| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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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. |
| 2. |
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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 |
| 3. |
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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 |
| 4. |
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| I thought clue19was a work of genius, clue 21 very nearly as good. The others 13,45 &49were enjoyably amusing. |
