Results: Clue writing contest 1874 Zebu
Winner
Keith Berrett, Wilmslow, Cheshire
Neat cutting from prize buddleia
Neat = cattle = definition
cutting from = part of = hidden word indication
prize buddleia = the “hiding place” containing the answer
It’s an interesting moment when our usual alphabetical sequence of answers (tweaked a bit at present for a couple of Olympic answers) reaches the last pages of the dictionary. The answer chosen from them can start with W, X, Y or Z, and this time I chose Z. I’m not surprised that most of the entries were hidden words. This clue was chosen because it was a change from “prize bull” as the hiding place. Combined with a relatively easy clue type and a fair definition, that seemed a bit too easy overall. Although buddleia is probably most familiar as a plant beside railway tracks, it can have a more decorative role, for which some prizes are awarded in real life. The opportunity to use “neat”, exploiting its fairly frequent crossword meaning, was well-used here.
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Good clues
Neil Mondal, Wembley, London
Using part of prize, buy stock in India
Another clue with deception to keep the solver busy — principally the apparent connection between “prize (money)” and another kind of “stock”.
Ruth Gray, London SE5
They’re animals of some size, buffalo
As an apparent accurate statement about some similar creatures, this hidden word clue has some deception.
Ross Harrison, Dechmont, West Lothian
Prize bull has humped horny cattle!
Although the humps and horns of zebus make the definition very accurate here, the surface story suggests something else.
Luciano Ward, Evanston, Illinois, USA
Prize bunny is at heart a horny beast
The surface reading is similar here, “bunny” is a deceptive alternative to “bull”, and “zebu” is at the exact centre of “prize bunny”. On the other hand, “prize rabbit” seems more likely in real life for the creature apparently meant.
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Elizabeth Manning, Malvern, Worcestershire
Prize bull is protecting cow
There’s a different surface story here. Possibly most accurate with “protect” meaning “restrict access to or use of”, which is normally an IT-related meaning.
Lynne Davis, London NW7
Source of meat prize butcher stocks
“Source of meat” is a fair and deceptive definition. In the surface reading, I wasn’t quite convinced by “prize butcher” as an alternative to “prize-winning butcher”. That kind of shortening seems to be used less often for humans than for animals.
Steve Randall, Reading
Prize budget for boxing lower in Asia
As an alternative to “cow” or similar that seems to mean something else in cryptic clues, “lower” is as popular as “neat”. The surface story is nothing to do with cattle, but needs “for boxing” rather than just “boxing”, which for me is acceptable but preferably avoided when competing for a prize.
RC Teuton, Frampton Cotterell, South Gloucestershire
Some beef from prize bull
This takes advantage of the “adult ox” meaning of “beef”, and thus avoids the question of whether “zebu” means “meat of a zebu”, which you’d need to ponder with a clue like “Meat from prize bull”.
Jan Dolny, Edinburgh
Early on, zoos exhibited bored and under-stimulated animals
A clue using first letters is at least a bit of a change from a hidden word, and the story told is convincing, but “bored” and “under-stimulated” seem like two versions of the same adjective.
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Rob Brominicks, Machynlleth, Powys
Supersize burgers only 25% cow
As “supersize burgers” has 16 letters, “zebu” is 25% of it, and the surface story about questionable meat products is entertaining, but in my experience percentages like this in cryptic clues always have this kind of meaning, so the clues tend to end up as giveaways
Phil Davies, Chelmsford, Essex
Cattle includes prize bull. On the contrary …
This starts with a very plausible statement, which is “on the contrary” in a way I don’t think I need to explain. But as it’s possible for the answer to be “on the contrary” in a number of different ways, clues using this idea seem possibly easier to write than ones telling a story without it.
Some comments on other clues
Beef, getting the hump?
This is intended to be a cryptic definition. The apparent meaning is that if you’re fed up or have “the hump”, you moan or “beef”. If there’s only one type of humped cattle with four letters, this is a very good clue. Unfortunately, in our reference dictionaries, one spelling of the humped cow/yak hybrid familiar to Scrabble® players as ZO is DZHO, so that would be an equally valid answer.
Enter prize bull in cattle shows
This is a hidden word clue that doesn’t work. I don’t mind “enter” being used to tell the solver that what comes next is what they need to write, and “shows” seems acceptable as a hidden word indicator”, but the wordplay would be accurately represented by “cattle prize bull shows”. Obviously the version here has a much better surface reading, but it’s one that can’t be interpreted in a way that logically leads to the answer — the solver has to do extra work to understand what we really mean to say. The skill of avoiding that need and still telling a good story is what good cryptic clue writing is all about.
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Initially, zoologist’s exam began uninspiringly with bovine question
On the logic side, the only problem with this clue using first letters is that “bovine question” isn’t a clear indication of a bovine creature. An ending like “with some bovine creature” seems fairer without completely destroying the intended story. A harder problem to solve is the clear tautology involved in “Initially … began … with”.
Indian ox encircling zebra and gnu
This deserves some credit for trying to use the outside of a phrase rather than the inside, but encircling something is going around the outside of it, not forming its outer edges.
Steer clear copper from crazed bus passenger
I think the surface reading intended here is advice to a policeman. If so, “Steer clear, copper, from …” seems a clearer way of telling it. But that would less than ideally disguise something that’s already less than clear — the idea that “steer clear”, meaning to avoid something, can be made into a transitive verb meaning that you steer someone else clear from something. “Copper” meaning “d” has to count as less than ideal, now that Decimalisation Day is more than 50 years ago. I’m also not convinced by “zedbu” as a “passenger” of “crazed bus”. I’d be happier with U as a “passenger of bus”, as a bus is something that can have a passenger inside, but a passenger of a “crazed bus” seems too daft an idea.
B & W images, leaves Art School and joins University. It’s a beast!
This is one of our occasional mystery clues. I can see that “It’s a beast” is a definition, and that “University” almost certainly indicates the final U. But getting ZEB from the rest of the clue is beyond my mental powers. This is one reason for encouraging explanations of your clues, which either protects you from my lack of vision or allows me to explain why I don’t think something works.
Clue writing contest 1877 Album
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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 16 and the best entry wins £25