CCCWC June competition voters’ comments
Clue no. 1: ——— time creates excitement in actors
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A clue to OSCAR.
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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| Any clue beginning 'Award' is a bit too pedestrian at this level. No14 would have been in the reckoning had it read 'can/will…take', which (to my mind) is required for grammatical soundness, but I suspect that several judges will not realise this and give it unwarranted points. No1 was my winner for its elegance and simplicity, even though it's not really very hard to solve. |
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Two clues 15 and 33 – 3.5 points each – stood out for me for their originality, creating convincing and (quite fairly) misleading surfaces supported by deft and sound wordplay. 1 – 2.5 points – offers a neat, economical composite anagram (though, personally – and no doubt I’m in a minority – I dislike the dash convention, which seems to me less elegant than indicating the clue word by “this” or equivalent). 36 – 1.5 points – was very pleasing, but I am slightly doubtful about “ops” = “works”. I thought 9, 28 and 52 – 1 point each – the best of the many other (often perfectly acceptable) clues based upon an anagram of “actor(s)”, largely because they had the most natural-sounding surfaces, and 52 the most satisfactory of the many outsize vehicles and the like. 42 – 1 point – neatly manages to use the statuette definition while creating an ostensibly archaeological surface.
Four other clues perhaps require comment. It was with regret that I had to reject the splendid brevity of 38 with its Buddy Holly echoes. Unfortunately, despite the author’s words of explanation, “Oh” cannot mean the letter ‘O’. In maths, if A=B and B=C, then A=C, but it doesn’t work that way for words. “O boy!” would have been sound, but a less satisfactory surface. For me, the almost equally succinct 7 was self-fulfilling! I couldn’t accept ‘O’ = “no”, as opposed to “nothing” or “nought”. 48 was potentially a reasonably good initial-letters clue (“leading lights” being a satisfying indicator in the context), but unfortunately “of” was asked to do double duty, which surely won’t do. And, as is depressingly often the case in these competitions, the claimed &lit isn’t one: not only does “honour” play no part in the subsidiary indication, but the sentence as a whole doesn’t define OSCAR. The ingenious 30 falls down because “one gold-plated” is, surely, much too vague to pass muster as a definition of OSCAR. |
