[Susan d.S.]

I believe there is also a rule that L6 cannot repeat any existing double dactyl. One time use only. I'm sure I've seen "Paronomastical" before. How on earth would one check that? Need a world database of published double dactyls.

[Brendan Beary]

And I don't mean for this to sound like sour grapes, nor to criticize the particular writers in question (esp. since I don't even know if they're members), but are "Chancellor Angela" and "Headmaster Dumbledore" really permissible form? I thought L2 had to be a true double-dactylic name; if you can start subbing in titles, honorifics & the like, it strikes me as watering down the overall strength of the pedigree. Or is that just me?

[Chris O'Carroll]

Fundamentalists who regard Hecht & Hollander's Jiggery-Pokery as scripture will indeed insist that once a six-syllable word has been used, it is ever thereafter out of play. In my view, if ever a rule was made to be broken, that one was.

I also take a loose constructionist approach to the question of what counts as a name. I've done "Headmaster Dumbledore" and "Pope John XXIII" double dactyls. John Whitworth has done an "Emperor Julian." Martin Parker has done a "Rodgers and Hammerstein." I'd be surprised to learn that nobody had ever done a "Gilbert and Sullivan." And there's no shortage of appellations -- "Philip of Macedon," "William the Conqueror" -- that could be challenged as not being actual names in the strictest sense, even though that's what everybody calls the people in question.

[Roger Slater]

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]

"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]

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

Tweedledum-tweedledee
Gilbert & Sullivan...

[Brendan Beary]

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.

[Gail White]

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]

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]

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.