Too clever by half

An editor I once worked for would use a putdown for headlines that tried too hard, and just never got there.

That’s too clever by half, she would say, as drily as a date in the sun.

Too clever by half has since, been a default headline checker over decades of giving and appreciating smart headlines.

HuffPo US today goes with ‘Hill Yeah’ – for Hillary Clinton’s victory.

Too clever by half.

Sure, we do get all the word play, but it reads like striving for clever, rather than smartly delivering the pun(ch) [see how this worked].

Watching you HuffPo.