CCCWC Christmas Special competition voters’ comments

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A clue to PARTRIDGE in a PEAR TREE (2 defs. + letter mixture).
13 comments were received for this competition (from 6 competitors, 0 others)
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Here is the text

Comments on the competition
1.
Difficult to pick any outstanding entries, so I've distributed my points quite widely, but there were a lot of good ideas, and no absolute turkeys. It's good to see so many rising to the final challenge of 2011.
2.
There are two basic requirements for a clue like this: 1)the minimum amount of extra verbiage (I attempted a clue with none) and 2) an unforced meaning, A clue such as 19 reads well but falls foul of criterion 1 and a clue such as 6 doesn't satisfy criterion 2. Clue 9 while making some sort of sense comes perilously close to satisfying neither criterion. For my winner I chose 33, though I might have liked 'red' qualified. Next,in order, came 11,20,23 and 10. All of these were economical and graphic. A tough challenge finding a bird compatible with a tree, and I thought the general standard was quite good.
3.
It's clear that the rubric for this competition has been misunderstood – though what's not clear is quite who has misunderstood it! I almost took the rubric to say that the letter mixture's beginning or end must be taken from one of the words we were playing with (ELK/ITEM/KITE/ELM as per the given example) – until I saw that it had to be taken from a word in the clue. What the intention was, I don't know, but I felt I had to go with the letter of the law, so to speak. I've felt I've had to do the same with judging this contest, which I know might be unfair to the 20ish entries that seem to have misunderstood things – though it might balance things out if those people do the same. Even so, I've found this a difficult competition to choose a clue for, and a difficult one to judge. There seemed little to judge between the better ones that fit my understanding of the rubric; equal points have been given to my top five.
4.
I find it hard to know how to judge clues of this sort fairly, ie, what criteria should be used. I think it important that the definitions should be sound, but beyond that, rightly or wrongly, I have, within reason, given as much weight to surface as to brevity. It's slightly strange that GREBE in OAK should, as I see it, have produced the lion's share of the better clues.

Comments on the clues

4. Bold rebellion against whip, perhaps, from a nervy backbencher

1.	More imaginative definition and surface than most, compensating for relatively large number of "wasted" letters

7. Customise law to make openings in Scotland flexible

1.	An obscure usage, but the rest of the clue looks fine.

13. Giant bill – a Greek bother?

1.	"bother" is slightly weak, but a good contemporary reference & admirable brevity

15. Greens' alert? Back Gore perhaps

1.	The competition rules stipulated that the split must occur within the bird element, so this otherwise good clue had to be overlooked.

17. I scrambled egg and lemon

1.	Would have scored more highly had I been fully convinced of "scrambled" as a def. of "mangled"

19. Legendary fraulein, rescued from obscurity by the zeal German brothers had.

1.	Nice spot of bird/tree combination, but excessive padding.

23. Monster bill left me mega broke!

1.	The best of the lot, by a considerable distance.

27. Pathetic urge to go after cheap fuel.

1.	Good one.
2.	V good letter mix, but much briefer "for" would give just as good a surface as "to go after". Not fully convinced by def. of peat.