No. 474: The winners
Competitors appeared to be more concerned to fulfil the rules of the competition than to show off their talents by surmounting them: some of the early sonneteers encountered similar difficulties. However, though the end-rhymes did impose certain strictures, there was a disappoint- ing lack of metrical inventiveness—outstanding amongst the exceptions was Dr Dening-Smither- man's remarkable exercise in sub-Gaelic skel- tonics.
As in the previous week's Word Game, the best entries were those that contained an ele- ment of wit—in the eighteenth rather than twentieth century sense. G. Hill on the Prince of Wales, for instance, contrived a neat double entendre with his last line: 'I've got to get a First or I'll be crowned' and D. Hawson in the dentist's chair was still sufficiently at ease to show a pleasing familiarity with Metaphysical imagery: 'The ache has abdicated when the tooth is crowned.'
Modern dentistry was the subject to produce the best entries, with the student prince running it a close second. VSO on the whole was poorly attempted, though T. Griffiths, with his 'slave- haunted shore,' deserves an honourable men- tion. Scottish nationalism didn't find its Burns, though Caledonia's cause was supported with considerable ferocity.
Competitors seemed to be unduly concerned for the Prince of Wales's Cambridge career—as R. Kennard Davis gracefully phrased it: `What purpose shall be set for royal youth Whose rank must every usual course confound?'
To which Dr Dening-Smitherman, equally gracefully replied: `Prince of the easy smile, our seal of youth, By loyal Wales in two years to be crowned, Now by the lazy Cam you dig for truth From shards and ancient bones that can confound.'
The first prize of five guineas, however, goes to Dr R. L. Sadler for this neatly turned sextet on modern dentistry : Let my uneasy tooth with gold be crowned. Not plain amalgam that was used before; Liquidity—its dearth will soon confound The dogma of Big Jim. Beyond our shore The price of gold will double in the end: My body shan't devalue, I contend.
Once again the choice of runners-up proved an unenviable task. Three guineas to Charles Lyall for his easy octosyllabics, and particu- larly that final couplet : Science delays the natural end And doth with senile fangs contend Until it seems eternal Youth Veils ever more objective Truth. Archaic molar plastic-crowned, Thou dost Antiquity confound. • And three guineas to Malcolm Murray Brown who, despite some rather awkward prosody, displayed a delicious sense of unfair word-play: Incisors are eyesores unless they're crowned— Encapsulated grins contend.
And change and decay themselves confound; Pre-cariousness is now the end.
Fluoride and Keats bewilder youth: Beauty is tooth, but is it truth?
Nine of the sixty-seven competitors guessed correctly that the words were chosen from Shakespeare's Sonnet LX, and Andrew MacEvoy gets a guinea for the first correct answer opened.
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