| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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| A very nice set of clues, I thought; my only gripe is that Rod LAVER seemed a bit over-used. 25 gets maximum points for ingenious linkage of 'flatter' and 'TV format'. 16, to which I gave 4 points, seemed the neatest of the 'conference pear' clues. 52 was very straightforward, but none the worse for that, 3 points. 2 points for 24, in which 'Filet de' worked very nicely. Finally, 1 point for 5, in which I liked 'brave talk'. At first glance, I marked 23 highly, but 'employ soft soap' is an intransitive phrase while 'flatter' is a transitive verb. |
| 2. |
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A great turnout of 62 clues making the most of a friendly clue word. I hope we get a correspondingly high number of votes and comments. With so many decent clues I had reluctantly to give zeros to some quite acceptable entries, such as 5, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18 and 37. I particularly liked the LAV for P in PAPER idea and the PAVER synonyms. Clue 8 handled the LAV idea best with an amusing surface. The work of an experienced clue-writer, I'm sure. 23 and 61 also used it effectively. 28's flags and 35's ground crew were the best of the PAVERs – the latter edged it thanks to its fully worked-out theme and 'carry-on' pun. The other clue that appealed to me was 14's succinct charade.
Rod Laver was a little too popular, and some clue-writers used 'Rod' to define 'Laver', not acknowledging with a question mark or a 'perhaps' that Laver is just one of many possible Rods (Stewart, Steiger…).
The two best punning definitions in the competition for me were 62's 'yak' and 29's 'how's your father', but sadly both clues were flawed. I couldn't accept 'possible exodus' as a hidden indicator, and 29's writer committed the cardinal sin of merging part but not all of the wordplay into the definition, leaving their Rod dangling cryptically.
A few other clues failed to exploit good ideas well: 11 and 53 stretch the meanings of their components too far in order to create a surface reading, hence the long explanations; 21 creates a very implausible scenario – surreality in its own right isn't necessarily entertaining; 32 really needs 'Lap dances! Rave parties!' – each word may change but the letters stay the same; in 38 and 39, 'parley' and 'palaver' for me are too close etymologically to make the clue interesting; 47, even Ms Palin would spell her name with an initial capital, surely; 50 uses a clever idea but puts it out of the solver's reach – there are just too many possible state names and abbreviations; and in 58 'utter' won't stand as a definition – without it this would have been a good & lit. |
| 3. |
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A clue word ofering many possibilities has produced the best of the 4 competitions I have entered so far. I usually award marks to only the top 5, but because of the high standard of the clues I've stretched it to 9.
Top mark to no 8, 4 points, a cracking idea exploited by two others, 23(2 points) and 61 (3 points). Top marks went to 8 because it was specific about which pee (p) was replaced. Looks to me like the work of one T.M.
25 and 38 (2 points each) are both excellent clues which I would have marked higher if more points were available. I awarded 0.5 points each to clues 14, 16, 18 and 20. Again, all would have received more had the competition not been so intense. |
| 4. |
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I was surprised by the number of clues that ignored hyphens in their definitions (4, 10, 11, 12, 13): "carry-on" is different from "carry on" and "to do" is different from "to-do".
There were quite a lot of alright but uninspiring clues, but the "lav for pee in paper" idea was a great one and most of my votes went to the three clues using this idea (8, 23, 61). My other choices were 24, 25 and 38 which all held together well, with decent surface readings and original wordplay.
I liked the idea of "state, state, state!?" used in 50 but thought it would be stronger worded as an &lit and even then with such a big choices of words and abbreviations for "state", perhaps a little unfair. |
| 5. |
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One or two very good clues this month. My suspicion is that the author of 16 made a slip: it seems that the word 'core' is not meant to be there. Without it it's an excellent clue and would probably have got 2 points.
1st (3pts): 25 (beautiful)
2nd= (2 pts each): 2, 8, 18
5th= (1 pt each): 23 ('Employ' is a bit cumbersome in the surface, and the comma for 'and' is also a bit weak I think), 37, 38 (not a totally natural surface), 44 (I don't like 'detailed' for 'de-tailed', and the surface meaning is perhaps a rather loose definition of 'palaver'), 56 (rather wacky and fun, but I felt the semicolon should have been either a colon or a dash), 62. |
