Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Likes; Jon 9 and 10, Dorrien 14, Tyke 22 (but needs homophone indicator?) Darla 27, and Mattrom 32

Vote Jon 18

Advance warning … I may be a little late with the result, even if all the votes are in before the deadline. I may also actually need to make a decision (which is very stressful in itself), given the closeness of the contest and the … imperfections in a couple of the clues in the running, as already noted!

Paul #35

I’m not sure what level of adjudication on my part is necessary / expected but, for what it’s worth, I think (i) L = lost is absolutely fine (Chambers will catch up eventually!); (ii) the ‘racquet’ spelling does only apply to the sporting equipment, so I agree that, in the absence of a homophone indicator, Dorrien’s @14 works as a (6), but not a (7); and (iii) Raquel is definitely ‘c’-less!

Anyway, I'm happy that nobody needs sin-binning or even a verbal warning over the debate, so let us move to the results. One vote each for fieryjack @17, tyke51 @22, mattrom @32, mprs @15, jono @18 and paul @35, but this quickly turned into a two-horse race between dorrien @14 and bigbadmarty2 @33, who ended up with 3 votes each.

So it seems it’s down to me. Each clue had a slight issue, as discussed: dorrien @14 only works as a (6), but the clue is otherwise perfectly admissible, but, as bbm2 @33 actually misspells the lovely Ms. Welch’s name, it probably isn’t quite so easily fixed. So I have decided to go with dorrien @14’s neat double def.:

It's essential to squash a disturbance (7) … or (6)!

Congratulations, dorrien, here are your prizes:

Trick shots … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT1aWbVwixM

Ra[c]que[l/t] … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qxzyLXqWhk

“Switch off that racket!” (according to my mum in 1971) … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIQMktyP90s

congrats dorrien and thanls patrich.

thanks for the mentions, fj and dorrien - very much appreciated

(cat on lap, hence lower case!)

Well done dorrien. Thanks to patrich for displaying the judgement of Solomon ! I did not check on the spelling of Ms Welch's name mea culpa.

And thanks to fiery, mathprof and jono for the votes, also to chris and tyke for the likes.

Well done Dorrien - bad luck Bbm2! International incident skilfully avoided Patrich and thanks for the clips! Appreciate the vote Chrise and thanks for the mentions Spike, Fiery & Paul.

I did indeed err with the length - I simply imitated the previous clue 's length which was a (7)! Bad luck BBM and thanks for the honours Patrich. I really enjpyed the clips. I did play badminton but also a lot of squash and squash rackets. I also got the same complaint from my mother!
Thanks to Spike, Aristo and Buddy.
Looking forward to next week

Congrats, dorrien. Once the editing is done to change the 7 to a 6, your clue certainly rises above the rest. Well done! Well done also to patrick for sorting through the small errors, and arriving at the best decision. It should be noted that many of us have made these types of mistakes here at one time or another. (I think I've made more than my share.)