CCCWC April competition voters’ comments
Clue no. 26: Low is high – nonsense!
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A clue to MOONSHINE (Letters Latent).
2 comments refer to this clue (from 2 competitors, 0 others)
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| Comments on the competition |
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| 1. |
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Lots of very good ideas this month. Clues 36 and 46 stood out for me, though. Accurate, concise, witty and with believable surface readings. Clues 5 and 13 followed very closely in points with their original workings. Clue 17 stole the last point because of the witty surface reading and original idea, although I was not 100% sure of "as" a joining word. 9 and 39 were also quite nice.
At the other extreme there were some things I did not like. There were rather too many unnecessary exclamation marks! (e.g. 2,18,26) There were a few indirect anagrams (e.g. 11), 'misleading punctuation' (e.g. 16), overlapping parts of the clue (e.g. 19) and such like.
Overall, fun to read through though, and many more ideas it seemed to me than for the LL clues to GREENGROCER a few years ago. |
| 2. |
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| A lot of good ideas were spoiled by unnecessary, and often fatal, flaws. For instance, in 19 and 20, the definition was invalidated by the omission (in the interests of the surface) of a hyphen between “still” and “produced”; at least in 20, the difficulty could have been avoided quite simply by the addition of “Reportedly” or equivalent. Conversely, in 16 the a.i. is invalidated by the addition of the hyphen before “brewed”. In 34, the use of the present “messes” rather than the past tense “messed” fails to achieve the meaning required to make it a valid a.i. In 42, the word “with” plays no part in either definition or subsidiary indication – and contributes to a very awkward surface into the bargain. The excellent idea for an anagram in 18 is spoiled by the clever-clever addition of “and lit!” – which (a nice irony) actually destroys the clue’s claim to be an &lit, since the words “and lit” play no part in the subsidiary indication. 30 is made hopelessly over-elaborate by the eight words after the semi-colon; on their own, the first seven would have made a first-rate clue. However, there were one or two very good and unflawed clues and quite a large number that were sound if unexceptional. Three clues stood out for me (3.5 points each), 17 (though one hopes the NHS is no longer so unenlightened!) and – both admirably succinct – 26 (which would have been even better as “Low’s high…”) and 46. Of the rest, 1 point each to 9, 18 and 25 and 0.5 point each to 6, 7 and 15. |
