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-clueable
Thankfully 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 jumped 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 boxes
With 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 avow
the quiet mind’s the one endowed
with thought. The Newtons, Wordsworths know
the fruitfulness of going slow,
of gazing, unexcited so
just pause because you’ll wiser grow.
Dorothy Pope

My pet was a lazy red fox
Who enjoyed eating bagels with lox
With a cream-cheesy smear,
Then he’d quaff a huge beer
Or a vodka, with lime, on the rocks.
Robert Schechter

The duck-billed platypus would seem
A 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, all
Their talent — modesty, forsooth, is scorn’d;
Beneath the doublet, codpieces, though small,
Are deck’d exquisitely, with jewels adorn’d.
Thus men will strive for fashion, dress to flatter,
Yet prove the ancient adage, size won’t matter.
Sylvia Fairley

Proud characters those twenty-six
That thought requires, with breath or ink,
To form the zillion verbal bricks
Which join to be our social link.
W.J. Webster

Just to make life better
In these dark and toxic times,
Our amazing Speccie setter
Is now requesting pithy rhymes
Involving every letter.
C. Paul Evans

Captives of virus
Fixed in quiet zones we lurk,
Just being homely.
Frank McDonald

Beware the questing zelatrix
Who, furtive, with her bag of tricks
Adjures the nun to mend her ways
And spies upon her when she prays.
Philip Machin

Forget the buzzy city bars
and quests for wild elation
in jolly pubs; we’re avatars
now doomed to isolation
as existential superstars
locked down for the duration.
D.A. Prince

We trawl our English word-hoard, deftly tread
Through Chambers Dictionary, A to Z;
A pointless journey, aardvark unto zythum;
Exotic, recondite? So what, just try them.
Vuvuzela, syzygy sound dirty;
Ceilidh, shillelagh? Who knows, stick to Qwerty.
Mike Morrison

My love, I beg you to reflect a while
Before you voice those sentiments you hold;
Prepare yourself not to expect a smile.
Don’t be amazed they think you overbold.
My love, I know you find my friends, well, quaint
And think their views must justify complaint.
Josephine Boyle

At sunrise, masked, I jogged beside the sea.
The vista of the promenade was free
of people, quiet too, but for a fox,
unworried by the unrelenting pox.
Obeying social-distancing, my gaze
met his before we went our separate ways.
Paul Freeman

No. 3147: going solo

You are invited to submit tips for social isolation in the style of a well-known writer, living or dead (please specify). Please email up to 16 lines/150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 29 April. NB. We are un-able to accept postal entries at present.