The Crossword Centre Clue-Writing Competition

CCCWC October competition voters’ comments
 
Clue no. 31: Not half boring, Chekov's plays – don't follow a line

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A clue to DUCKSHOVE.
3 comments refer to this clue (from 3 competitors, 0 others)
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Comments on the competition
1.
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.
2.
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!
3.
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.