Competition

For Competition 3443 you were invited to submit a dear John letter in the style of a well-known writer. The brief stipulated 16 lines but you submitted both verse and prose and I allowed both. I very much enjoyed Sue Pickard’s Bram Stoker: ‘My dear Count, I can barely summon the energy to write this

Competition 3432 invited you to submit a passage containing some AI-style ‘hallucinations’ (it would be just as anthropomorphic to call them lies). These are false assertions delivered in a perky tone, often with a smidgeon of flattery, in an answer that may contain enough correct information to give the user misplaced confidence. The yield was

For Competition 3431, you were invited to submit a passage in which Sherlock Holmes solves one of the great mysteries of our time. Many entries interpreted the ‘of our time’ bit quite loosely, with Holmes tackling the Princes in the Tower, the origins of Stonehenge and even the Big Bang. Nonetheless, after toying with pedantry,

For Competition 3430 you were invited to write a rhyming prophecy for 2026. Joe Houlihan’s closing couplet encapsulates the tenor of the entry: Next year is like this year, but much, much worse: So take a stiff brandy and call for nurse. But while the mood was downbeat, the standard was cheering and the entries

Competition 3429 invited you to tell the story of the Nativity in the style of a well-known writer. There were very many excellent passages, enough to fill this column three times over, but as it is the £25 vouchers go to the following. Thanks for all your lovely entries this year and happy Christmas one

For Competition 3427 you were invited to write a paean on a place traditionally considered to be ugly. In an accomplished entry, in which many took inspiration from William McGonagall, the Bard of Dundee, honourable mentions go to Ralph Goldswain, Richard Warren and Elizabeth Kay. The winners, led by Bill Greenwell on the Pompidou Centre,

Comp. 3426 was inspired by Stephen Vincent Benét’s 1927 poem ‘American Names’ (see Charles Moore’s Notes, 1 November): I have fallen in love with American names, The sharp names that never get fat, The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims, The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat, Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.     You were invited to

Competition 3425 was prompted by Gill Hornby, a biographer of Jane Austen, telling an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival that Jane’s sister Cassandra did the novelist’s reputation a favour by burning most of her letters, and if that hadn’t happened she might have been cancelled: ‘She has become this very vague, hazy figure, like

For Competition 3424 you were invited to write a short story for which ‘Conman’ could be the title, containing a dozen words of four or more letters beginning with con or man. This produced a larger-than-usual entry in which all were fairly evenly matched, making it tricky to whittle it down to the six below

Comp. 3423 invited you to submit a passage about a command or suggestion from literature being taken too literally. I was sorry not to squeeze in Alan Millard’s riff on John Donne’s ‘Go and Catch a Falling Star’: ‘The object in question can reach temperatures of almost 3,000˚F when entering the Earth’s atmosphere…’. A popular

For Competition 3422 you were invited to submit a poem or passage on the theme of ‘daylight saving’. In a very good batch, once again the poetry bubbled to the top. There are too many close runners-up to name names, and it seems best to maximise space for winners. The £25 vouchers go to the

For Competition 3421 you were invited to submit a reply from Slough to offset Betjeman’s rude lines on the subject. The poet Ian McMillan got in there first, springing to Slough’s defence in 2005 with ‘Slough Re-visited’: ‘Come friendly words and splash on Slough!/ Celebrate it, here and now/ Describe it with a gasp, a

For Competition 3420 you were invited to submit a poem or short story incorporating that sentence of Emerson’s: ‘The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.’ Dr Johnson may have been the first to mention spoon counting, saying (according to Boswell) that ‘if he does really think that there is

For Comp 3419 you were invited to write a poem to mark National Vodka Day (4 October) or another spurious designated day, actual or invented. There were several good vodka poems, by Adrian Pascu-Tulbure, D.A. Prince, Tanya Dixon–Clegg, and Helen Baty – I was sorry not to be able to fit them in. Ditto David

For Competition 3418 you were invited to provide a pompous leading article on a trivial subject. The ubiquity of ‘Hi’ replacing ‘Dear’; conjoined teabags; the apostrophe (ban it!); the semi-colon (save it!): all featured in a medium-sized, accomplished entry. The half-dozen below stood out and earn their authors the £25 John Lewis vouchers. Our readers

Comp. 3417 invited you to write an elegy to a piece of obsolete technology. This prompted a deluge of very good entries – too many to name all the runners up, though here are some of the lamented objects: mangles, steam engines, oil lamps, floppy discs, the trebuchet, cash registers, radiograms, gramophones, tape recorders, Ceefax,

Comp. 3416 invited you to marry romantasy (the romance-fantasy fusion now dominating fiction sales) with a third genre. Narnia, gritty realism and Holby City were in the mix. Some saw no reason to confine themselves to three, and we had romantasy sci-fi noir, as well as a Scandi noir-Richard Curtis romantasy-com. I’m sorry to leave

For Competition 3415 you were invited to submit a lost poem by a well-known poet which makes us see him or her in a new light. There is space only to commiserate with unlucky losers Elizabeth Kay, Alex Steelsmith, Sophie Hannah, Ralph Goldswain and D.A. Prince. The winners below take the £25 John Lewis vouchers.

For Competition 3414 you were invited to provide an extract from a well-known literary work rewritten to include appropriate product placements. Honourable mentions, in a top-notch entry, go to Max Ross, Ralph Goldswain, Hamish Wilson, John O’Byrne and Paula Cameron – and to Matt Quinn and Nick Syrett for a pair of excellent twists on