Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Pangrams in six lines

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Credit: keiichihiki

In Competition No. 3144 you were invited to submit a poem, six lines at most, containing all the letters of the alphabet.

Some of the more technical challenges in the past have prompted howls of protest; under the circumstances, I decided not to make this one too taxing. Max Ross speaks, I am sure, for many:

Crazily quizzical, anagrammatical,Fiendishly taxing they drove compers wild,Almost undoable, don’t-have-a-clueableThankfully this one’s just pleasantly mild.

Hats off to you all for a terrific entry, in which the topical rubbed shoulders with the absurd. There were lots of entertaining riffs on the famous pangram ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’, but so much more besides. Especially strong performers who only narrowly missed out on a prize were F.M. King, Joe Houlihan, Frank Upton, David Shields, Linda Lewis, Jim Lloyd Davies, Nick MacKinnon and Linda Mallinson. Those who did make the cut appear below and earn £10 each.

Onyx goblins, quick brown foxes,Jumpers over lazy dogs,Pack my black quartz sphinx’s boxesWith piqued gymnasts and their frogs.In an age of scary poxes,Pangrams frolic through the blogs.Chris O’Carroll

Except for this, and even so,And just because, but quite (you know),And mindful of, amazingly,I plight my, well now, let me see.Bill Greenwell

Inventors, poets all avowthe quiet mind’s the one endowedwith thought. The Newtons, Wordsworths knowthe fruitfulness of going slow,of gazing, unexcited sojust pause because you’ll wiser grow. Dorothy Pope

My pet was a lazy red foxWho enjoyed eating bagels with loxWith a cream-cheesy smear,Then he’d quaff a huge beerOr a vodka, with lime, on the rocks.Robert Schechter

The duck-billed platypus would seemA lovely, gentle creature,Its schnozzle, quaint in the extreme,Adjudged its finest feature.Hugh King

Letters go now, u and i,Minnows of the Scrabble board.But ‘senza’ racks J. Alfred plenty;With ‘etherised’ worth over twenty,Spread out against a triple word;Squares in exile, versify. Edward Lyons

Young men do flaunt, in masques and revels, allTheir talent — modesty, forsooth, is scorn’d;Beneath the doublet, codpieces, though small,Are deck’d exquisitely, with jewels adorn’d.Thus

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