| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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| I felt that an indication of Antipodean origin was necessary for this word and was surprised by how few clues included such. This has heavily influenced my voting. I gave 5 points to clue 39, which achieves a commendably Aussie surface. 4 points to clue 45, the most successful of the cricketing clues, I thought. 3 points to clue 19, which has an amusing surface and a neat reference to the British penchant for queueing. 2 points to clue 13 for a brave use of 'Darwinian' and 1 point to clue 40, which I feel is let down by the second 'to'. |
| 2. |
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| Judging this one didn't take long – once I'd ruled out all the clues that defined the word transitively, plus all the ones with 'shove' and most of the ones with 'duck' as part of the wordplay, there weren't that many left to consider! |
| 3. |
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| I started with the idea of ignoring DUCKS/HOVE or DUCK/SHOVE constructions, but had to give up for want of enough alternatives. Surely any clue that uses such an obvious split devalues itself automatically? So much so, in fact, that I was tempted to give votes to 31 purely on the strength of the Chekov spot (and did so, but for more than just this aspect). I assume the word was chosen with cheating MPs and duck-houses in mind but was sorry to see neither featuring. Largely a drab collection, I felt. |
| 4. |
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| With quite unfriendly letters and the Australian context, this was a hard word to clue concisely, and the strain shows in a lot of the entries, though there's little unsoundness. I liked 39 for its entertaining surface and nice use of 'digger', and 1 and 19 also read well. 26's several puns create a good penny-drop, and put it a little way ahead of 24. I was less keen on the Sussex cricket clues because they were mostly on the long side (30 just missed the points for this reason). Some clues that ruled themselves out were: 8 – 'a couple of characters from Vancouver' is too vague for V and U; 33 – I like a clue to have some wordplay as well as a definition, however clever; and 22, which I didn't understand at all, I'm afraid. |
| 5. |
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Surprisingly high standard of clues for what I found very hard to clue. Unfortunately the cricketing image was rather overused, since it is a nice idea.
So mostly it was hard to choose between clues and I gave a lot 1 or 0.5 points. For me 31 stood out as the clear winner, though. Quite different, lovely image, misleading and accurate definition of the word and interesting wordplay. Lovely clue! |
| 6. |
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I had to look the word up and found it was Antipodean slang. Bearing this in mind, my preferred clues would be those that incorporated this, or at least that the word is of overseas derivation. Unfortunately, a lot of clues did not do this.
My two favourites were 39 and 23. The latter would have been an outright winner except the use of Mr Manley is, for me, a little unfair. Sure, we all know him, but plenty of other solvers might not know him, let alone his pseudonym. If the clue had simply referred to 'Donald', then I'd have given it top marks.
I also liked 28 and it deserves recognition for being the only one to invoke Drake and the Hoe. However, as a whole, it doesn't read correctly in terms of grammar.
There was obvious scope for cricketing references, and I liked 3 and 45 although again I couldn't give them big marks. I don't think 'Hove' can be defined simply as 'Sussex' and I'm not sure about 'two bad innings' for 'ducks'. A bad innings could be score of 1, 2 ,3 or whatever.
Thanks to everyone though for submitting their efforts and giving me the pleasure of reading them. |
| 7. |
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I know it's a level playing field for all competitors but currently I hate all clue-words with a 'U' in.
Wasn't the Chekov clue good? DFM, perhaps? |
| 8. |
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| A very tricky word to clue, and IMHO nobody (including me) has produced anything outstanding. I discounted clues which termed 'Hove' a cricket ground. Hove just happens to be a town which has a county ground and it's name is 'The County Cricket Ground'. If such a loose terminology were to be entertained, then it would also be permissible to refer to Folkestone, say, as a racecourse. Not a path we want to follow I think. |
| 9. |
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| Not the most wonderful word to have to clue, Mr Teuton! The obvious break down was DUCKS + HOVE with a cricketing reference (who faced with cluing the word professionally would look elsewhere?). Some fairly contrived efforts to avoid this. some pretty good and others awful. I think this is a comp that will be quickly forgotten. |
| 10. |
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Not a good month.
The definition of DUCKSHOVE needs (a) to be a verb (present tense or infinitive – not a present participle as in 4), (b) to be an intransitive verb (see Chambers) (so none of “abstract” 12, “gull” 9, “con” 13 “lift” 26 and “trim” 44 will do) and (c) (if it is to be completely fair) to indicate that the word is antipodean or at least (as 28) not English English. Very few clues ticked all these boxes. (My own wasn’t one of them – I failed to notice until it was too late that “duckshove” in the sense of “cheat” was intransitive.) Another bear-trap was “hove”, which is the past tense of “heave” only in certain specific nautical phrases (eg, “hove to”, “hove in sight”) or certain obsolete senses. Although Chambers gives “to rise like waves” as a meaning of “heave” (Clue 1), I strongly suspect that even a sailor would say “the ocean heaved” not “the ocean hove”; similarly with the past tense of “heave” in the sense of “vomit” 33; “lifted sailcloths” 3 is perhaps on the borderline, but “sailcloths” (plural) is a very artificial usage in either sense of “lift” and hardly an equivalent of “ducks” (plural). The surfaces of several of the clues were unconvincing (one even meaningless) – eg, 5, 6, 11, 14, 21, 22, 23, 32, 42, 43. 31, perhaps the most imaginative clue of the lot, unfortunately includes an indirect anagram, while “don’t follow a line” seems iffy as a definition; a great shame, because “Not half dull, Chekov’s plays” would have been a splendid anagram (though “play” would have been sounder). Three clues with promising Australian cricketing surfaces (30, 40, 45) were marred by definitions that were simply too far from the meaning of “duckshove”; 30 also needed an apostrophe-‘s’ after "Sussex".
All that leaves precious few clues to chose from. Top billing to 39 – 4 points. Not a great surface, but perfectly acceptable, and, uniquely, a fully sound definition with a sound subsidiary indication. The lack of an antipodean indicator being the least important of the criteria for the definition, 2.5 points each to 24 and 36. 1.5 points to 18- some clever wordplay, but "fault" instead of "responsibility" in the definition is a definite weakness. 1 point each to 12 – marred by “scoring” – and 20 – "Sussex" is in the wrong position. 0.5 point to 16 for ingenuity, though the surface sense of the second part is pretty strained, and, perversely, to 31, despite all its serious flaws, for imagination. I can’t justify the remaining 1.5 points. |
| 11. |
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Some reasonable clues this month, but nothing really stood out, so I decided on:
1st= (2 pts each): 9, 12, 26, 39, 45 (all of whose surfaces are quite nice, better than:)
6th= (1 pt each): 3, 23, 29, 41, 44 |
