CCCWC March competition voters’ comments on Clue no. 23

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CCCWC March competition voters’ comments

Clue no. 23: It's the end of the diet he's on.

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A clue to EASTER (Misprints).
5 comments refer to this clue (from 3 competitors, 0 others)
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Comments on the clue

1.	Wordplay is required for EASTER, not a definition.
2.	I'm not sure which of these two words is given by the wordplay (the solver would need to know for the purpose of grid entry)
3.	Same idea as clue 13 but not quite so clever.

Comments on the competition
1.
Several clues (10 11 12 13 22 23 54) contain a definition for EASTER. Whether cryptic, &lit or plain, a definition is not wordplay as I understood the instructions. This point was commented on in the Christmas 2012 Special competition. A couple of clues (14 and 15) use "hesitation" to indicate "er", which doesn't seem right to me. "Sign of hesitation", perhaps. Some excellent clues among the others; preference given to those which combine the two key words seamlessly. Found it hard to separate my top five, finally scored them 3.5, 3, 3, 3, 2.5.
2.
Great to see such a large number of entries this month – more to chose from than the Grand National ! A couple of clues (13and23) did fall at the first, unfortunately. The rubric specifically required the clue word (EASTER) to be distinguishable by wordplay, effectively ruling out the use of 'double definition' clues. Imagine if the misprinted letter were unchecked, the solver would not know which word to enter ! The second hurdle was avoiding link words. I may be wrong, but it seems untenable to use the customary 'wordplay' FOR 'definition' or 'definition' FROM 'wordplay' structure for 'misprint' clues, as by their nature the 2 elements differ by one letter. I therefore preferred clues without such an explicit connection, accordingly marking down 8,11,15,20,21,25,35,36,38,39,40,41,42,43,47,48and52. On the other hand, the '& lit' clue was quite acceptable, though only 4 were attempted, with varying degrees of success. Other fallers included a nounal anagram indicator 50 and a few dubious single letter indicators (20,24 and 44). Of the 13 possible choices for an EASTER misprint just 4 were absent (BASTER,LASTER,PASTER and VASTER) and 2 had single entries, so the best EASTED (9) and GASTER (51) were easy to choose ! Of the other clues, exactly half (26/52) defined MASTER (14) or TASTER (12), and 6 of these received my points, along with 2 WASTERs and 1 EASIER. My favourites for the 5 commonest definitions chosen were 53,6,27,29 and 19. It only remains for me to wish good luck to all the runners and riders in this month's competition, and may the best clue win !