Competition

In Competition No. 2853 you were asked to incorporate the following words (they are real geological terms) into a piece of plausible and entertaining prose so that they acquire a new meaning in the context of your narrative: Corallian, Permian, Lias, Kimmeridge, Oolite, Cornbrash, Ampthill. The inspiration for this comp came from a bit in Robert Macfarlane’s wonderful The Old Ways where he muses on the names of the surface rock formations in the British Isles: ‘It’s tempting to lend them hypothetical definitions. Great Oolite (the honorific of the panjandrum of a non-existent kingdom). Cornbrash (a Midwest American home-baked foodstuff)....’ There was a great deal of wit and ingenuity on show in the entry this week and competition was hot.

In Competition No. 2852 you were invited to step into the shoes of a well-known writer of your choice and submit a poem or piece of prose in praise or defence of something you would not expect them to champion. You were on top form this week. Martin Parker reveals a lighter side of Leonard Cohen with a nice twist on ‘Bird on a Wire’, while Alanna Blake’s Wordsworth has a soft spot for wind farms. Ernest Hemingway comes out for the League Against Cruel Sports and against sobriety. And J. Seery’s Barbara Cartland shows her true Marxist colours (‘There is no phrase in English more sensuous than “dialectical materialism”’). Other stellar performers were John Samson, Josephine Boyle, C.J.

In Competition No. 2851 you were invited to mark Jeremy Paxman’s departure from Newsnight by supplying an extract from an interview with a politician or statesman in which the interviewer doggedly but unsuccessfully attempts to get a straight answer to a straight question. There’s space only to announce that the winners take £30 and W.J. Webster nabs £35 for his entry, which features a slippery Boris Johnson. I. Would you like to replace David Cameron as Prime Minister? B.J. With whom? Good grief, man, there’s no vacancy and I’m no kingmaker. I. Nor a potential rival? B.J. He is my leader and I think of myself as his fidus Achates. I stroll pleasantly in the cool of his shadow. I. But if he were for some reason... B.J.

In Competition No. 2850 you were invited to invent proverbs that sound profound but have no meaning. This was an extremely popular competition, which attracted an enormous entry. It was a pleasure to judge, and cheering, too, to see lots of unfamiliar names in among the regulars. The best entries contain just the promise of a profound meaning — but frustrate the reader’s attempt to work out exactly what it is. I tried to weed out those submissions (some of them very amusing) that did express a clearly discernible deeper truth, but some may have slipped through the net. The following competitors deserve an honourable mention: ‘The shallow puddle floods no meadows’ (D.A.

In Competition No. 2849 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of the BBC. The entry felt a bit flat this week and you seemed to be lacking in any real conviction either way. Roger Theobald’s opening lines pretty much reflected the general mood: ‘To praise or dispraise: well, if that’s the question,/ The record is too mixed to be quite sure.’ An honourable mention goes to Jerome Betts for his pithy four-liner. Basil Ransome-Davies romps home with the extra fiver and the rest pocket £30 each. I always treasured Auntie. She was such    a damn good sport. Thanks to BBC steam wireless I was    entertained and taught.

In Competition No. 2848 you were invited to submit a poem commenting on Scottish independence in the style of William Topaz McGonagall. McGonagallesque long lines leave me space only to congratulate you on a vast and skilful entry before handing over to the man himself, hailed by the TLS as ‘the only truly memorable bad poet in our language’. Ralph Rochester takes the extra fiver; the rest nab £35. Bounteous Heavens, let us all rejoice! For the People of Scotland have been given a     Choice And there is to be a National Referendum For which we must thank the Scottish     Nationalists and London.

In Competition No. 2847 you were invited to submit a poem celebrating a famous duo. You wheeled out a colourful cast of pairings. Ray Kelley sang the praises of Flanders and Swann: ‘Never was there a sweeter fit/ of wit to melody, melody to wit’. Brian Allgar proposed a toast to that gruesome twosome Burke and Hare. And Martin Parker saluted south London kings of retail Arding and Hobbs: ‘Posh Knightsbridge had Harrods for nabobs and nobs./ The folks down at Clapham had Arding and Hobbs.’ Hugh King was impressive, as were Michael Swan and Alanna Blake, but they were edged out by this week’s overall champ, Chris O’Carroll, who takes £35, and his fellow winners, who pocket £30 apiece.

In Competition No. 2846 you were invited to invent the six rules for writing of a well-known author of your choice. Honourable mentions go to Hugh King, whose Revd W.A. Spooner urges writers to ‘be sure to merge all pisstakes’, and to J. Seery, who reckons Hemingway’s sixth rule would be: ‘It is you or the reader. Only one of you is going to walk away from this alive. Make sure it is you.’ I was prompted to set this task by a tweet that reminded me of George Orwell’s famous six rules, and W.J. Webster earns the bonus fiver for crafting an eloquent riposte to Orwell on the part of Henry James. The rest take £25 each. 1. Do not think that using three words where one will do is a cardinal sin.

In Competition No. 2845 you were invited to provide a hymn for atheists. This excellent, and topical, competition was suggested by John Whitworth, in response to the growth of organised atheism. Hymns do not feature at all at the Sunday Assembly, an atheist church founded last year in London. Instead the congregation sings along, in evangelical style, to pop songs by the likes of the Pointer Sisters, Stevie Wonder and Daft Punk. Perhaps they might feel inspired, by one of the entries below, to change their tune. Honourable mentions go to Sid Field, George Simmers, Barbara Smoker, Nick Grace, Richard Kelly and Samuel Johnson. The bonus fiver is Rob Stuart’s and the rest take £25 each.

In Competition No. 2844 you were invited to provide an extract from either a gripping thriller or a bodice-ripping romance containing half a dozen pieces of inconsequential information. I can now add the fact that Zanzibar is the world’s largest clove producer, and that 99 per cent of Estonians have blue eyes, to my cache of conversational titbits. Thanks, for those morsels of trivia, to J. Seery and Nicholas Hodgson. Basil Ransome-Davies takes £30; the rest nab £25. I was wearing out shoe-leather tracking Torpedo McCann across the city, learning why most American males prefer rubber soles. LA had expanded since it was bought by the US from Mexico in 1848 and I was building a thirst myself when he entered a saloon next to a tattoo parlour.

In Competition No. 2843 you were given a list of poets’ surnames — motion, bridges, wilde, gray, cope, hood, burns and browning — and asked to incorporate them into a poem or piece of prose. I gave you scope for showing off by inviting you to cram in extra names should you choose to. The award for class swot has to go to Albert Black, who pulled off the phenomenal feat of shoehorning 52 names into his entry. A nod to Frank McDonald, whose entry to another competition gave me the idea for this. Basil Ransome-Davies takes the bonus fiver; his fellow winners pocket £25 each. The bridge that burns can be the best of bridges. A pound of hope won’t buy an ounce of luck. Try Scotland, though you’ll have to cope with midges.

In Competition 2842 you were invited to compose the most off-putting book blurb that you could muster. There’s just space to say that I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy Jonathan Friday’s ‘groundbreaking exploration of the neglected beauty of bodily fluids and excreta’, which features ‘a striking array of scratch’n’sniff imagery’. G.M. Davis, nabs £30. The rest take £25. Like Ernest Vincent Wright and Georges Perec, Guillermo Pozoverde has written a lipogrammatic novel, an extreme one.

In Competition 2841 you were invited to paint an amusing portrait in verse of the vice and folly of humankind. It was William Congreve who wrote that it is the business of a comic poet to paint the vice and follies of humankind, and I thought I would give you the opportunity to do just that. Gail White expresses doubt that ‘the vices of our flesh and minds’ can ‘be contained in sixteen lines’. But John O’Byrne boils it all down into a haiku: ‘My new credit card/ Means I can buy happiness./ Where did I go wrong?’ The extra fiver is Sylvia Fairley’s. Her fellow winners take £30.

In Competition 2840 you were invited to provide an extract from the autobiography of a modern-day celebrity, ghostwritten by a literary great. Where would Jordan’s literary ambitions have been without the creative input of Rebecca Farnworth? And how many chapters would Wayne Rooney have managed without the guiding genius of Hunter Davies? Behind many a bestselling biography is an invisible man or woman, the unsung hero who has done most of the work but gets virtually none of the credit. There were some inspired pairings: Charles Dickens and Jamie Oliver; Charlotte Brontë and Susan Boyle; Stephen Fry and Samuel Johnson. Commendations to C.J. Gleed, Noel Petty and Josh Ekroy. The bonus fiver goes to D.A. Prince for her account of the life of Stephen Fry by way of Bleak House.

In Competition 2839 you were invited to submit a poem about the darker side of spring. There were references in the entry to Larkin, who could always be relied on to see the bleaker side of things (‘their greenness is a kind of grief’), as well as to Eliot and Thomas Edward Brown. There were also nice echoes of Ogden Nash and Wordsworth. Nicholas Holbrook and Josephine Boyle were unlucky losers and I liked Ray Kelley’s closing couplet: ‘It’s not by mere coincidence that vernal/ Rhymes so immaculately with infernal.’ The winners, printed below, earn £25 each. Bill Greenwell takes the extra fiver.

In Competition 2838 you were invited to submit a short story entitled Fifty Shades of whatever you chose. It was a bit of a mixed bag this week but I liked Gerard Benson’s twist on Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, Josh Ekroy’s 50 Shades of Ukip and Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead’s clever, grisly tale of a woman reduced to a piece of meat. Not all of you went the E.L. James route, but Chris O’Carroll’s winning entry clearly took its lead from the queen of erotica. He is rewarded with 50 lashes and £30. His fellow winners pocket £25 each.   Fifty Shades of Dan Brown ‘The Pope!’ he hissed in her ear. The Illuminati! Atlantis! Stonehenge! Inscriptions! Codes! Occult wisdom!

In Competition 2837 you were invited to submit a poem on the horrors of a reunion dinner. In days gone by, the allure of school reunions lay in the opportunity they offered to see — and assess — former classmates in their adult incarnations. But in an age of social media no one really loses touch and that element of mystery is all but gone. We’ve seen the pictures and read the status updates. Albert Black, Rob Stuart and Peter Goulding are highly commended. The winners take £25 each. The extra fiver belongs to Alan Millard. ‘Good evening, sir, wind down the window please, Perhaps you’d like to tell me where you’ve been.

In Competition 2836 you were invited to coin collective nouns for the following: tweeters, hackers, hoodies, WAGS, environmentalists, bankers, MPs and contrarians. This was by far the most popular competition we’ve run for a long time and it was cheering to see so many new names in the postbag. Inevitably, there was a fair amount of repetition: nest/cacophony/outrage/triviality of tweeters came up more than once, as did skulk/huggle/scowl of hoodies; bonus/wad/wunch/trough of bankers; knot/-perversity/Hitch of contrarians; vacuum/bling/surgery of WAGs; flood of environmentalists; expense of MPs; to list just a few.

In Competition 2835 you were invited to submit a profile for an online dating website for a well-known politician, living or dead. Unlucky loser John Samson’s Oliver Cromwell might, I suppose, appeal to those who like the masterful type: ‘That ye should seek matrimonial harmony by reading such vainglorious publications doth render thee unworthy of espousing this Puritan. Speak thus of me to thy more God-fearing sisters...’ Commiserations, too, to Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead and Hugh King. The winners take £25 each. W.J. Webster pockets the bonus fiver. Hi, my name is John. I’m from Yorkshire. We all know Yorkshiremen can be bluff and let me tell you straight out I’m 100 per cent bluff. I speak as I find and find as I speak. WICWIG as the young folk say.

In Competition 2834 you were invited to submit an extract from a classic of children’s literature rewritten in the style of hard-boiled crime fiction. My word, you were good this week. The entries came flooding in and were a joy to judge. Much-loved children’s classics, filtered through the prism of gritty 1930s urban America, were given a new, hard-boiled lease of life. All the hallmarks of the genre were there: sharp repartee, staccato delivery, economy of expression, psychological drama, black humour and the liberal use of simile. Honourable mentions go to Barbara Lightfoot and Poppy McLean. The winners earn £25 each, except Adrian Fry who gets £30. I’m looking for this broad named Alice. An innocent abroad?