A noun with 4 distinct meanings this month and even more clues to rank. The majority (44) opted for the meaning of mortuary, with 4 of these extending the meaning (perhaps a little to far) to a room in which post-mortem dissections are performed (17, 26, 54 and 56). Of these, 30* and 42* in particular stood out from the rest. 3 clues opted for the more figurative meaning (6, 41* and 47) and a further 9 defined haughtiness/arrogance (3, 5, 8, 14, 33, 34, 38,42 and 49*). Just two clues(2* and 37)tackled the remaining definition – the first of these was the only one managing to allude to another of the word's meanings in a well crafted &lit format.
Once again anagrams proved popular, but once again there were a few faulty anagram indicators (5, 15, 26 and 44), with 2 clues missing anagrinds altogether (3 and 19). The rules here are relatively simple: verbs, adjectives and adverbs are OK as long as they indicate rearrangement of the anagram fodder. Clues in which the indicator is not adjacent to the fodder are certainly not fair to the solver. Given the subject matter, GRUESOME was a popular choice and as it contains all the letters needed offered the possibility of a simple subtraction clue (12, 16, 17, 24* (the pick of the bunch), 26, 27, 28, 35 and 56) as well as a more sophisticated compound anagram (2*). Other popular choices were ROGUE (5, 22, 23, 37, 44 and 48*) and GOURMET (1, 14 and 55).
The possibility of hiding the answer in the clue was exploited in (5) cases, with varying success (13, 21, 31, 40* and 51).
Finally, there were 5 clues using MORE as container for G and U (4, 30, 41, 47 and the excellent 49* which bagged top points). |
