Thank you to everyone for a generous helping of creativity, humor (and flattery). I have to mention, on my debut as Clueless adjudicator, how stressful it is sifting through the contributions to make sure I understand all the nuances and don’t miss anything too blindingly obvious. Remind me never to win again!
Anyway, I counted 35 contributions (excluding genuine tweaks) from 12 different setters. Mattrom started the ball rolling with a nice smooth (not too frothy) surface, using what proved to be a popular ‘contained coffee’ theme … jono, geeker and spike2 all pitched in. Lots of neat double defs and a couple of triples. Some nice anagrams (especially paul @5, geeker @13&17) and subtractive ones (mattrom @11, buddy @24 and jono’s mega opus @42/45). I also liked fieryjack @33’s ‘studio’ misdirection. Finally, I have to give an honorable mention to spike2 @41 & 46 … a bit of Ethel, followed by Arsenal over United tomorrow evening, would be a perfect cocktail!
It’s very difficult to pick just one (hence the aforementioned stress), but I have gone for geeker’s cleverly conceived acrostic @38:
Feigned laudatory addresses that toadies employ regularly? Yuck, primarily (8)
To be honest, I had never heard of the Toadies, and frankly I didn’t much like what I heard during my research. I thought this cover of a great song was quite good, though. Enjoy!