Competition 3438 was inspired by the 1986 film Clockwise, in which John Cleese is constantly impeded in his attempt to get to the headmasters’ conference to make a speech. ‘It’s not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It’s the hope!’ he wails to a pupil at one point. There were lots of A+
Competition 3437 invited you to submit a passage or poem incorporating the line ‘Why, what’s the matter, That you have such a February face’, from Much Ado About Nothing. It continues ‘So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?’ – rain, muck, drizzle and sludge would be more appropriate to 2026. There was a healthy
Competition 3435 invited you to write a poem that included Wendy Cope’s immortal line ‘A happier cabbage you never did see’, from ‘Being Boring’. This was a popular competition with more entries than usual (it’s always a mystery) and you grappled heroically with the challenge of making cabbage interesting. A mention must go to Janine
Competition 3434 was prompted by the 400th anniversary of the retrospectively controversial purchase of Manhattan island by the Dutchman Peter Minuit from a local tribe, supposedly for 60 guilders ($24). You were invited to write a poem on the subject. The standard was really high and the whittling process tricky: mentions must go to A.H.
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
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
Comp. 3428 was inspired by Rose Ruane’s Larkin/Shelley mash-up (many thanks to Bill Greenwell for flagging this up): They Oz you up, your Mandyias. They may not mean to, but they do. They give you vast and trunkless legs A sunken shattered visage too. But they were Ozzed up in their turn By Mandyias upon
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
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 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
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
Comp. 3413 was prompted by J.G. Ballard’s story ‘The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race’ (itself inspired by Alfred Jarry’s ‘The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race’). You were invited to consider some event in a category to which it did not belong. It was harder than ever to
For Comp. 3411 you were invited to submit a passage or poem on the subject of dynamic pricing. Thanks to Paul Freeman for the suggestion, who deserves a nod for his entry too. So do Mike Morrison, Matt Quinn, Nicholas Lee, Elizabeth Kay, Frank Upton and others, and here’s John O’Byrne’s Larkinesque riff: I listen
For Competition 3408 you were invited to write poems about heatwaves. This comp was inspired by the weather! In the face of lethargy, rage, sleeplessness etc lots of you still managed to put fingers to keyboard with good results. It was almost too hot to choose, but the £25 vouchers go to the following. Long
For Competition 3407 you were invited to write about a historical event euphemistic-ally. This challenge was a little vague; Private Eye code was the inspiration but from the tone of the entries it could have been 1066 and All That. The standard was very high, with too many runners-up to name names, and the £25
For Competition 3405 you were invited to submit a scene in which Doctor Who has regenerated into someone very unexpected. Plenty of interesting transformations resulted, featuring among others Paddington Bear, Mary Berry and two Jacob Rees-Moggs, but the winners of the £25 vouchers are below. The Doctor, regenerating as a tall, meaty-faced man in jeans,
