CCCWC May competition voters’ comments
Clue no. 4: Accommodation for hols – vacancies for air travellers from Iceland, perhaps
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A clue to VOLCANIC ASHES.
2 comments refer to this clue (from 2 competitors, 0 others)
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| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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Many very good clues this month and I found it hard to separate them. It seems this Iceland thing has inspired setters. Last week's offering in The Week by Tim Moorey was excellent, and a regular setter in a daily was telling me how he had painstakingly produced a crossword with that unpronounceable island in the unches, for it to be rejected as having already been done.
1st (2 pts): 41
2nd= (1.5 points each): 25, 37, 42, 48, 50, 53
8th= (0.5 points each): 4, 10, 15, 23, 38, 40, 44, 46 |
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Head and shoulders above the competition was 42, which combined sound and deft wordplay with an excellent surface – 5 points.
So many of the other promising clues were at least slightly unsound, inaccurate (eg, in 6, tuff is not the same thing as volcanic ashes for all that it is formed from them) or had forced and/or unconvincing surfaces. In my book, the best of the rest were
20, 50 – 1.5 points each
1, 4, 7, 15, 22, 23, 46 – 1 point each
30 had a clever basic idea, but was carelessly executed. Volcanic ashes are plural and thus can’t validly be represented by “this” – something like “owing to these” would have been accurate and conveyed the same sense. See also 33. 43 was also nearly very good, but the anagram is fatally flawed by the little word “to” – “They vanish ultimately into calces when dispersed”? |
