Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 2738 you were invited to concoct a government ad that bravely attempts to attract applicants to an especially unappealing job of your invention. Some time ago a reader brought to my attention an ad for the position of ‘Band 3 Process Developers in the VOA2015 Process Team’. Such was its mind-boggling impenetrability (‘The VOA2015 Programme is redesigning the Agency’s processes to create a simplified process model that will better support the new structure of the Agency as it moves into Business Streams...’) that it brought me to wondering who would conceivably apply for such a job and whether the ad could perhaps have been written in a more beguiling way — which is where you come in. Derek Morgan gets the extra fiver.

In Competition No. 2737 you were invited to submit a double dactyl. This popular and, judging by the size of the entry, extraordinarily compulsive poetic parlour game was invented in the Sixties by the celebrated poets Anthony Hecht and John Hollander and is described in the blurb of Jiggery-Pokery, their magnificent compendium of the form, as a ‘devilish amalgam of rhyme, meter, name-dropping and pure nonsense’. The challenge generated a quirky parade of double-dactylic notables. I especially liked Bill Greenwell’s double dactyl as it might have been written by that mangler of meter William McGonagall; commendations, too, to Mike Morrison, Luci Thomas, Christopher Greening, Roger Munson, Alannah Blake and Penelope Mackie.

In Competition No. 2735 you were invited to take as your first line ‘My love is like a [fill in blank]’, and continue, in light verse. Amid the ailments — ‘a drippy nose’, ‘a whooping cough’; the animals — ‘a three-toed sloth’, ‘a sea urchin’; and foodstuffs galore: ‘ripe Gorgonzola’, ‘ a tub of lard’, ‘a rack of ribs’, Bridget Rees’s inventive opening impressed: ‘My love is like a — do you know,/ I don’t know what he’s like!/ I thought I knew for twenty years/ And then he took a hike...’ Honourable mentions, too, to Max Ross and Adam Campbell. The winners get £25 each. Basil Ransome-Davies nets £30.

In Competition No. 2734 you were invited to provide anagrams of lines from Shakespearean sonnets. These assignments are not the most popular but every so often the urge to send you to anagram hell gets the better of me. ‘I found this competition exasperatingly difficult,’ wrote Josephine Boyle. Equally exasperated, it seems, was Basil Ransome-Davies, whose email subject line read: ‘Everlasting fire for this one’. Shirley Curran expressed her frustration anagrammatically: It is rather gawky to reinvent bards! (It is the star to every wand’ring bark). While W.J. Webster injected a refreshing note of cheeriness: ‘Lovely competition! Two Scrabble sets and a laptray — the insomniac’s dream!’ But I am not alone in inflicting such torture.

In Competition No. 2733 you were invited to condense the plot of a Dickens novel into a triple limerick. In case you hadn’t noticed, it would have been Dickens’s 200th birthday this week, and this assignment is a modest contribution to the avalanche of Dickens-related events unleashed across the globe by the bicentenary. (Even estate agents have jumped on the bandwagon: ‘Dickens Mania Brings sales boost to Victorian Homes in the Capital’.) The challenge attracted an enormous and impressive postbag. Well done, one and all. It is a tall order to boil down the great man’s works to 15 lines, and you didn’t shy away from the especially densely plotted doorstops such as Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend.

In Competition No. 2732 you were invited to submit a comically appalling final paragraph to the worst of all possible novels. This challenge is a twist on the magnificent annual Bulwer-Lytton contest, which salutes the memory of the 19th-century writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, author of the much-parodied opening: ‘It was a dark and stormy night…’ Entrants are invited to come up with deliberately dreadful openings to imaginary novels. It was a most enjoyable competition to judge. I was entertained by some truly vile abuses of the English language, the best-worst of which appear below and earn their authors £25 apiece. Dishonourable mentions to Charles Chadwick, Adam Campbell, R.S. Gwynn, W.J. Webster and Katie Mallett. The bonus fiver goes to Basil Ransome-Davies.

In Competition No. 2731 you were invited to supply a poem in praise of punctuation. An excellent entry, this. Space is tight and I very much regretted not having room for Alan Millard, David Duncan Jones and Frank Osen in addition to the worthy winners below. The bonus fiver belongs to Basil Ransome-Davies. The rest pocket £25. I dallied with a comma whose cute curves had made me pause And catch my breath, if only for a second, But she’d a wild obsession with an adjectival clause Whose charismatic syntax always beckoned. My rebound squeeze, a semi-colon eager to be kissed, Proved versatile, a mark of many talents. She had the power to subdivide a rather lengthy list Or function as the pivot of a balance. And did I stop there? No!

In Competition No. 2730 you were invited to supply a refutation in verse of Philip Larkin’s assertion ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’. ‘This Be The Verse’ may not be Larkin’s finest poem but it is certainly his best-known and most oft-quoted (he himself wryly commented that he fully expected to hear it recited by a thousand Girl Guides before he died). The challenge generated a large and generally impressive postbag. Commendations to Frank Osen, Adrian Fry, Robert Schechter and John Whitworth. Star of the show is Alan Millard, who pockets the extra fiver. His fellow winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 each. You lying toad!

In Competition No. 2729 you were invited to recast a well-known nursery rhyme, filtering it through the lens of a recent news story. Josh Ekroy was on fine form: ‘Liam had a little friend/ his suit was white as snow/ and everywhere that Liam went/ his friend was sure to go.’ In a strong entry, honourable mentions also go to Mae Scanlan, Katie Mallett and Noel Petty. The winners get £20 each. The extra fiver is Mike Morrison’s. Mary, Mary, ordinary In décolletage, Thought, ‘Such tedium being medium, Why not plump for large?

In Competition No. 2728 you were asked to provide a parody, with a Christmas connection, of a living British writer with an international reputation. The assignment invited you to follow in the mighty footsteps of Max Beerbohm, whose talent for parody few have matched. His A Christmas Garland, whose centenary falls this year, is considered one of the finest collections of parodies ever written in English, and on its publication reviewers agreed that not only had he captured the styles of his subjects but appeared to have gained ‘temporary loan of their minds’ too. A tough act to follow, then. Derek Morgan, G.M. Davis, David Mackie, Shirley Curran and Chris O’Carroll impressed, but first prize goes to Alan Millard. His fellow winners get £25 each.

In Competition No. 2727 you were asked for a short story entitled ‘An unwelcome bequest’. The Guardian recently invited its readers to share their experiences of unwished-for bequeathals. The request elicited a crop of hugely funny and touching stories featuring, among other things, ‘a hideous pink pig in a hat and a pinny drinking a cup of tea’, which  was initially consigned to a cupboard but metamorphosed over time into a symbol of stoicism that provided its recipient with solace in dark times. Animals popped up frequently in the entry: I especially liked Basil Ransome-Davies malign, windy polecat. Honourable mentions, too, to Mark Ambrose, G.M. Davis and Natalia Colthurst. Bill Greenwell’s vengeful parent gets him £30; the rest nab £25.

In Competition No. 2726 you were asked for a modern version of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ taking as your first line ‘On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me...’ and continuing for a further twelve. Perhaps inevitably there was a fair amount of repetition in the entry: plenty of leakers leaking, hacks a-hacking, lawyers laughing and ‘Five Olympic rings’. Still, you were on good form. Here are extracts from three submissions that only just missed out on a place in the winning line-up.

In Competition No. 2725 you were invited to supply the sales particulars for planet Earth. ‘Need a home where you can really spread yourself?’ asks George Simmers. ‘It’s the ideal residence for the adventurous virus with an urge to propagate. There’s a comfily warm and humid climate in most parts of the planet (And it’s getting warmer! Fantastic!) Potential hosts abound.’ What’s not to like? Equally persuasive and slippery of tongue were John Plowman, Tracy Davidson, Frank Upton and Adrian Fry. But those who most successfully accessed their inner  estate agent are printed below and get £30 each. This week’s top dog is Brian Murdoch, who pockets the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2724 you were invited to supply a poem in which the initial letters of each line read down the page reproduce the last line. Though some of you clearly relish competitions of this kind (check out Frank McDonald’s double-paracrostic in the winning line-up), there was the inevitable rumble of protest in the ranks. Here’s Jerome Betts: ‘To write a verse within such rules,/ How can this count as fun?/ I think that only drunks or fools/ Suspect it can be done...’ Bill Greenwell agrees: ‘Some competitions/ Expect you to slave/ Nightly. Perdition/ Draws near, as, unshaved,/ Manic and glum,/ Expecting to die,/ Folly fills bumf./ It’s like working out pi.’ Discontent notwithstanding, you rose to the challenge with gusto.

In Competition No. 2721 you were invited to supply a short story incorporating the following: ‘rebarbative’, ‘solipsistic’, ‘lapidary’, ‘consequential’, ‘plangent’, ‘gibbous’. It was an impressive postbag with only the occasional stilted moment — you displayed considerable ingenuity in weaving the given words into a plausible and entertaining narrative. I was sorry to have to disqualify Adrian Fry’s amusing portrait of a village literary festival on account of a technical slip. Commendations, too, to Max Ross, Susan Therkelsen and John Plowman. The winners get £25; the bonus fiver is Brian Murdoch’s.

In Competition No. 2720 you were invited to supply a piece of prose written by a well-known author working in an unlikely context. Thanks to Brian Moore for drawing my attention to Samuel Beckett’s flirtation with a career in grocery trade journalism, as revealed in the great man’s recently published volume of letters: ‘I see advertised in to-day’s Irish Times an editorial vacancy on the staff of the RGDATA [Retail Grocery Dairy and Allied Trades-Association] Review at £300 per an. I think seriously of applying. Any experience of trade journalism would be so useful.’      It was a strong entry and I very much regretted not having space in the winning line-up for Gerard Benson, Shirley Curran and Adrian Fry.