the LL clues to GREENGROCER a few years ago. |
| 3. |
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| Strong competition this month and a nice variety of ideas gave me about 15 clues to choose from. 46 was a clear winner – misleading definition, concise wordplay and an entertaining surface (I've heard of talking tripe, but this is tripe talking!). I suspect an experienced hand is behind it. 36 is also cleverly misleading, as is 14. 17 has a great (if contentious) surface, accepting that 'as' is part of the definition of an adjective. 24 has several good elements to it and got a point despite the linking word 'for' (I don't feel as strongly as Azed about this). I'd have liked to give marks to the lovely 'and lit' in 18, but it doesn't quite work cryptically, and also to 5, but I'm not sure 'moon' in this sense is a noun. 1 also reads well at first but it isn't a very plausible description of cricket. A few minor issues: in 11 E abbreviates 'English' not 'England'; in 19 'produced' does double duty, taking too much liberty with the usual clue structure; Munshin in 33 was a bit too obscure for me; and 40 appears to have 'reality' as its definition. I wasn't so keen on clues that contained a nonsensical proposition and described it as nonsense – it looks rather contrived unless the nonsense is especially entertaining. But overall a high quality set and a pleasure to judge. |
| 4. |
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Clues 1, 20, 21, 24, 25, 33 and 35 all use link-words which suggest that the mutilated version is the same as the original. It isn't so you shouldn't use themm (see the slip for Azed No 1914). This does make life more difficult for clue-writers but at least there was a choice of letters to make latent.
What a beautiful clue 46 is. |
| 5. |
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| A lot of good ideas were spoiled by unnecessary, and often fatal, flaws. For instance, in 19 and 20, the definition was invalidated by the omission (in the interests of the surface) of a hyphen between “still” and “produced”; at least in 20, the difficulty could have been avoided quite simply by the addition of “Reportedly” or equivalent. Conversely, in 16 the a.i. is invalidated by the addition of the hyphen before “brewed”. In 34, the use of the present “messes” rather than the past tense “messed” fails to achieve the meaning required to make it a valid a.i. In 42, the word “with” plays no part in either definition or subsidiary indication – and contributes to a very awkward surface into the bargain. The excellent idea for an anagram in 18 is spoiled by the clever-clever addition of “and lit!” – which (a nice irony) actually destroys the clue’s claim to be an &lit, since the words “and lit” play no part in the subsidiary indication. 30 is made hopelessly over-elaborate by the eight words after the semi-colon; on their own, the first seven would have made a first-rate clue. However, there were one or two very good and unflawed clues and quite a large number that were sound if unexceptional. Three clues stood out for me (3.5 points each), 17 (though one hopes the NHS is no longer so unenlightened!) and – both admirably succinct – 26 (which would have been even better as “Low’s high…”) and 46. Of the rest, 1 point each to 9, 18 and 25 and 0.5 point each to 6, 7 and 15. |
| 6. |
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There were so many good clues that it was very hard to whittle them down. Several that were I'm sure worth points have been left out, but eventually I decided:
1st= (2 points each): 34, 46, 47
4th= (1 point each): 2, 7, 17, 20, 22, 32, 36, 39
12th= (0.5 points each): 3, 5 |
