[John Whitworth]

Lucy Vickery 7 June 2014
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 a profound meaning — but frustrate the reader’s attempt to work out exactly what it is. I tried to weed out those submissions (some of them very amusing) that did express a clearly discernible deeper truth, but some may have slipped through the net.

The following competitors deserve an honourable mention: ‘The shallow puddle floods no meadows’ (D.A. Prince); ‘A circular argument cannot be broken’ (Barry Baldwin); ‘People in glass houses should put their kaftans on’ (Tessa Maude); ‘Never play chess with snooker balls’ (Dr J.D. Renwick); ‘Never underestimate big numbers’ (Nigel Grigg); ‘It’s a weak proverb that hasn’t got something to say’ (John O’Byrne); ‘Even Adam and Eve were not forbidden to eat a pickled onion’ (Brian Murdoch); ‘Wit needs no disguise’ (Michael Jones); ‘A cauliflower is a vegetable but a sweet pea is not’ (Alanna Blake).

Lord Chesterfield warned his son that proverbial expressions are ‘the flowers of the rhetoric of the vulgar man’, and that ‘a man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs and vulgar aphorisms’. But perhaps he would have changed his mind if he’d seen the glorious nuggets of folk wisdom you’ve come up with.

The winners below are rewarded with £4 for each proverb printed. Congratulations, all round.

A wise snake never attempts to play hopscotch.
It is better to scalp a cat than to swallow a lawnmower.
No living creature is ever too old to age.
It’s a short road that has no length.
Brian Allgar

The deepest ocean is shallow at the shoreline.
When you don’t know where you’re going, every route is a shortcut.
Even a tall man has his toenails close to the ground.
You won’t find your keys in a kangaroo’s pocket.
You can’t hide what you can’t find.
Life is the crossword, love is the clue.
There is no ‘I’ in ‘eye’.
No staircase leads in only one direction.
Success is a strategy, not a tactic.
A steep mountain rises from a flat plain.
Chris O’Carroll

The overcoat of conceit will not deter the lizard of oblivion.
The mountain does not argue with the valley.
The hungry goat does not ask for Lobster Thermidor.
Live like a nettle, die like a lotus.
G.M. Davis

The wise caterpillar shuns the anvil.
Beware the bridge that stops halfway across.
The burrowing mole sees not the horizon.
Basil Ransome-Davies

Badger the fox and you’ll fox the badger.
Letters in post boxes cannot be read.
The wake of a ferry leads nowhere fast.
Still waters won’t run a bath.
Alan Millard

Woods do not grow on trees.
The dead need no passports.
It’s a poor morning that never turns into afternoon.
Bill Greenwell

A knot in a plank cannot be undone.
It is a poor pawnbroker who has only two balls.
There are more coppers in a pound than there are in a police station.
Sid Field

It is better to have travelled than never to have arrived.
Patrick Smith

Lowing sheep and barking geese/
Fill the cooking pot with grease.
Frank Upton

The bigger the churn, the more the cheese.
John MacRitchie

Dark sky at night, brighter sky at dawn.
Alan Sinclair

A chiropodist will not remember you by the colour of your eyes.
Malcolm Burn