| 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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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. |
| 3. |
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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. |
| 4. |
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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 |
