| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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I thought this was an excellent set of clues, by far the strongest that I remember in this competition. After my first run through, I had at least 15 candidates for votes, which made the task of awarding votes (pleasantly) demanding.
Ultimately, I gave 5 points to 40, which is as good an &lit. as I've seen; 4 points to 12, for a perfect and succinct surface; 3 points to 5, an excellent clue which is, to my mind, slightly outshone by 40; 2 points to 26, another with an excellent, tight surface; and 1 point to 51, which is pleasingly original. |
| 2. |
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| Such a clue-friendly word (thanks Robert), this was really hard to judge. Lots of perfectly good clues, so I had to look for that little extra something that made a clue stand out. 31 is an excellent topical reference and a shade better than 16. 40 is the cleverest of the & lits., perfectly worded, as is 43, just pipping 47. The chess idea is well handled in 41, and the picture conjured by 19 is very plausible. Sadly that left no room for 2 and 21's original ideas or 51's neat combination of 'apartment' and 'smoke'. In a more average competition they'd all have been contenders. |
| 3. |
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| With so many entries it's not surprising to see some very similar ideas, for example 18 and 40, 43 and 47, 44 and 59. 24 and 37 rely on practically identical but dubious homophones. Several clues don't read very naturally, e.g 11 13 17 20 32 33 34 42 53. I don't see how "screen" works as a definition in58. Dr.Edwards is supefluous in 22. Vacuum = capture dust in 23 is tenuous to say the least. 14 is probably the most inventive clue but since a capon is not necessarily a turkey I ruled it out, sorry. (Chambers simply has "a castrated cock".) Some excellent pithy clues – 5 stands out, and 26 is very elegantly constructed. I also rather like 2, 10 12 18 and 40. Perhaps surprisingly, no references to the Tea Party. |
| 4. |
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| Not many of these really grabbed my attention, and there were quite a few ungrammatical anagram indicators that spoiled some otherwise good ideas. 5 and 40 stood out for their smooth &lit treatment, with 40 coming top for me because of its natural surface reading. |
| 5. |
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A lot of reasonable clues this month, and I distributed lots of half points. The clues that stood out to me for more points than that were 40 and 5, the former with a perfect surface reading &lit, the latter slightly strained, but still the same great idea; 29 and 47, both original ideas, well worded with respect to surface and cryptic reading.
For 15, a "castle" is not a chess piece, but "castling" is a chess move, which could not possibly result in the queen being taken since it would be illegal. Clue 22 seemed to have a lot of superfluous wording for surface reading only. Clues 19 and 31 were not quite up to "above half points" because of the exact wording. I thought 19 would have been better as "Curate fidegeting with priest's collar" and the "first" in 31 seemed to me to be a bit clumsy. |
| 6. |
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This competition was notable for the extraordinary variety of single-word definitions offered for “capture”. Quite a few of these struck me as definitely inadequate: eg, picture, detention, control, vacuum, even (apparently) escape. Words like hook, land, beach and trap signify specific ways of capturing something, but, at least without a “for instance” or equivalent, are, it seems to me, inaccurate as synonyms for capture. Which is a particular shame in the cases of 29, 30 – a lovely allusion to the Mad Hatter’s tea-party – and 31, all otherwise very good clues. Similarly, something appropriated is not necessarily, or even typically, captured, spoiling 59, an otherwise good clue. I was surprised to find that Chambers gives “arrest” as one of the definitions of capture and find it hard to credit that “arrest” in the sense of “apprehend or take into custody by legal authority” is what is meant. Only in a minority of very specific circumstances would it be at all natural to talk about the police capturing a suspected criminal. However, in view of the Chambers entry, it seemed a bit unfair not to give cop, collar, bust, nick and pinch (and indeed the &lit at 40) the benefit of the doubt . 8 and 32 were examples of invalid indicators of first letters: “starts treading” surely cannot indicate the first letter of “treading” – which requires something like “start of treading” or “how treading starts” – while “Premier’s” cannot conceivably mean “premiers of”.
5 points:
12 – delightfully succinct, with an excellent and (quite fairly) misleading surface.
2 points each:
18 – a neat clue
40 – a question-mark would have improved it
1 point each:
21 – a slightly improbable surface
41 – though the “in”, where “of” is really required, is a shade clumsy
49 – straightforward and rather easy to solve, but a pleasing image
55 – a nice anagram and surface, but, even with a question-mark, the definition is pushing it a bit.
0.5 point each:
10 – a question-mark to indicate that smoking is only one means of curing would have been an improvement
15 – surface spoiled by extreme improbability of a rook’s taking a queen in the opening of a chess game
39 – wrongful is on the borderline as an a.i.
48 – quite a nice surface, but “restore” for “cure” is a shade iffy |
