September 18 2010
Winter Wind-Up Winners
Promise you, this ain’t a wind-up. As God is my witness, I warmed to the business deciding the best clue for each super-word (see Best of Winter series), and found myself plumping for five separate compilers, one per word.
Before I reveal the crème de la crème, let me make a few observations. Quite a few COWARD clues missed selection as they settled on ‘yellow’ as a synonym, which is really cowardly. (Not on the setters’ parts, but in Rogets, I reckon. Don’t you?)
Beware too indirect anagrams, or missing definitions. Not looking at anyone directly PRS! But don’t worry. Here is the ideal think lab to attune your craft, and PRS was a breath from snaring AFFIRM with a stylish alternation formula: Even half of diorama is correct.
Another poser for all ye posters – does ‘has’ function OK as a container? So fish has fight can be CO(WAR)D? It’s very, very, very close – so close it’s there – but I waver on it, nonetheless. Even I succumb to the same temptation in my own stuff, often as a result of trying everything else.
A special mention to philth for his ‘first time with the carving knife‘ – and a Madcap Medal to SK for trying to finagle Kraftwerk backwards into POMADE. Quite breath-taking, and it almost worked! So to the laurels, in alphabetical order:
AFFIRM: Verify type of leaf fir might shed [SB]
COWARD: Chicken is source of hay fever [Mr X – with wry reference to Noel, and some subtle downcasing]
POMADE: It helps make do when work is overdone [dg]
WHACKS: Work out who packs punches [JD – tres elegant, and only just shading X’s Brazilian beats]
WIND-UP: Finish twin duplex interiors [SK]
Outstanding marathon, all runners. Well endured, well solved, and superbly well wound up.
Comments
SK — 18 September at 08:29PM
Thanks for this marathon DA. I'm at the end of a 2 week travel marathon (back in Oz tomorrow morning...yee-hah), so this has been a very useful way of killing time in too many airports. My favourite clue from all submitted was also JD's hit-out. Very neat clue and I reckon we probably all had a "Why didn't I think of that?" moment.
And thanks for the acknowledgement of my retro/techno German cheese effort. The idea jumped into my head through background boarding announcements auf Deutsch, and I couldn't let it go until I had crafted it into a clue (tortured as it was!) Definitely a bitte-sweet moment.
JD — 19 September at 11:19AM
Thank you, thank you,(DA and SK). This certainly was a marathon, and made enjoyable by quality entries all round. The limited entry requirement certainly changes the nature of the beast. Submissions needed to be worked on and refined until they were just right, rather than just being entered willy nilly. Then there was the frustration of finding someone else had used your good idea before you'd had a chance to post it. And the silent frustration of coming across better ideas once you'd used up your quota. All good fun.
Mr X — 20 September at 04:16PM
I also wondered about the use of "Yellow" as a noun rather than an adjective & ended up relying not on Roget's but Rogers (Kenny) and the following line from his classic meditation on the nature of cowardice:
"Hey look old Yellow's leaving"