Friday Cryptic Crossword Game
Like Hof, I'm OK with arcana in principle, as long as the structure is sound. And I know from previous clues that there are people interested in US sports, and baseball in particular, on this thread--indeed, I thought Nef was one of them--and once you suspect the phrase "Green Monster" may be involved, the link with John W Henry is easy enough to find, or so I thought. So Hof's criterion, that the answer be obvious once you've got it, would be satisfied as long as the rest of the clue worked.
So I guess for me the fairness or otherwise of my clue hinges, in the end, on "dick" (as in "private dick") as a synonym for "eye" (as in "private eye"). I may have been too sanguine about that. (But in passing, the capitalisation problem is a red herring: the Ximenean rule as I understand it is that you may freely capitalise a lower case word, but not remove a capital from a proper noun.)
Here's the thing, though. What leaves me slightly baffled is the direction the conversation took in terms of tone, with all that stuff about my "huffiness" (which seemed to come from nowhere), and what seemed to be the sarcasm of "after all, it's only a game".
I admit, it even occurred to me to suspect Nef's motives; to wonder if some element of (I'm embarrassed even to use the word) revenge might be involved. That would fit the sarcastic "only a game" stuff, which echoes slightly something I said, "straight" as it were, upthread. I apologise, deeply, if I'm wide of the mark on that, because it's a hell of a thing to accuse someone of. But otherwise I can't really understand what just happened.
Either way, I'm left wondering if this particular game is worth the candle. If it ain't fun it's no fun.
Like Hof, I'm OK with arcana in principle, as long as the structure is sound. And I know from previous clues that there are people interested in US sports, and baseball in particular, on this thread--indeed, I thought Nef was one of them--and once you suspect the phrase "Green Monster" may be involved, the link with John W Henry is easy enough to find, or so I thought. So Hof's criterion, that the answer be obvious once you've got it, would be satisfied as long as the rest of the clue worked.
So I guess for me the fairness or otherwise of my clue hinges, in the end, on "dick" (as in "private dick") as a synonym for "eye" (as in "private eye"). I may have been too sanguine about that. (But in passing, the capitalisation problem is a red herring: the Ximenean rule as I understand it is that you may freely capitalise a lower case word, but not remove a capital from a proper noun.)
Here's the thing, though. What leaves me slightly baffled is the direction the conversation took in terms of tone, with all that stuff about my "huffiness" (which seemed to come from nowhere), and what seemed to be the sarcasm of "after all, it's only a game".
I admit, it even occurred to me to suspect Nef's motives; to wonder if some element of (I'm embarrassed even to use the word) revenge might be involved. That would fit the sarcastic "only a game" stuff, which echoes slightly something I said, "straight" as it were, upthread. I apologise, deeply, if I'm wide of the mark on that, because it's a hell of a thing to accuse someone of. But otherwise I can't really understand what just happened.
Either way, I'm left wondering if this particular game is worth the candle. If it ain't fun it's no fun.
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