Victoria Lane

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,

For Competition 3404 you were invited to design your own Midsummer rites. There were fewer entries than usual, all of them very good. I was sorry not to have room for Mark Ambrose’s ritual involving a small white ball (‘Eighteen is the sacred number. We assemble before dawn and climb the hill to a wooded

In Comp. 3402 you were invited to submit a poem or passage about an unusual predilection. The quirks ranged from wildly fantastical to having the ring of truth. Mike Morrison, Paddy Mullin, David Shields, Elizabeth Kay, Adrian Fry and Nick Syrett were close contenders, but the vouchers go to those below. In supermarket checkout queues,

For Comp. 3401 you were invited to submit a poem that included the line ‘My vegetable love should grow’ from Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’. There were lots of entries, some of them quite fruity (sorry). There are too many worthy runners-up to name names, but the£25 vouchers go to the winners below. My vegetable,

Competition 3398 invited you to submit a poem about snooker as the world champion-ship was under way. The entries poured in! There were many excellent poems in both camps (snooker being either the best or the most boring thing ever). Among others, Anna Cox, D.A. Prince, Nick Syrett, Kavanagh Millard, Ralph Goldswain and Helen Baty

Comp. 3396 invited you to write a poem that endeavoured to romanticise tariffs. There was a fine haul, though a few had to be disallowed for straying from the brief. Praise to George Simmers, Frank McDonald, Janine Beacham, Sylvia Fairley, Tom Adam, Sue Pickard and Elizabeth Kay, among others, and a special mention to Tracy

Comp. 3395 yielded many fine entries in which Animal Farm became a satire on office politics. Deserving of a mention: David Silverman for his White House version featuring a ‘prize wild boar, one E. Long-Tusk’ and ‘two American XL Bullies, Don and Shady’; and Sue Pickard’s scenario in which two workers, Pinko and Porky, ‘inspired

Competition 3393 went in search of – and found – basic laughs by inviting you to submit a passage of historical fiction sprinkled with anachronistic detail. I was thinking along the lines of the grey squirrel in Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour (set during the War of the Roses), but it was generally

Comp. 3392 invited you to write ‘The Curse of King Thut’ (in poetry or prose) in response to the discovery of the tomb of the pharaoh Thutmose II, the first such since Tutankhamun’s. There were many imaginative curses, from the archaeologist Artemis Spendlove Jr’s tinnitus (Mark Ambrose) to the contents of the tomb turning out

For Competition 3390 you were invited to come up with your own version of the Groucho Marx song ‘I’m Against It’, from the film Horse Feathers: Your proposition may be good But let’s have one thing understood: Whatever it is, I’m against it. Hats off to David Silverman, who got into specifics: (‘Conniving, skiving; Mo

Comp. 3389 invited you to submit an estate agent’s blurb advertising a property development on Mars. There were many excellent entries, not all of them enticing. Sean Smith’s seemed potentially the most realistic, offering for £4.5 billion a 12 sq m dwelling with private sleeping quarters: ‘private on a rotational basis with other residents’. Nicholas Lee advertised

In Comp. 3387, for the centenary of the publication of The Great Gatsby and Mrs Dalloway, you were invited to submit a passage in which one goes to the other’s party. It was especially hard to whittle this one down. Deserving a mention: Mrs D.’s West Egg dream by Brian Murdoch (‘“Sod the temporal perspective

Competition 3386 invited you to submit poems about the domestic arrangements at the White House. The idea was to inspire some visions of what goes on behind the official scenes – oh to be a fly on the East Wing wall. MAGA hats off to Frank McDonald, Elizabeth Kay, Daniel Pukkila, Nicholas Lee, Tom Adam,

For Competition 3385, with Valentine’s Day looming, you were invited to submit a passage in which one well-known character from literature goes on a date with another. There was a very full inbox, with enough excellent entries to fill weeks’ worth of competitions. It’s tempting to think that some of these imaginative pairings would have

For Competition 3384, since this issue appears on the first of the month, you were invited to submit a short story featuring someone who is a slave to superstition. Every corner of the country used to have its own folkloric behaviours that have now been forgotten (one wonders why salt and mirrors and magpies etc stuck).

In Competition 3383 you were invited to submit a Tripadvisor-type review by an alien who has visited Earth for the first time. Frank Upton pointed out that it could have been titled ‘Mostly Harmless’, Ford Prefect’s entire entry for Earth in The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The submissions were full of inventive detail and

For Competition 3382 you were invited to write a poem to mark this day, officially the dreariest of the year. (This year, as a few pointed out, it doubles as Inauguration Day. Things can only get better!) Responses ranged from Tracy Davidson’s ‘It’s just a Monday. You’ll be fine’ to Sylvia Fairley’s despairing ‘When will