Competition
This sporting life
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
In Competition No. 3065 you were invited to supply a happy ending for a well-known play, poem or novel. …
Living dangerously
In Competition No. 3064 you were invited to supply a newspaper leading article exposing the hitherto unsuspected corrupting influence of…
Pundemic
In Competition No. 3063 you were invited to submit a poem about puns containing puns. Dryden regarded paronomasia as…
Where there’s a Will
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
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
In Competition No. 3060 you were invited to provide an updated version of ‘Jerusalem’ starting with the words ‘And did…
That’s chemistry
In Competition No. 3059 you were invited to supply a poem inspired by the periodic table. The writer and chemist…
Tourist misinformation
In Competition No. 3058 you were invited to supply snippets of mischievously/sadistically misleading advice for foreign tourists visiting Britain, or…
Net effect
In Competition No. 3057 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The day the internet died’. Phyllis…
Closed shop
In Competition No. 3056 you were invited to submit an elegy on the death of the High Street. Your…
Question time
In Competition No. 3055 you were invited to take a well-known figure on the world stage, living or dead, and…
Double vision
In Competition No. 3054 you were invited to compose double dactyls about double acts. I didn’t include the rules about…
#MeToo lit
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
In Competition No. 3052 you were invited to supply a sonnet inspired by a well-known contemporary figure’s characteristic feature. There…
Royal treatment
In Competition No. 3051 you were invited to supply an entry by a well-known diarist describing the wedding day of…
A fine bromance
In Competition No. 3049 you were invited to submit a poem about a bromance. Pairings including Friedrich and Karl,…
New word order
In Competition No. 3048 you were invited to take an existing word and alter it by a) adding a letter,…
Between the lines
In Competition No. 3047 you were invited to supply an imaginary testimonial for a high-profile figure that is superficially positive…
First and last
In Competition No. 3046 you were invited to supply a poem beginning with the last line of any well-known poem…
Mind your language
In Competition No. 3045 you were invited to provide a poem about euphemisms. You avoided politics and sex (mostly),…
Let’s talk about sex
In Competition No. 3044 you were invited to provide a lesson in the facts of life courtesy of a well-known…
Poison pen
In Competition No. 3043 you were invited to provide a short story inspired by the Salisbury poisonings. Ian McEwan,…
Carroll in La La Land
In Competition No. 3042, a challenge inspired by the American parodist Frank Jacobs’s 1975 version of ‘Jabberwocky’, ‘As If Lewis…
Creative spark
In Competition No. 3041, to mark the centenary of the birth of Muriel Spark, you were invited to submit a…