Competition

In Competition No. 2856 you were invited to recruit a well-known author of your choice to give Phil Neville a masterclass in the art of football commentary. After his commentary debut, unkind comparisons were drawn between Neville’s style and a speak-your-weight machine, and when the England physio was stretchered off injured, a Twitter user speculated

In Competition No. 2854 you were invited to invent a title for a new cookery book, with a fresh angle, and supply a publisher’s blurb. When it comes to the market for bizarre cookery books, a quick trawl of the web reveals that there is already stiff competition out there. The Star Wars Cookbook (may

In Competition No. 2853 you were asked to incorporate the following words (they are real geological terms) into a piece of plausible and entertaining prose so that they acquire a new meaning in the context of your narrative: Corallian, Permian, Lias, Kimmeridge, Oolite, Cornbrash, Ampthill. The inspiration for this comp came from a bit in

In Competition No. 2852 you were invited to step into the shoes of a well-known writer of your choice and submit a poem or piece of prose in praise or defence of something you would not expect them to champion. You were on top form this week. Martin Parker reveals a lighter side of Leonard

In Competition No. 2851 you were invited to mark Jeremy Paxman’s departure from Newsnight by supplying an extract from an interview with a politician or statesman in which the interviewer doggedly but unsuccessfully attempts to get a straight answer to a straight question. There’s space only to announce that the winners take £30 and W.J. Webster

In Competition No. 2850 you were invited to invent proverbs that sound profound but have no meaning. This was an extremely popular competition, which attracted an enormous entry. It was a pleasure to judge, and cheering, too, to see lots of unfamiliar names in among the regulars. The best entries contain just the promise of

In Competition No. 2849 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of the BBC. The entry felt a bit flat this week and you seemed to be lacking in any real conviction either way. Roger Theobald’s opening lines pretty much reflected the general mood: ‘To praise or dispraise: well, if that’s

In Competition No. 2848 you were invited to submit a poem commenting on Scottish independence in the style of William Topaz McGonagall. McGonagallesque long lines leave me space only to congratulate you on a vast and skilful entry before handing over to the man himself, hailed by the TLS as ‘the only truly memorable bad

In Competition No. 2847 you were invited to submit a poem celebrating a famous duo. You wheeled out a colourful cast of pairings. Ray Kelley sang the praises of Flanders and Swann: ‘Never was there a sweeter fit/ of wit to melody, melody to wit’. Brian Allgar proposed a toast to that gruesome twosome Burke

In Competition No. 2846 you were invited to invent the six rules for writing of a well-known author of your choice. Honourable mentions go to Hugh King, whose Revd W.A. Spooner urges writers to ‘be sure to merge all pisstakes’, and to J. Seery, who reckons Hemingway’s sixth rule would be: ‘It is you or the

In Competition No. 2845 you were invited to provide a hymn for atheists. This excellent, and topical, competition was suggested by John Whitworth, in response to the growth of organised atheism. Hymns do not feature at all at the Sunday Assembly, an atheist church founded last year in London. Instead the congregation sings along, in

In Competition No. 2844 you were invited to provide an extract from either a gripping thriller or a bodice-ripping romance containing half a dozen pieces of inconsequential information. I can now add the fact that Zanzibar is the world’s largest clove producer, and that 99 per cent of Estonians have blue eyes, to my cache

In Competition No. 2843 you were given a list of poets’ surnames — motion, bridges, wilde, gray, cope, hood, burns and browning — and asked to incorporate them into a poem or piece of prose. I gave you scope for showing off by inviting you to cram in extra names should you choose to. The

In Competition 2842 you were invited to compose the most off-putting book blurb that you could muster. There’s just space to say that I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy Jonathan Friday’s ‘groundbreaking exploration of the neglected beauty of bodily fluids and excreta’, which features ‘a striking array of scratch’n’sniff imagery’. G.M. Davis,

In Competition 2841 you were invited to paint an amusing portrait in verse of the vice and folly of humankind. It was William Congreve who wrote that it is the business of a comic poet to paint the vice and follies of humankind, and I thought I would give you the opportunity to do just

In Competition 2840 you were invited to provide an extract from the autobiography of a modern-day celebrity, ghostwritten by a literary great. Where would Jordan’s literary ambitions have been without the creative input of Rebecca Farnworth? And how many chapters would Wayne Rooney have managed without the guiding genius of Hunter Davies? Behind many a

In Competition 2839 you were invited to submit a poem about the darker side of spring. There were references in the entry to Larkin, who could always be relied on to see the bleaker side of things (‘their greenness is a kind of grief’), as well as to Eliot and Thomas Edward Brown. There were

In Competition 2838 you were invited to submit a short story entitled Fifty Shades of whatever you chose. It was a bit of a mixed bag this week but I liked Gerard Benson’s twist on Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, Josh Ekroy’s 50 Shades of Ukip and Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead’s clever, grisly tale of a woman

In Competition 2837 you were invited to submit a poem on the horrors of a reunion dinner. In days gone by, the allure of school reunions lay in the opportunity they offered to see — and assess — former classmates in their adult incarnations. But in an age of social media no one really loses