Competition No 3733
Set by George Cowley, 27 May
Joshua Winter (NS, 6 May) wrote that "the human animal is hardwired to find meaning in a universe where there is none". We asked for texts to prove that assertion.
Report by Ms de Meaner
Not bad at all. Hon menshes to David Silverman (A very brief history of time) and Andrew Wilson (Cosmic string theory and the contents of his kitchen drawers). £20 to the winners. The overall winner is Will Bellenger, who also receives the vouchers.
St Stephen was stoned to death; Wallsend marks the most easterly point of Hadrian's Wall, beyond which the sea lies and is often shrouded in fog. Wolves are now extinct in this country; convicts who had death sentences commuted were placed on "transport" ships. The Cheshire Cat is a creature consisting only of a vanishing smile; Charlie Chester is now dead and forgotten. The verb for shouting abuse is "to rail"; the name of the person buried at Corunna was J Moore. John the Baptist was beheaded. Bye is an Old English version of "buy"; also a short form of "farewell".
Stephen John Byers, MP for what was Wallsend, was born in Wolverhampton, educated in Chester, in Cheshire, lost his spin-doctor J Moore, and is the Mr Transport against whom people rail. Even Nostradamus couldn't have missed this one.
Will Bellenger
Beckham's foot? It's because they have to wear standard European boot sizes. EU regulation. Same with the Queen Mum's coffin. Why so big? Had to be an exact number of metres. It's like the boys in Afghanistan. Centimetre-sized bullets are too small, no wonder they never hit anybody. Angus Deayton? Only got the job because of an Equal Opportunities scheme for the sexually underprivileged. Dreamt up in Brussels. That pretzel Bush choked on? It was one of the EU standard sizes. Common Agricultural Policy. Then there's poor old Roy Keane, they paid him in euros. What he really told the manager was: "Give me some punt!" Now even the Statesman's at it. Down to 150 words. Like half a litre, instead of a decent pint.
Ian Birchall
Let's look at a few facts. In 1919 the disastrous Treaty of Versailles was signed. In 1930 came the suspicious death of novelist D H Lawrence.
In 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. The hydrogen bomb arrived in 1952. In 1963 President Kennedy fell under an assassin's bullet. In 1974 John Lennon left Yoko to work and party with Phil Spector in LA. Countless more examples could be added, but the pattern is clear: cataclysmic events recur with uncanny precision every 11 years. Mere coincidence could never account for the astonishing regularity of the sequence. Nor could any of our usual sources of explanation: science, history and other disciplines are wedded to an outdated, tunnel-visioned, "rational" orthodoxy. Thus, ironically, even astronomers who scan the distant heavens have failed to notice what is under their noses: the classic 11-year cycle of sunspot activity.
Basil Ransome-Davies
No 3736 Set by Margaret Rogers
We'd like haikus on the World Cup. As many goes as you like by 28 June (to appear in issue dated 8 July) E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk
