And now my judgements:
Duke:
Iron, maybe, found in article trapped in small, low nest's entrance (8)
Nice definition, and good construction. Surface is okay.
Iron plane (8)
Good, and misleading, surface. With regard to the construction: I much
prefer that double definitions use two completely different meanings of
the answer; here, they both use the exact same meaning.
Rob:
Even out odd length with a layer underneath (8)
Good surface, good construction, good definition, and special bonus
points for the use of the MIT's favorite length unit, the smoot.
Luciano:
Press release from the morons excited the Right (8)
Very smooth surface, and I very much like the way it hides the definition. Construction is fine (I'm less keen on anagram-minus-letters clues than
plain anagrams, though I think the subtraction indicator here is very good).
When the moon's out you can do this in the course of an evening (8)
I like the definition here a lot, and the surface is very good. As discussed, though, the "When" ends up being extraneous here.
Iron Lady accepts arguable point (8)
Another good surface hiding a definition very nicely. A minor quibble:
In the cryptic reading, "Lady accepts arguable" is a full sentence, and
"point" is a noun phrase, so the combination doesn't really make
grammatical sense; I think this would work better with "accepting"
in place of "accepts", so it's one noun phrase after another.
And now, the placements:
First place goes to Rob's measured clue.
Second place goes to Luciano's publicized clue.
Third place goes to Duke's entrancing clue.
Rob?
Kevin Wald
wald@math.uchicago.edu | Last .4-smoot cat near
http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~wald | one hassock (7)
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