| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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There were clues with imprecise or unnecessary words. In 10, 'Muhammad' is inconsistent with a lack of Cassius: 'Clay or Ali?' might be punchier? In 14, 'plug'? Or 'plug in'? Only the latter I think applies to connecting a power supply and this would not fit the surface reading, so perhaps the underlying idea may need to be approached with new word play; the 'lacking' only works at a stretch, in my view.
One-and-a-half points each to 32, 39, 51, 53. Imaginative.
Two-and-a-half each to 37, 43. Ditto…accurate and amusing.
To pick a winner, 50, 4 points. The surface reading is fun and hangs together with interesting use of words. For me, 'admitting' just improves on 'admit' as it removes the clash with the imperative 'Spin'. Fussy stuff. |
| 2. |
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| Worst set of entries I can remember – maybe because of shortness of the word? Very little variation between so many entries. On reflection, would not even give my own effort a point, even if allowed to! |
| 3. |
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| The simple effective ideas (boxer/dog; boxer/Clay)were too frequently picked up to gain many points from me (just one Clay clue getting two points). Many of the rest were strained, obviously trying to be different and turning into long-winded essays. Subtraction was a good idea this time and I awarded two such clues. No. 38 though got my top spot. |
| 4. |
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Of the three similar boxer dogs (clues 7, 8, 9), I think 8 was the best since pug is an example of the dog and hence a ? or a perhaps/maybe is crucial to indicate definition by example. I gave 8 5 points and nothing for the other two. Similarly, liked 14 too and gave it 5 points.
28 was good but I still like first to mean only the first letter of the first word – prefer starterS or something similar to indicate first letters of more than one word. So, I gave that only 3 points.
48 is a nice hidden clue. So 2 points.
Many clues were non-Ximenean! Wish I had the patience to comment on all of them! Sigh. |
| 5. |
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| I thought some ideas were rather obvious: boxer /dog, Cassius Clay, and Pugwash (captain or conference) among them, although there are some clever treatments, especially 21. Re clues 78and 9: I think the question mark and the capital D in Dog are both unnecessary so I prefer 7. |
| 6. |
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Rather too many multiple definitions, I thought, none of which was sufficiently special to clinch it. I gave 5 points to clue 17, simple but effective. 4 points to clue 43, which is clever, though the subtraction of SHIN via a finite verb jars. 3 points to clue 32, for neat use of the alternates in 'sprung'. 2 points to clue 2, for a brave attempt at an &lit. And 1 point to clue 40, where the juxtaposition of the high-register 'papa' and the vernacular 'not half' jars.
I'm very surprised that nobody used 'toy' as a definition, even among the multiple defs. I was expecting lots of 'toy engines' etc. |
| 7. |
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| Not the most sparkling set of clues this time, showing how hard it can be to clue a short word well, even one with a wealth of different meanings to exploit. Of the two-word clues 23 was the most original. 'Boxer dog' is a perfectly good clue, and I chose the unembellished 7 as the best of the three. 43 is the better of the two pu(shin)g clues with a great image, but is just a bit too long for top marks. Clay/boxer was another obvious choice for multiple definition clues, and 17 achieved the best surface of these. 13 also reads well both on the surface and cryptically. A few clues didn't quite work for me: 1's colon spoils an ok clue – why not 'Track Anglo-Indian'?; 29 has a good surface – better than 36 – but immediately sends me to a crossword lists book to look up architects, a little obscure these days; 34 is a clue to Pugwash, surely – the pug would need a 'wash' but hasn't got it; with 53 I googled the verse quite easily but I'd never have solved it cold. |
| 8. |
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| Although I used boxer and lap dog in my clue I gave my votes to those who did not as a lot of clue's with these references. |
| 9. |
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As with GRAVE not so long ago, this clue attracted numerous multi-definition clues – some of which went to four (18[,21) and even five 19. These aren't the fairest of clues to my mind, though their surfaces certainly have nothing wrong with them. Some clues appeard to be somewhat disorganised: 10 suggested that the boxer was losing an L; the grammar isn't quite right to suggest otherwise. Likewise, 34 sound like the setter wants us to add PUG to WASH. Granted, in a crowword, we'd have a letter count to assist, but that might just confuse matters.
The clues I picked out for possible points mostly turned out to be double-definitions, some in a roundabout sort of way. I'm just annoyed that I never made the Clay/Muhammad Ali link. The "Boxer dog" construction I found the best, and thought it fairest to share the points that I'd normally give to top dog (geddit?) as far as the divisibility of 5 would allow. So points went to:
789: 1.5 points each
20: 4 points – The best of the Cassius Clay ones, I thought. Delightfully concise.
3: 3 points – Nice surface and literary reference.
44 2 points – Another nice Muhammad Ali clue.
23 1 point – A little more inventive than "Boxer dog", I thought, but perhaps more obscure.
14: half point – A sort of double-definition that I thought deserved a mention, and benefits from me having half a point left over. |
| 10. |
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I begin by eliminating ten clues: – 17,18,19,20,21,22,26,27,44,&54 all citing 'clay' as a definition. Pug2 is not clay, but clay (or loam – see Oxford Concise) ground and worked with water as a rendering medium, etc. Were it valid, 'limestone', for example, would be a valid definition of 'Portland cement'.
Since most of those clues are double/multi-def. entries (others are 7,8,9,14,16,33,49 & 56) and I am not inclined to favour them anyway, my approach matters not a jot. I make an exception for 23 which has hidden depths – you will see hundreds of pugs (pug2) at a greyhound meeting, perhaps even the odd famous pug4. Sighting a pug1, in any of its guises other than a 'nose' would be a champagne event. 'when stopper's left out' is a subsidiary needing some adjustment in the other 'clay' clue (27).
When the clue-word has many meanings, clues having cryptic definitions are especially problematic. I question 2 (The solver has to find a synonym for 'assertive' , deduce that 'that' is a quality of 'me' and not a definition, and all before applying the subsidiary indication – fatal flaws in a highly polished and inventive entry), 52 (Desperate – its whole appears to define the tracker (authority?) rather than the verb), 4 (I see the subsidiary, but the remainder might be a reference to a pug's squat face? – only guessing), 24 (Willy is not a definition, he's an instance of pug – this needs to be flagged), 32 (when the subsidiary is discarded the remainder makes no sense, essentially because this is another attempt at an &lit), 40, 41 & 50, the last four having other faults. They are:- 32 does not flag the 'obscure' definition used, (echo 45, otherwise perfectly acceptable), 40 has a padding problem, ("'s"), 41 does not indicate initial letters, unless 'small' is to be taken for this purpose. Either way, the def. is adjectival and none is listed in C. Finally, 50 overlooks the spin/spun problem.
Miscellaneous quibbles with others:-
6,25,28,29,31,34,35,36,43 padding in varying degrees, 10 back-to-front, 11 'not on'='less'? 39 vague def. 42 PU = 'up' up, not 'pick' up, 55 indirect subsidiary, 49 & 56 simple 2 def. clues spoilt by waffle.
My votes are:
23 I have sung its praise above. 4 points
30 A brilliant and prescient rebuke to the 2-def hordes, suggestive of a very superior pooch 4 points
38 Very fine surface and subsidiary. May perplex a few voters. 3 points
47 Clever use of 'to a standstill' (= up) & apt parsing (Gee up Rev. Audrey?) 2 points
1,3,13,48 Good efforts – half point each |
| 11. |
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There is a problem with choosing a very short clue-word for a competition, even a word with as many meanings as PUG. It greatly limits the number of promising approaches and makes it likely that one will end up with a lot of clues that are basically very similar. So it proved in this case. It is very hard to ring the changes convincingly on dogs, boxers and (Cassius) Clay. With such a degree of similarity, it is also even harder than usual to identify clear winners, leading to low scores even for the best clues.
All credit to those few who attempted a less predictable surface, though, unfortunately, only a small handful of these achieved clues that were both sound and had natural and fully convincing surfaces. 53 deserves a special mention for perhaps the most original surface (to say nothing of the most involved explanation!), but the precise reference (“Why should poor pug (the mimic of your kind) / Wear a rough chain, and be to box confin'd?” – in fact, lines 11-12 of a 40-line poem, not 7-8 as in the explanation) is surely a bit too obscure to be entirely fair as a definition; nor is there anything in the poem to show that the pug (as opposed to the author it symbolizes) was a bitch and thus to justify the rather forced use of the equally obscure meaning of “Lady” (which would have been better omitted, I think). I don’t know whether 27 was meant to be a reference to the capping operation in the Gulf of Mexico; if so, it doesn’t, unfortunately, very accurately mirror the actual situation; if not, it is hard to read the surface in any very convincing way. 50 has an excellent surface and good definition, but for its s.i. to work grammatically, either “Spun doctor admits..” or “Spin doctor and admit…” is required, neither of which, of course, makes any sense in the context of the surface.
Of the numerous clues featuring boxers of the fighting variety, 14, 18, 20, 44 and 54 struck me as the neatest, 6 being marred by the fact that “pug” is hardly the title of a boxer. Of the multiple definitions, 7, 8 and 9 seem rather too obvious and 22 is marred by the (unnecessary) lower-case ‘y’ in “yank” and 26, even overlooking the slightly obtrusive “with” and “of”, by the fact that “pug”, though it may mean “footprint”, doesn’t mean “feet”. Much better are 23 and, again, 18, 20 and 44. Of “hiddens” not already mentioned, 46 and 48 both score through the appropriateness of the surface meaning to the definition.
2 points each: 2 (in many ways, most pleasing, though “assertive” is a slightly odd word to describe a dog in an &lit clue), 14, 18, 20, 40 (would be rather easy to solve, but the surface is refreshingly remote from dogs and boxers)
1 point each: 23, 44, 46, 48, 53
Prox. ac.: 6, 13, 27, 29, 50, 54 |
| 12. |
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| I thought clue19was a work of genius, clue 21 very nearly as good. The others 13,45 &49were enjoyably amusing. |
