Competition

This sporting life

22 September 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3066 you were invited to submit an ode to a piece of sporting equipment. There is a…

All’s well that ends well

15 September 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3065 you were invited to supply a happy ending for a well-known play, poem or novel.  …

Living dangerously

8 September 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3064 you were invited to supply a newspaper leading article exposing the hitherto unsuspected corrupting influence of…

Pundemic

1 September 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3063 you were invited to submit a poem about puns containing puns.   Dryden regarded paronomasia as…

Where there’s a Will

25 August 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3062 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean-style soliloquy that a contemporary politician might have felt moved…

The appliance of science

18 August 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3061 you were invited to imagine a well-known author who doesn’t normally write in the genre having…

A new Jerusalem

11 August 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3060 you were invited to provide an updated version of ‘Jerusalem’ starting with the words ‘And did…

That’s chemistry

4 August 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3059 you were invited to supply a poem inspired by the periodic table. The writer and chemist…

Tourist misinformation

28 July 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3058 you were invited to supply snippets of mischievously/sadistically misleading advice for foreign tourists visiting Britain, or…

Net effect

21 July 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3057 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The day the internet died’.   Phyllis…

Closed shop

14 July 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3056 you were invited to submit an elegy on the death of the High Street.   Your…

Question time

7 July 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3055 you were invited to take a well-known figure on the world stage, living or dead, and…

Double vision

30 June 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3054 you were invited to compose double dactyls about double acts. I didn’t include the rules about…

#MeToo lit

23 June 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3053, an assignment prompted by Anthony Horowitz’s reflections on creating female characters for his latest Bond novel,…

A sonnet on it

16 June 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3052 you were invited to supply a sonnet inspired by a well-known contemporary figure’s characteristic feature. There…

Royal treatment

9 June 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3051 you were invited to supply an entry by a well-known diarist describing the wedding day of…

A fine bromance

26 May 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3049 you were invited to submit a poem about a bromance.   Pairings including Friedrich and Karl,…

New word order

19 May 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3048 you were invited to take an existing word and alter it by a) adding a letter,…

Between the lines

12 May 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3047 you were invited to supply an imaginary testimonial for a high-profile figure that is superficially positive…

First and last

5 May 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3046 you were invited to supply a poem beginning with the last line of any well-known poem…

Mind your language

28 April 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3045 you were invited to provide a poem about euphemisms.   You avoided politics and sex (mostly),…

Let’s talk about sex

21 April 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3044 you were invited to provide a lesson in the facts of life courtesy of a well-known…

Poison pen

14 April 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3043 you were invited to provide a short story inspired by the Salisbury poisonings.   Ian McEwan,…

Carroll in La La Land

7 April 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3042, a challenge inspired by the American parodist Frank Jacobs’s 1975 version of ‘Jabberwocky’, ‘As If Lewis…

Creative spark

31 March 2018 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3041, to mark the centenary of the birth of Muriel Spark, you were invited to submit a…