COMPETITION
No. 473: The word game
Competitors are invited to use the following twelve words, taken from the opening pages of a well-known work of literature, in the order given, to construct part of a narrative, essay, speech, advertisement, newspaper report or other coherent piece of prose. Any number of words can intervene, to a maximum total of 150, but marks may be given for brevity, as 'well as for structural integrity and imagina- tion. Entries must be in by 13 November.
The words : Landlord, troubled, country, pair, desolation, black, fingers, jealous, tenant, barrier.
In addition to prizes of five guineas for the best contribution and three guineas each for runners-up, a special prize of one guinea will be awarded to the first entry opened which correctly identifies the book from which the words were chosen.
Since this competition will be new to many readers, here is an example: The words: Father, accident, pie, mischief, basket, umbrella, naughty, squeezed, French, ate, sick, parsley. (From The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter.)
Sperhnen entry: 'Modern psychologists agree that father-deprivation in the child almost in- variably leads to accident-proneness in the adult. From this it is as easy as pie to deduce that young people who get into mischief come from fatherless homes. An interesting case in- volved a married woman at the supermarket whose shopping basket was found to contain a bowler hat, an umbrella and two naughty French novels—all stolen. She clearly felt her- self squeezed inside the pressures of an acquisitive society; in this context I think it is significant that she did not understand French- At the police station, she ate voraciously, and was immediately sick, crying for "parsley"— clearly indicative of the need for a "pa" or father-figure in her life.'
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