Sunday Times clue writing contest 1873: Unicorn

Good clues

Lynne Davis, London NW7
It’s fabulous being involved in our new campaign from the start
The definition here is “it’s fabulous being”, an example of the slightly abbreviated but still comprehensible language we sometimes need to use (instead of “It’s a fabulous being” in this case). The wordplay is an anagram of “in our, N, C”, with “involved” as the anagram indicator, and “in” not performing one of its usual functions in cryptic clues, but simply providing its letters.

Geoff Goodger, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
Horny beast starts to consider other relationships; trapped in a loveless marriage
Here, “horny beast” is a whimsical definition and the wordplay is C O R inside UNI(o)N, as a “loveless marriage”. Looking back at the clue with a bit more time than when choosing the winner, I think the word order could have been changed to the more natural “Horny beast trapped in a loveless marriage starts to consider other relationships” without making the cryptic reading unfair.

RC Teuton, Frampton Cotterell, South Gloucestershire
A fanciful creature, I’m surprised to be in a loveless marriage
This tells a similar surface story, with “cor!” indicated by “I’m surprised”.

Ciaran Daly, Cork, Ireland
What don should earn in high-value startup?
With “corn” as in “earn one’s corn”, though not in “corn” definitions in our reference dictionaries, “what don should earn” is “uni corn”, and “high-value startup” is another meaning of “unicorn”, specifically one worth more than $1bn.

Neil Mondal, Wembley, London
A very successful business is being imagined with one projection
With “projection” as “a part that juts out”, “being imagined with one projection” is the defition. Unless Neil and I are both wrong, unlike narwhals and rhinoceroses, unicorns are thus unique among mythical beasts. (A “monocerous” seems to be the same thing with a different name.) The “projection” in the surface reading is an estimate of a future situation.

Graham Davies, Shoreham by Sea, West Sussex
Something fanciful forged from iron and, essentially, copper
This time, the route to anagram fodder providing a good surface reading is using “and, essentially” to indicate N, and “copper” to indicate Cu, which is just a bit of indirect content, but uses the typical meaning of “copper” in cryptic clues. Although it’s obviously vital for the logic, in the surface reading you might wonder why “essentially” applies to one metal but not the other. On the other hand, plenty of solvers would be “cheated fair and square” into trying to use “pp” or “oppe” as part of the wordplay.

Keith Campbell, Collingtree, Northants
“It’s boring at college”: this is a mythical fantasy
With “at” meaning “next to”, which I think I’ve allowed once or twice, this indicates CORN = “it’s boring” next to UNI=college. Although this stretches language a bit, I enjoyed the surface reading suggesting an older relative encouraging a sceptical teenager to consider higher education.

Howard Kerr, Wicklow, Ireland
Foreign coin found in vessel is something of a collector’s item
Like “at” in the previous clue, I think I’ve allowed “foreign” to be used as an acceptable rather than ideal anagram indicator, in this case for COIN inside URN. As “unicorn” can mean “something rare but desirable”, “something of a collector’s item” is a fair definition which completes a metal-detecting or Bargain Hunt surface reading

Sean Donoghue, Currandulla, Co Galway, Ireland
Fantastic horse with a distinct advantage in a photo finish!
This exploits two meanings of “fantastic” and imaginary horse racing to produce an entertaining cryptic definition. Other mythical horses like Arion in Greek myth and Sleipnir in Norse myth have features that could help in a race, but less obviously in a photo finish, and I haven’t spotted any others with seven letters.

Some comments on other clues

After initial loss, Carthaginian soldiers head north bringing extraordinary animal
This is one quibble away from being a usable clue. The wordplay is “(P)unic = Carthaginian, OR=“other ranks”=soldiers, N=north”, and the surface reading is supposed to suggest Hannibal and his famous elephants. The quibble is with “head” being interpreted as “being in front of”. If you head a field, you are at the front of it, but you are not “in front of” it, because you’re part of it.

Consortium has nothing to lose in acquiring my successful start-up
This is another version of “cor!” inside UNI(o)N. Although “consortium” has meanings related to groups and marriage, I can’t see that either is a precise equivalent of “union”. You can find the two words in the same list in at least one thesaurus, but that’s not enough. If you use a thesaurus to find possible synonyms, you need to look up the dictionary meanings of the words involved and decide whether they are true synonyms or just closely related words.

College humour is fabled beast
This uses uni+corn in a way that’s fair, but how any form of humour can be any kind of beast escapes me. A rephrase as “Fabled beast in college humour” seems to make more sense in the surface reading, without spoiling the logic.

Coin tossed into vase is an old Scottish example
In this version of URN containing an anagram of “coin”, the solver needs to know that in 15th and 16th-century Scotland, a unicorn was a coin worth 18 shillings. This is not something you can confirm from our reference dictionaries, and I can’t see that it’s appropriate “general knowledge”.

Singularly fabled creature’s magic in Numbers
The surface reading suggests that there might be a fabled creature in the fourth book of the Old Testament. It doesn’t matter whether there is, but it does matter that the entrant’s claim that “magic” is the collective noun for unicorns has not been confirmed by source that I can find, including lists that include examples like “barren of mules” which are very hard to find in places other than lists of similar nouns.

Fantastical creature in Uruk-hai – originally orc bred with man ultimately
I’m afraid I’ve forgotten since reading the Lord of the Rings that “Uruk-hai” is a subset of orcs. The wordplay is an anagram of “in, U, orc, N”, but apart from “originally” and “ultimately” both having their stock cryptic crossword meanings, “bred” as an anagram indicator is beyond my comprehension.

Punic or North Africans, a virgin could be the downfall of some of these
Apparently if you want to tame a unicorn, you need the assistance of a virgin maiden. But if you’re a solver trying to make sense of a hidden word clue, you need the assistance of an indicator like “among”. And few crossword editors these days would allow a word like “Africans” to be added to the “hiding place” for the sake of the surface story. Strict crossword editors would insist than every word in the hiding place must have part of the answer. Slightly more generous ones would allow you to add short words like “as” or “the”, but not something like “Africans”.

Clue writing contest 1876 Athletics

You are invited to write an original cryptic clue for the word above, in Sunday Times crossword style. Email your entry to puzzle.entries@sunday-times.co.uk. The contest closes on Monday, August 9, and the best entry wins £25

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