The Crossword Centre Clue-Writing Competition

CCCWC June competition voters’ comments
 
Clue no. 48: Vuvuzela – necessary in some places to double as a trumpet?

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A clue to Any “Double” Word (6 or more letters) (A Game of Two Halves).
2 comments refer to this clue (from 2 competitors, 0 others)
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Comments on the competition
1.
This was a fun challenge and it was good to see so much imagination going into creating clues with a World Cup theme. Everyone seems to have stuck to the rules, though I felt that adding a link word between the extra word and the rest of the clue (8 and 31), or other superfluity (26?) was a yellow card offence. My favourite clues combined a recognisable World Cup reference with a fluent surface. The best three were 37, 45 (great definition) and 46, followed by 15 (how come I never thought of TESTES?!), 32 and 48 (any vuvuzela clue had an immediate advantage). I also liked 7, 9, 13, 19, 23 and 40.
2.
Some lovely ideas but also lots of clues made unsound by the use of linking words which implied that, for example, BUL is the same as BUL-BUL, which it isn’t. This is something repeatedly mentioned by Azed over the years (Slips 1200, 1441, 1459, 1596, 1707, 1914 ).
Some of the linking words used were ‘as’ (4), ‘in’ (8 and 13), ‘for’ (12 and 26), 'is’ (39 and 41) and ‘prove to be’ (44).
One can normally work round the problem (eg High kicking action? Crouch has the power) but avoiding them does make life harder.
My favourite clue was 48 (where the ‘as’ is part of the definition), then 18, 17, 3 and 1.