CCCWC April competition voters’ comments on Clue no. 6

CCCWC April competition voters’ comments

Clue no. 6: Being of heavenly appearance, Lauren Bacall initially modelled

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A clue to NEBULAR.
8 comments refer to this clue (from 7 competitors, 0 others)
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Comments on the clue

1.	A clever anagram and excellent surface
2.	Well done for spotting the LAUREN B anagram.
3.	Nice surface, and good def in a round of weak defs. Joint first.
4.	Excellent and original clue, and she did indeed work as a model.
5.	A very nice surface, but the definition is on the borderline of being too imprecise.
6.	This is too close to a similar clue from Guardian 21644, so am marking it down, though a good clue
7.	Nicely done.

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. 6: Being of heavenly appearance, Lauren Bacall initially modelled

CCCWC April competition voters’ comments

Clue no. 6: Being of heavenly appearance, Lauren Bacall initially modelled