Newsgroups: rec.puzzles.crosswords
From: wald@ford.uchicago.edu (Kevin Wald)
Subject: ACC 81 -- Complete Results
Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator)
Organization: Dept. of Mathematics
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 22:45:34 GMT
 
			 ACC 81 Results
                         ==============
 
In this competition, entrants were asked to clue a word having something
to do with poetry, with a clue consisting of one or more lines of 
alliterative verse, defined according to the following rules (which are
based on the rules of Old English alliterative verse):
 
   (1) Every line is divided into two "half-lines"
 
   (2) Each half-line must have *at least* four syllables.
 
   (3) Each half-line must have *exactly* two "strongly accented"
       syllables, where "strongly accented" is defined as in Rule (7)
 
   (4) Two syllables are said to "alliterate" if either 
 
	(i) They both start with the same consonant *sound*, or
 
	(ii) They both start with a vowel sound (not necessarily the 
	     *same* vowel sound).
 
   (5) In a given line, the *first* strongly accented syllable of
       the *second* half-line must alliterate with one or both
       of the strongly accented syllables of the *first* half-line.
 
   (6) The *second* strongly accented syllable of the second half-line
       does *not* alliterate with the first strongly accented syllable
       of the second half-line.
 
   (7) A "strongly accented syllable" is the accented syllable of a
       key word, where the key words are defined to be  
 
	  (i) *All* nouns, adjectives, participles, gerunds, infinitives, 
              and numbers, and
 
	  (ii) All *emphasized* adverbs and all *emphasized* finite verbs. 
 
 
I was pleased to see that a number of entrants, undaunted by the complexity
of this task, came up with clues to submit.  (In fact, this number was seven,
but what the heck -- it's an Araucaria, after all.)  I was also pleased by
the generally high quality of the clues; the clues themselves were generally
sound, and the versification was generally good (the occasional versification
flaws in the non-bonus clues were minor ones). Thanks to everyone who
entered.
 
 
The winning clue for ACC 81 was
 
     Pleistocene picadors     punctured by mammoth (4)     
 
submitted by Robert Galejs, who has agreed to moderate ACC 82.
 
 
Here is the complete list of clues. The winner is marked with *, and
those receiving Honorable Mention are marked with + ; also, out of
fairness to those who wish to solve these clues on their own, clues
with missing or incorrect enumerations have had correct ones supplied
in this list (though not in the list of solutions, explanations, and
comments which follows this list, after about 25 lines of blank space):
 
Clues:
======
 
+ Lament the capture    of cruel Egyptians (5)
  It has five feet or fifteen feet? (10)
  The gain is heard...... the guru's hymn!  (3,7)
+ Master Blackstone or     Mister Blake get
  price of prose from      pastoral bard  (7,10)
  Under dirty             Indian garments,
  Toes embellished?       Toes unpainted? (5) 
* Pleistocene picadors      punctured by mammoth (4)
  "Lexus" operator,      in energetic,
  outlandish use      of Latin term  (9)
 
 
Bonus Clues:
============
 
  Where Frenchmen go overboard   and one is framed
  By use of the tongue           of Irish province (8)
  A city style --- now sometime past.   (7)
  The rhyme 'tis said that Winter brought
  The writer sang of ways not sought..........   (5)
 
[Start of 25 lines of blank space:]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[End of 25 lines of blank space.]
 
| And now, the solutions and explanations of the clues, and my comments.
| All of my comments are preceded by | .
 
============================================================================
 
 Lament the capture    of cruel Egyptians (5)
 
 Alliterates:  cap, cru
 Strong accents:  ment, cap; cru, gyp
 
 "lament" = def. "elegy"
 "the capture of" = hidden word indicator 
 "cruEL EGYptians" = phrase containing "elegy"
 
| A good, solid, well-versified clue. (And for those of you who may be
| wondering, "capture" can indeed mean "that which is captured".)
| Honorable mention to Brian C. Spollen. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
It has five feet or fifteen feet? (10).
 
| Alliterations:
Five, feet, fifteen, and feet.
 
| Accented syllables:
Fi, feet, fif, feet.
 
| Solution:
pentameter.
 
It has five feet--pentameter is a meter with five feet to a line.
or fifteen feet--fifteen feet is roughly 5 meters, and so we create a 
metric unit called a pentameter (hey--a dekameter is 10 meters, why not a 
pentameter which is 5).
 
| The alliteration here is not quite right; the second strongly accented 
| syllable of the second half-line is not supposed to alliterate with the
| first strongly accented syllable of the second half-line. Aside from that,
| though, this is a good, clever, double-definition clue. (Although
| strictly speaking, five meters is over sixteen feet . . .)
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
The gain is heard...... the guru's hymn!  (3-7)
 
SOLUTION:  The Prophet
 
Explanation:   homophone (maybe a double homophone ?)
 is heard - indicator
 The gain - homophone for the profit
 The guru's hymn - definition .  Also is a homophone for  "the 
                                                   guru's him!"   (prophet)
 
 A list of all the alliterations in your clue;
    Gain/guru  and heard/hymn
 
 A list of all the strongly accented syllables in your clue;
     Gain/heard -- gu/hymn
 
| Cryptically and poetically speaking, this is good.  (I think it's just
| a single homophone, by the way -- the second homophone works in the reverse
| direction to the way homophones usually do.)  I can't really understand
| the surface, however.
|
| (Irrelevantly, I seem to recall that someone wrote a parody of Khalil
| Gibran's _The Prophet_, entitled "_The Profit_, by Kellogg All-Bran".) 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Master Blackstone or     Mister Blake get
price of prose from      pastoral bard  (7,10)
 
and the solution is WILLIAM WORDSWORTH  (extra points for
alliterative answer?)
 
Cryptic:  Master Blackstone or Mister Blake= WILLIAM
          Price of prose= WORDS' WORTH
          pastoral bard= straight definition
 
The alliteration:  line 1= Master/ Mister   
                   line 2= price/prose/pastoral
 
The accents:       line 1= Mast/Black/Mist/Blake
                   line 2= price/prose/past/bard
 
| This is well-versified, and I like the surface reading. The cryptic
| reading is perfectly sound (although a charade which breaks "William
| Wordsworth" into "William" and "words' worth" isn't particularly 
| exciting, to my way of thinking). Honorable Mention to Ed Coulson. 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
         Under dirty             Indian garments,
         Toes embellished?       Toes unpainted? 
 
2) list of alliterations:  "un" of  "under" with "In" of  "Indian";
"toes" with "toes"
 
3) list of strongly-accented syllables:  " un", "dirt", "In",
"gar", "toes", "bel", "toes", "paint"   
 
4) solution to clue:  ARSIS
 
5) description of how clue works
 
             under - connector
             dirty - anagram indicator
             Indian garments - SARIS
             toes - part of a foot
             embellished - accented
             unpainted -  unaccented
             ? - pun signal
 
thus:  ARSIS, which can be either the accented or unaccented part 
of a (metric) foot, one meaning having a Middle English/Latin 
origin, the other, Greek
 
| This is an indirect anagram, which is not allowed. The reason for
| this rule is that indirect anagrams tend to make cryptic clues far
| too obscure. In fact, even if there hadn't been an indirect anagram
| here, the other indirectnesses would have made this clue a very
| obscure one anyway -- the connections "embellished toe" = "accented
| part of foot" = "arsis" and "unpainted toe" = "unaccented part of foot"
| = "arsis" each are a tad too indirect for me.
 
| The surface reading is fine, and the versification is pretty good
| except that "Under" in the first line is really a preposition rather
| than an adverb, and so cannot bear a strong stress. 
 
| I very much like the use of the two contradictory definitions of
| "arsis". (Those who have access to an OED should look up "arsis",
| to see the wonderful list of contradictory quotations about just
| what the word means, winding up with one that recommends simply
| avoiding the word entirely.)
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Pleistocene picadors      punctured by mammoth (4)
 
I guess this explains why the sport evolved into *bull* fighting.
 
mammoth = epic (definition)
punctured by = hidden word indicator
pleistocenEPICadors
 
alliterating syllables: "plei", "pic", "punc"
strongly accented syllables: "plei", "pic", "punc", "mam"
 
| From Bizet's _Cavemen_:
|
|  "Mammothador en ga-a-a-a-arde! Mammothador! Mammotha[squish]"
|
| I love the surface reading, the straight definition is nicely obscured, 
| and the cryptic definition and versification are quite sound. 
| The Winner.
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"Lexus" operator,      in energetic,
outlandish use      of Latin term  (9)
 
Strong accents:   lex   op      en  get
                  land  use     lat  term
 
Alliterations:          op      en
                  land          lat
 
  Lexus = CAR, operator = O (on a telephone dial), energetic = MANIC
  outlandish use of Latin term = definition of  MA(CAR + O)NIC.
 
  The word, which some may call dog-Latin, is a description of
  a style of verse and may also be applied to prose.
 
| I think "macaronic" is my favorite among all the words that were
| clued in this competition; the term, for those who are not familiar
| with it, refers to poetry written in an (often extremely silly) mixture
| of Latin and the vernacular (or, by extension, of any two languages).
|
| The cryptic construction is okay, except that since a Lexus is a
| specific kind of car, there really should be some kind of "for example"
| indicator if you are going to use "Lexus" as a cluse for car. The
| surface reading is a trifle strange -- I'm still not sure what it's
| supposed to mean (Is it that to call someone a "Lexus" operator is an
| outlandish use of the latin term "Lexus"?). Finally, there is a slight
| flaw in the versification, in that "energetic", being a non-compound
| word in English, really should only count as having one strong stress
| (even though there is, indeed, a secondary stress on "en").
 
===================================================================
 
Bonus Clues:
 
| Note: The bonus clues were not judged as part of the competition, so
| I have only commented on things that particularly caught my eye.
 
===================================================================
 
 Where Frenchmen go overboard   and one is framed
 By use of the tongue           of Irish province (8)
 
 Alliterates:  Ov, one
               use, Ir
 
 Strong accents:  French, ov; one, framed
                  use, tongue; Ir, prov
 
 "where Frenchmen go overboard" = "mer"
 "one" = I
 "is framed by" = inclusion indicator
 "use of the tongue" = "lick"
 thus "li (mer + i) ck"
 "Irish province" = def., "Limerick"
 
| Oddly enough, neither of these lines alliterates, since neither
| "one" nor "use" starts with a vowel sound. Was this intentional?
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
BONUS CLUE:
 
A city style --- now sometime past.   (7)
 
SOLUTION:  Chicago (by Sandberg)
 
Explanation: charade
A city - definition
Style = chic
now = position indicator
sometime past = ago
 
ALLITERATION: City -- Sometime
Accented syllables:  CIT , STYLE -- SOME  PAST
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 
          The rhyme 'tis said that Winter brought ~
          The writer sang of ways not sought..........   (5)
 
EXPLANATION:  FROST
  The rhyme = rime = frost
   tis said = homophone indicator
The author = definition
sang of ways not sought = refers to "The Road Not Taken".
(and with a stretch, maybe it is an &lit sort of clue...???)
 
ALLITERATIONS:
rhyme    said      Winter    
writer     sang     ways
 
Stressed Syllables:
rhyme/said/Win/brought
wri/ sang/ ways/ sought
 
| While there are plenty of alliterations here, they don't
| follow the pattern set by the rules of the competition (and
| by the rules of Old English verse). However, the alliterations
| and the rhyme do make for a nice poetic effect.
 
=====================================================================
 
Kevin Wald              |  Hwaet saegest thu, yrthlingc?
wald@math.uchicago.edu  |       -- AElfric, _Colloquium Martianum_
