COMPETITION

No. 589: True feeling

Set by 1, M. Crooks: A recent note in the Times diary revealed that John Masefield suffered from sea-sickness and originally wrote 'I must go down to the roads again'. There must be other, equally startling literary disclosures—e.g. that Keats hated birds and first wrote 'My head aches, and a raucous uproar drowns/My sleep . . .' Competitors are asked to uncover the secret fear of any other writer and to give an extract (maxi- mum twelve lines of verse or 100 words of prose) from the real and original version of one of his or her works. Author and work should be indicated; entries, marked 'Com- petition No. 589', by 6 February.

No. 586: The winners

Trevor Grotie reports: SPECTATOR readers who had struggled ineffectually over Christ- mas Quiz were invited to exact revenge by setting a fiendish brainteaser themselves. In order to help them along we offered five answers and asked competitors to provide five appropriately devilish questions to match them. Owing to some curious goings-on down at the press, the printed version of this competition—as a good many readers pointed out—made very poor sense, with the result that entries differed widely in point of format, etc. So instead of prizes being awarded on the basis of the best selection of five questions, they will be awarded in each case per individual suggestion. Most compe- titors tended to adopt the crossword setter's approach, e.g. B. L. Howarth with a ques- tion to answer number 1—'I wandered lonely as a cloud':

The beginnings of motion recollected in tranquillity!'

Martin Fagg wins two guineas for an alto- gether more quiz-like suggestion:

'What famous poetic first line is a fib?' (The relevant entry in Dorothy Wordsworth's diary records that she accompanied her brother on the walk which formed the basis of -Daffodils'.) And a guinea to T. Griffiths:

'Pers. pron. 1st sing. nom. divagated in a sequestered condition analogously to a pom- pon of cirrus. Who did?'

Answer number 2 read as follows: 'Shake- speare, Lindsay Anderson, Henry Ford, Little Miss Muffet and Moby Dick'. The point was, of course, that this string of unrelated names should somehow appear as the answer to a single question, or at least a series of related questions. Molly Fitton's was by far the most distinguished suggestion and wins two guineas: (a) Who set a famous scene in a Gloucester- shire orchard'?

(b) Who used exterior shots of a well-known Gloucestershire public school in his most notable film?

(c) Which celebrated motor mechanic once lived in a Detroit suburb only nine blocks from the intersection of 29th Street and Gloster Avenue?

(d) Which famous nursery rhyme character may well have been the daughter of an arachnaphile from Stroud, Glos.?

(e) Which famous novel was first issued by a publisher who had an uncle living at the time at New Gloster, Connecticut?

'Hull' was answer number 3 and there was no shortage of questions to match it. Russell Lucas's was: 'The Chaudiere falls power the twin of an English port.'

No less erudite was Molly Fitton's: 'Who conducted the London Bach Choir at a concert at the Queen's Hall on 17 February 1932?' (Answer, the late Sir Percy Hull.) But the most professional entry undoubtedly came from Captain Rochester, who wins two guineas: 'Now we all know what a monostich is. Where are we if the following is a telestich?

The Bishop asked a colleague passing through, "How does our northern city seem to you?"

The cleric smiled, "I hesitate to tell; It's very much how I imagine hell!"' No especially amusing questions for answer number 4 (2rr), though plenty in the vein of this, from E. 0. Parrott: 'Distance round a pie of some kind (or two?)' The answer to number 5 was 'Mercurius Oxoniensis'. Plenty of witty suggestions, but only two win prizes. A guinea to N. J. Rock : 'Messenger of godlike class-distinction, oper- ating a private code for a well-informed Onlooker.'

And a final guinea to Molly Fitton: 'Who. having first seen the light of day in the Midlands during the Civil War, is still winging his way regularly to Bloomsbury?'