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-   -   Speccie Competition Double Dactyl (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=17197)

Roger Slater 03-11-2012 08:04 PM

I agree, Chris, but there's a difference, I think, between what everybody commonly calls someone, on the one hand, and an invented name like "Chancellor Angela," on the other hand, which is not what she is commonly called and which was clearly invented just for the contest. I would also think that "Gilbert & Sullivan" wouldn't strictly qualify when the rules call for one person rather than two.

But Chancellor Lucy can do what she likes, of course, which will invariably be to pick the entries that strike her as the funniest. And the winners here are pretty funny, I think.

Chris O'Carroll 03-11-2012 08:43 PM

"Chancellor Angela" is, admittedly, a bit of a stretch. I once read a double dactyl about "John Rocker LHP" (for non-Americans, that's a baseball writer's shorthand for "left-handed pitcher"), and thought that was even more of a stretch. Where ultra-strict formal requirements are concerned, I don't always know where to draw the line between admiring a writer's ingenuity and groaning, "Give me a break!"

John Whitworth 03-11-2012 10:39 PM

Gilbert & Sullivan is definitely, like the Chesterbelloc, a single entity. I posit

Tweedledum-tweedledee
Gilbert & Sullivan...

Brendan Beary 03-12-2012 07:41 PM

For what it's worth (which is apparently a good bit less than £25), here is the entry for which I had higher hopes:

Higgledy piggledy
Annika Sorenstam,
Once female golfing's most
Bankable star,
Hung up her spikes after
Cervicobrachial
Injuries left her not
Quite down to par.

Martin Elster 03-13-2012 02:08 PM

Here's what I entered:

Schmorowitz, Florowitz,
Vladimir Horowitz
Practiced piano from
Midnight till noon;

Mastered such difficult
Ultra-applaudable
Works — yet if pressed couldn’t
Carry a tune!

Jayne Osborn 03-13-2012 04:07 PM

Here's what I came up with; it probably wouldn't have made it, but as I forgot to actually enter it we'll never know!

Hickory Dickory,
Lucinda Vickery.
Staggers did this one quite
recently. Drat!

People will send you their
dismally-dactylly
trickery poetic
failures from that.

Gail White 03-14-2012 02:47 PM

Delighted to see that most of our usual suspects won this round.
I've only written one of these things in my life - on Thomas Stearns Eliot. Must get out more.

Brian Allgar 04-29-2012 10:46 AM

Having belatedly seen this thread (I wasn't a member at the time), I'd like to apologize to John and Chris for the "slight" inaccuracy in my Titus Andronicus - put it down to a combination of memory loss and poetic license.

If it's any consolation, I submitted fifteen other clearly-deserving entries, none of which got a look-in. As it happens, they included one on William the Conqueror:

Bazyvoo-tazyvoo, *
William the Conqueror
Fancied an outing to
Hastings and Rye ;
Found the inhabitants
Incomprehensible;
Offered King Harold a
Poke in the eye.

* Bastardisation of "Baisez-vous, taisez-vous", roughly translated as "F**k you, shut up!"

If I'm feeling really malicious, I may trot out a few of the others one of these days. In the meantime, I shall act on the old French saying cited above, and shut up.

Chris O'Carroll 04-30-2012 01:08 PM

Brian, are you hoping that people will refrain from hassling you about such stuff now you're a member? In your dreams, pal. I'm still waiting for John Keats to join so I can give him grief up close and personal about that Cortez/Balboa screw-up.


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