I meant to come back to this earlier in the week, but forgot:
* Araucaria and Ximenes are/were the pen names of two of Britain's most popular setters. The broad difference in their styles can be summarised,
X: clues should follow fairly rigid rules in setting, even if the surface reading looks a bit clunky
A: they should read as pithily/ elegantly as possible, even if that means some liberty with the rules.
I don’t think this is quite right. It’s certainly true that Ximeneans say that there should be specific rules to be followed (eg you can capitalise a non-capitalised word – so for the purposes of misdirection “reading” can become “Reading”, say – but you can’t fairly do it the other way round), and they say that a clue should be quite precise in the way that it is parsed and in the way it leads logically to the solution. And it’s certainly true that Araucarians are more liberal in their interpretation of the rules, and are all in favour of bending or ignoring the rules under many circumstances (although only as long as they remain fair to the solver).
However, I don’t think surface reading or elegance really comes into it – or at least, even if that’s the stated motivation for rule-bending it’s not what we see in practice. The most frequently voiced criticism of Araucaria that I’ve heard is precisely that many of his clues are over-wordy and completely lack any surface intelligibility – they can’t read as anything other than crossword clues, which is practically the definition of inelegance in a clue. That’s of course not to say that Araucaria can’t be elegant in his clueing – but that particular criticism regarding surface reading is the one that is levelled at him more than anyone.
Conversely, some of the most pithy, elegantly worded clues you will find come from arch-Ximenean Pasquale. In fact, for pithy elegance in clueing, I think him and fellow Ximenean Brendan are probably top of the Guardian tree (which isn’t to say they are the best in general – the wit of the more Araucarian Paul makes him top dog for me).
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