July’s word was WEAK, but the submitted clues, around fifty of them, were thankfully far less so. As I said when LUNG was the word to be clued, clues to short words are sometimes desperately hard to make original and there were predictably a lesser variety of treatments apparent. Using the first letters of words in the clue was one common way of dealing with it but none of these stood out from the crowd. My three selected winners this month each use a different construction. Although there were other clues submitted which broadly used these same ideas, those below were just that little bit neater, I felt.
My selection this month is thus:
1st
Advertisement
Poor time to be out of small change (4)
[(T)WEAK]
Frank Williams
(The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines TWEAK as a fine adjustment, thus “a small change” is a good alternative definition for it. The surface reading is good as one can envisage many occasions when to be out of small change is inconvenient, - such as buying one’s copy of The Times every day! Simple stuff, to be true, but likely to be appreciated by solvers. Mr Williams’ forte is beginning to look like clues to short words since he was also the winner in the competition for BOLE).
Advertisement
2nd
Spent some time listening (4)
[sounds like “WEEK”]
Sumant Kowshik
(There were a number of clues relying on sound, generally referred to in crossword solving manuals as “homophone” clues. This one produces a nice simple phrase that does not look forced in any way. Going off on a tangent for a moment, many times when I see the word “listening”,I find myself musing that there should be asimilar verb formation “Listenering”, to mean solving The Times’s very difficult Listener Crossword. I note that substituting it in this clue would produce a sentence all too true for most of its regular devotees!).
Advertisement
3rd
My comrades and I, a thousand strong? Not at all! (4)
[WE + A + K]
Ann Martin
Advertisement
(Again, a simple and direct construction, its phrasing, with an elaborate indication of WE and the definition by opposite meaning, perhaps being a little long for a clue to such a short word. Again, though, it reads well, without any special pleading being necessary).
For the rest, there were very few entries I didn’t think worked when viewed with a solver’s eye. When looking as a setter, I could see that the phrasing of some could have been improved with some small changes. I make it a point not to criticise individual clues in these reports, so I won’t give examples but the main “fault” I would identify is that the cryptic and apparent English readings are not both expressed with perfect smoothness. Often they pull the writer of the clue in two directions over word order or punctuation and the trick is to keep tinkering with the wording of the clue until a formulation is found which satisfies the constraints of both readings without too much (preferably none) strain on the word order in either reading. I’ve gone on about this before (and, no doubt, will do again) but it is what makes a clue a winner rather than an also-ran.
On, therefore, to the next competition. For August I’d like you to produce a clue for GINORMOUS. I think this will perhaps provide more scope for originality than the competition above.