CCCWC June competition voters’ comments
Clue no. 15: Flying across southern deserts? Change once, in Alice Springs
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A clue to OSCAR.
3 comments refer to this clue (from 2 competitors, 1 other)
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| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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| Although the word offered a lot of different meanings and references, it seemed many competitors struggled to make a coherent clue out it. The best were: 21, an excellent & lit., if a bit of an easy definition; 15 with lots of misleading elements, a professional job, almost more than what was needed; 42, good surface, misleading context; then 4, 16, and 33, all original ideas that work and read well. Too many unsound clues this time to single any out, but 'stretch limo' clues certainly need a question mark, and I can't accept 'no mark' = '0 scar'. |
| 2. |
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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. |
| 3. |
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| 15 Awakening memories of flying a single-engined Piper Apache across the Tanami desert north from Alice Springs, there could only be one winner for me. Fully fuelled for five hours max, after four hours of radio silence across a desert of nothing, obsessive setting and resetting of compass from gyro and – crotch-tight hopefully – holding true a straight course, I can STILL hear the feint pips of – – – what was that? – – – a Morse code signal reaching us 40 miles out from our destination airport's ADF beacon. Louder and louder, Schubert with Bollinger, 5 points. |
