LJ Post WNFR

[rhu]

[Public post, but meaningless to you if you're not in the NPL]

Is it my imagination, or has Crax been running a lot more flats "WNFR" than Sax did? Personally, I don't usually care for these, because (1) they don't feel quite fair to me -- if you don't catch what the flattist had in mind, there's often not enough to go on, and (2) they often feel like the flattist wussed out. ("Yeah, it was an amusing enough base to want to send it in, but not enough that I felt I could be bothered to write a couple of lines of doggerel.")

Certainly there are times when a base is so inspired and extraordinary that it deserves this kind of treatment --- Xemu's #42 from Nov. 2004 was elegant.

How do others feel?

Comments

[saxikath]

Well, I guess you can guess how I felt about them. :) When they were elegant, or clever, I ran them, but I was always leery of the "the flattist just didn't care" feeling.

[qaqaq.livejournal.com]

I kind of feel like it's a joke that's been long played out.

[rpipuzzleguy.livejournal.com]

Comment WNFR:

I've never composed a flat, but...

[ertchin.livejournal.com]

I may be more forgiving, being a newer member, but I have rolled my eyes at a few. This may be weird, but my biggest gripe is that putting all the clues in the first line (or whatever) looks awkward, even though the rest of the lines aren't there.

[(Anonymous)]

Aleph here; I just noticed this thread while Googling a related topic. nmHz writes:

Yeah, it was an amusing enough base to want to send it in, but not enough that I felt I could be bothered to write a couple of lines of doggerel.

As a perpetrator of several recent WNFR's, I ask in their and my defense: if the base *can* be fairly clued in under two lines, why saddle both composer and solver with doggerel padding?

I haven't been around the NPL for that long, but have already heard complaints about picture flats (another doggerel-avoidance tactic?), isomorphs, bases that include obscure taxonomical names or pop-culture trivia, and for that matter vowelless forms, Knight's-tour crypts, and cryptograms. I'm even heard rumors of complaints about Ucoaimhu flats. None of these categories is likely to disappear any time soon, and WNFR's don't seem fundamentally different --- especially now that they've been Guided, modified, parodied, UE'd, and Ralved(sp?) in various different ways, suggesting that it will be a while yet before the idea is "played out" as Qaqaq suggests.

rpipuzzleguy writes:

Comment WNFR:

I've never composed a flat, but...

So what's the enumeration? ;-)

=[Aleph] [= elkies_AT_m@h.harvard.ed]

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

א asks:

if the base *can* be fairly clued in under two lines, why saddle both composer and solver with doggerel padding?

My response, at least, is that flats are a particular art form, and part of the enjoyment comes from the execution of the idea and the humor of the poetry. To my eye, what makes a FWNFR work is that it is playing with the form for a reason.

The Xemu flat that I referenced works because the line he used is a direct quote from the first thirty seconds of the show. If he'd quoted any more or modified the quote, it wouldn't have worked at all.

if the base *can* be fairly clued in under two lines, why saddle both composer and solver with doggerel padding

Well, part of my complaint was that I find the WFNRs often don't provide me with enough to go on. But I also don't think of the doggerel as padding; it's flavortext and it's what makes a flat a flat. Otherwise, we might as well just print lists of clues and call it a day. Here's what the sample curtailment from the Guide would look like

CURTAILMENT (8)
Hopeful; pain-killer

Yawn.

The Guide itself warns: FWNFR should not be used just as a way to present bases that the composer didn’t feel inspired to versify. “Flats we never finished writing” are often uninteresting, and are likely to be underclued.

I'm not saying "Crax should stop running FWNFRs." I'm just saying he seems to be running more than Sax did (which has been confirmed) and that I (and apparently others) don't find them as enjoyable as other kinds of flats. No big deal.

[(Anonymous)]

"Hopeful; pain-killer" is indeed a yawner, but not for lack of verse (or even meter, which WNFR's usually do have): do you really think it's any better as

     Hopeful's BEGUN,
     Painkiller's DONE.

?... It has meter and rhyme, but feels equally flavorless to me. I think the artistic "flavor" that distinguishes a flat from just a list of clues is not so much in the verse as in a single idea/image/story/... that draws them together. Sometimes the connection is so obvious that no text is needed at all other than the enumeration and one of the parts, as in apt letter banks (or apt transposals, a.k.a. anagrams); in a picture flat, of course, a literal image provides the connection without any text. WNFR's can work the same way, *if* the cluing is sufficient and the text unifies the parts, however fragmentary or ludicrously contrived the whole (relativistic bird-flight comes to mind). I certainly agree that WNFR's are more susceptible to inadequate cluing than fully versified flats. But the recent WNFR's don't feel to me noticeably harder to solve or less fun to read than the average Enigma flat. Maybe composers have simply gotten better at it...

=[Aleph]