Cryptic Contest III- results posted.

[Suspence]

[3iff]

Then that's why you have no issue with them sounding alike...interesting.

[Suspence]

Should I claim my "prize" and run another, or should we take a break from Cryptic Contests for a bit?
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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Quailman]

I didn't vote for the Parish/Perish clue because I say/hear them differently too. My mouth is spread a bit wider for PERISH than for PARISH. Close but different.

I thought my animal clue might have fared better, but I liked Novice's the bast.

[novice]

[Suspence]

I agree...winning these things is kinda exhausting

We'll take a break. I'll put something on my calendar to run another one in a couple of months. Maybe after Top GLer finishes.
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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[DejMar]

In both British and American English dictionaries, the pronunciation of the words 'parish' and 'perish' are different, yet in certain regional dialects this difference is absent. Due to their similar and sometimes same pronunciation these words are listed as a homophone word pair in many homophone word lists. Many word pairs identified as homophones are not recognized as such in certain dialects.Even outside of word pairs, some words have more than one standard pronunciation which can cause a problem with using homophones in cryptic word clues.

Cryptic word clues should be syntactically, grammatically and definingly accurate. I will note, even with the medal winning clues, this sometimes is not the case here. I, myself, failed in this guideline with treating the word pair 'parish' and 'perish' as a homophone without providing the proper syntax to indicate the two words are only near homophones. I, also, have occasionally failed in the accuracy I judge a GOLD clue should be. I am happy that, this time, none of the GOLD winning clues failed in this criteria.

A comment on Elethiomel's critique to the cryptic word clue for "Book size!":The exclamation mark used as a cryptic word pun here is validly used. What seems misplaced is that the 'phrase' does not seem to be a probable interjection. A better cryptic pun indicator would have been the question mark — "Book size?" As a question the two word sentence is believable, and the clue is a valid cryptic pun! (Though I didn't vote for it in this contest as I've seen this form of the clue and its variants in many different cryptic crossword puzzles. I felt it wasn't original enough.)

An example of a clue where an exclamation mark is correctly used in a non-cryptic pun is Elethiomel's "Alas! German scrambles from beachhead to strike down with vengeance." Here, the punctuation mark is used to denote an actual interjection. There were several clues in this contest that I almost dismissed due the "misuse" of this punctuation mark, though I decided to ignore this "failure" in this contest. .

Anyway, I enjoyed many of the clues, here. Working these makes me miss my subscriptions to Harper's and Atlantic Monthly. Both magazines had provided great cryptic crosswords. Comparatively, those found in Games magazine were a bit of a disappointment.

[Quailman]

Also, when I went to school, Mass <> Volume. Mass/Volume = Density. I didn't vote for the clue or two that seemed to used this definition.

[Thok]

[Suspence]

Would Related to mass publication (6) have been better?
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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[3iff]

I was very unsure about whether or not to use the exclamation mark in my clue. I still haven't grasped the concept of when it should be used...not to worry.

I agree with taking a game break...but...I'd like to practice a bit more, so I was wondering if someone would care to give me 5 words that I can write clues for then critique my attempts. We can do this via PM if you like and I can publish my efforts later...or I can do it in the thread?

[Elethiomel]

I'm still enjoying this, and wouldn't mind another round.

I do realize there is some work in hosting this, so I'd like to thank our hosts so far!

Perhaps we can move to a less formal format similar to the backronyms thread? Someone picks a word, everybody submits clues ASAP, and once we have around 8 clues, we make a poll and vote. No anonymity, and lobbying for your favorite clues would be permitted.

If we use published clues, the one who picked the word would add the published clue to the poll once all the other clues have been submitted, so that we're not spoiled or influenced by the published clue.

[Vagrant]

[3iff]

Ok. Post or PM some words and I'll see what I can do.

[Elethiomel]

I used this: http://watchout4snakes.com/creativitytools/randomword/randomwordplus.aspx

to generate a random "somewhat uncommon" noun:

COPPICE

Let's go!

One problem with the backronyms approach is that only the thread starter can edit the poll. So we still need someone to "run" it.

[Elethiomel]

Ok, here's my clue. I'll put it in a spoiler tag for now.

Copulation ends prematurely - epic failure in the bushes. (7)

[3iff]

Thanks. I'm currently working on 5 words Vagrant has given me but I'll have a think about this one too.

[Suspence]