CCCWC April competition voters’ comments on Clue no. 50

CCCWC April competition voters’ comments

Clue no. 50: Urban landscape's outline softens in a mist

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A clue to NEBULAR.
5 comments refer to this clue (from 4 competitors, 0 others)
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Comments on the clue

1.	I've not seen 'outline' to indicate first and last letters before, nor 'softens' as an anagram indicator
2.	Softens as anagrind is interesting though not totally convincing.
3.	Natural surface with a nice poetic image. Slightly dubious about "softens" as an anagrind.
4.	Liked this, but 'softens' doesn't mean 'melts', which would work just as well in the surface

Comments on the competition
1.
An excellent choice of clueword which gave solvers a variety of options for anagrams and containers. Common weaknesses in clues were faulty or absent anagram indicators(9, 19, 32, 35, 36, 44, 50), superfluous words (21, 29, 44, 48, 52) and failure to combine a clear definition with a sensible surface reading (3, 4, 5, 7, 13, 14, 16, 18, 23, 25, 28, 39, 42, 42, 46, 48, 52) . In fact three clues seemed to define 'nebulous' rather than 'nebular' (16, 21, 26). Of the rest, 24 referred in some way to the heavens and another 21 used cloudy/misty in a general sense. Only two clues used the ophthalmological meaning (8 and 45), and just one tackled 'of the nature of a liquid for spraying', which deserved a mark for bravery ! (42) There were 16 variations on straight or simple compound anagrams, with UNABLE + R being the most popular by far (7 in total, clues 15 and 51 were the best of these). Personal favourites were LAUREN + B (6) and LUREXBAN – X (24), which I made joint winners – well done ! In third place was LUNARBASE – AS which conjured up images of Space 1999. Of the container clues, variations on BUL in NEAR or NE+AR were by far the most popular (13). My favourite of the BULKs was 10, and of the BULLs 30.

Comments on the competition

An excellent choice of clueword which gave solvers a variety of options for anagrams and containers. Common weaknesses in clues were faulty or absent anagram indicators(9, 19, 32, 35, 36, 44, 50), superfluous words (21, 29, 44, 48, 52) and failure to combine a clear definition with a sensible surface reading (3, 4, 5, 7, 13, 14, 16, 18, 23, 25, 28, 39, 42, 42, 46, 48, 52) . In fact three clues seemed to define 'nebulous' rather than 'nebular' (16, 21, 26). Of the rest, 24 referred in some way to the heavens and another 21 used cloudy/misty in a general sense. Only two clues used the ophthalmological meaning (8 and 45), and just one tackled 'of the nature of a liquid for spraying', which deserved a mark for bravery ! (42)

There were 16 variations on straight or simple compound anagrams, with UNABLE + R being the most popular by far (7 in total, clues 15 and 51 were the best of these). Personal favourites were LAUREN + B (6) and LUREXBAN – X (24), which I made joint winners – well done ! In third place was
LUNARBASE – AS which conjured up images of Space 1999.

Of the container clues, variations on BUL in NEAR or NE+AR were by far the most popular (13). My favourite of the BULKs was 10, and of the BULLs 30.

CCCWC April competition voters’ comments Clue no. 50: Urban landscape's outline softens in a mist

CCCWC April competition voters’ comments

Clue no. 50: Urban landscape's outline softens in a mist