| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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| Rather too many clues that had a surface meaning that seemed to be specially constructed for crossword-land rather than sounding plausibly authentic — eg many of the Laver and Vera efforts. Escaping from the exam for a pee though at No 8 seemed very authentic and got my first vote almost immediately. |
| 2. |
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A great turnout of 62 clues making the most of a friendly clue word. I hope we get a correspondingly high number of votes and comments. With so many decent clues I had reluctantly to give zeros to some quite acceptable entries, such as 5, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18 and 37. I particularly liked the LAV for P in PAPER idea and the PAVER synonyms. Clue 8 handled the LAV idea best with an amusing surface. The work of an experienced clue-writer, I'm sure. 23 and 61 also used it effectively. 28's flags and 35's ground crew were the best of the PAVERs – the latter edged it thanks to its fully worked-out theme and 'carry-on' pun. The other clue that appealed to me was 14's succinct charade.
Rod Laver was a little too popular, and some clue-writers used 'Rod' to define 'Laver', not acknowledging with a question mark or a 'perhaps' that Laver is just one of many possible Rods (Stewart, Steiger…).
The two best punning definitions in the competition for me were 62's 'yak' and 29's 'how's your father', but sadly both clues were flawed. I couldn't accept 'possible exodus' as a hidden indicator, and 29's writer committed the cardinal sin of merging part but not all of the wordplay into the definition, leaving their Rod dangling cryptically.
A few other clues failed to exploit good ideas well: 11 and 53 stretch the meanings of their components too far in order to create a surface reading, hence the long explanations; 21 creates a very implausible scenario – surreality in its own right isn't necessarily entertaining; 32 really needs 'Lap dances! Rave parties!' – each word may change but the letters stay the same; in 38 and 39, 'parley' and 'palaver' for me are too close etymologically to make the clue interesting; 47, even Ms Palin would spell her name with an initial capital, surely; 50 uses a clever idea but puts it out of the solver's reach – there are just too many possible state names and abbreviations; and in 58 'utter' won't stand as a definition – without it this would have been a good & lit. |
| 3. |
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A clue word ofering many possibilities has produced the best of the 4 competitions I have entered so far. I usually award marks to only the top 5, but because of the high standard of the clues I've stretched it to 9.
Top mark to no 8, 4 points, a cracking idea exploited by two others, 23(2 points) and 61 (3 points). Top marks went to 8 because it was specific about which pee (p) was replaced. Looks to me like the work of one T.M.
25 and 38 (2 points each) are both excellent clues which I would have marked higher if more points were available. I awarded 0.5 points each to clues 14, 16, 18 and 20. Again, all would have received more had the competition not been so intense. |
| 4. |
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What a word! Such range of defs and variety of wordplay – great choice by our examiner rewarded by fine turnout. After dismissing poor surfaces (my key criterion) I removed inadequate definitions and over-obscure wordplay. All left scored something and get a comment below:
2 nice but I found the ': to engage' part good for the surface but bad for the wordplay
5 lengthy clue but good surface – I liked 'brave talk' definition and its double meaning
8 lovely wordplay, decent surface eclipsed by some other clues though
14 such neat concise and coherent clues always get a mark from me
18 best of the conference pears but I don't like them 'chopped' – this would have scored a point with a better anagrind('stewed' I would suggest)
20 beautiful example of & lit comp anagram, probably many hours in the making – surface conjures up a perfect image of a palaver! My favourite clue this month.
28 smooth surface, I like paver = flag arranger and LA not to be French article or sun drenched city!
37 some regard acronyms as a cop out, but when they read as well as this one they are works of art. I admired the Shakespearian definition!
38 nice & lit effort with non-clumsy surface, I would have awarded it more if it started with "A" rather than "One" for even better surface |
| 5. |
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I was surprised by the number of clues that ignored hyphens in their definitions (4, 10, 11, 12, 13): "carry-on" is different from "carry on" and "to do" is different from "to-do".
There were quite a lot of alright but uninspiring clues, but the "lav for pee in paper" idea was a great one and most of my votes went to the three clues using this idea (8, 23, 61). My other choices were 24, 25 and 38 which all held together well, with decent surface readings and original wordplay.
I liked the idea of "state, state, state!?" used in 50 but thought it would be stronger worded as an &lit and even then with such a big choices of words and abbreviations for "state", perhaps a little unfair. |
| 6. |
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One or two very good clues this month. My suspicion is that the author of 16 made a slip: it seems that the word 'core' is not meant to be there. Without it it's an excellent clue and would probably have got 2 points.
1st (3pts): 25 (beautiful)
2nd= (2 pts each): 2, 8, 18
5th= (1 pt each): 23 ('Employ' is a bit cumbersome in the surface, and the comma for 'and' is also a bit weak I think), 37, 38 (not a totally natural surface), 44 (I don't like 'detailed' for 'de-tailed', and the surface meaning is perhaps a rather loose definition of 'palaver'), 56 (rather wacky and fun, but I felt the semicolon should have been either a colon or a dash), 62. |
| 7. |
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Most clues 'worked', I think. I cut down the choice by eliminating the ones that were all on similar themes (ie including those invoking Rod Laver's dad!) and I wasn't aware before the competition that palaver = conference, so I decided to leave those out as well. A bit unfair I guess as there were some good ones on those lines – 18 was certainly one.
37 was the stand-out for me as a very original treatment. Points also for 2,8 and 56. |
