You're getting this because nobody told you about the secret little hibernate 'elements' and 'indices' functions. Yes I know there's 1001 tutorials/books/etc on how to creating a mapping file with lists or sets or maps. But no, no of course it wouldn't be usefull to put in said tutorials a small hint as to how one actually queries these collections.

from the hib docs:
"
from Player p where 3 > all elements(p.scores)
from Show show where 'fizard' in indices(show.acts)
"