From: ipg@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Ian Gent)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles.crosswords
Subject: Re: CWC Poll
Date: 28 Aug 92 11:45:14 GMT
Reply-To: ipg@aifh.ed.ac.uk (Ian Gent)
Organization: Dept AI, Edinburgh University, Scotland

In article <1992Aug27.173639.14906@ccu.umanitoba.ca> prking@silver.cs.umanitoba.ca (Peter King) writes:
>
>On another matter, I have never seen it stated what the difference
>between ACC and CWC is. And I came in at CWC4 I think. Perhaps
>somebody could clarify this for newcomers -- and me!

As the founder of CWC, I can try to say what was in my mind when I 
started it.

The most important thing is that both CWC and ACC are not anybody's
freehold, so the whole situation is somewhat anarchist.  In each case
the judge has total control over what she/he sets in that round and the
ground rules.  Also, there's nothing to stop someone starting a new
clueing competition.  For example, it might be fun if one person
started a competition where he/she judged it every week: part of the
fun would be getting to know that person's likes and dislikes.  

Here is the history of ACC and CWC as I recall it.  This is all there
is to it since there is no difference between the competitions except
tradition.

ACC was the first clueing competition, started by Ray Steiner I believe.
He posed the word "Ophelia".  There followed a long period when most of
the postings on r.p.c just contained single clues for the word, and it got
pretty dull IMHO - how many interesting anagrams are there for Ophelia
where the anagram indicator is "mad"?  This lasted some time and I
thought, mistakenly, that Ray was never going to announce a winner.

I thought it would be fun to start a competition with quite a fast
turnaround, roughly a week.  I also decided to ban postings of clues to
the net, because I thought the numerous postings for Ophelia were a
ghastly waste of bandwidth.  I therefore started CWC (for "Clue Writing
Competition") unilaterally with the rules that I wanted.  It pleases me
that these rules seem to have pleased the net, and the rules currently
used are not too different from the ones I started with.  The only real
differences:  I allowed multiple entries and I didn't post all the
clues I received.  (But remember, each judge could change these
arbitrarily!)

Just after I started CWC1, Ray Steiner chose Dave Corne as the winner
of ACC1.  Dave started the next round, and indeed coined the name "ACC"
for "Auraucaria Clueing Contest".  Dave also holds the distinction for
giving the first ever entry to CWC - for that it helped that he's in
the same department of Edinburgh University as me.

CWC and ACC are both continuing, and the only real traditional differences
are:

ACC has a longer cycle than CWC - hence it's on a lower number.
ACC doesn't ban postings of clues - but they're unusual now.
ACC usually just has one word to clue - CWC usually has two.
CWC operates with the conceit that people may want to wait to 
    see the winning clue and then try to solve it.  I'd be interested to
    know if this is true or not.

Having written all this, I'm not sure it's going to help much, but it
was fun writing it.  Keep up the good work, everyone!

Ian Gent






--
Ian Gent