A challenge for the long nights

It sometimes comes as surprise to students of books history to learn that many ancient scripts were written in scripta continua, that is with no gaps between the words. Even more surprising, it was the Irish who sorted out this minefield of potential misunderstanding sometime before the year 1000 ad, due, apparently, to their difficulties in deciphering Latin words with which they were not terribly familiar.

The possibility of misreading individual words and even sentences is apparent, although context presumably ironed out much of the confusion. We've been wracking our brains to come up with a few examples of sentences which could be read in more than one way, and it is not as easy as it seems. One fairly simple example is: menswearupstairs. The best we could do is:

whatbookstolendreadfully

So, this month's challenge to readers is to produce the longest, most ambiguous, sentence they can. There will be a small prize for the best entry received. We don't like to think of our customers slaving away over the festive season, so we've decided to extend the deadline from our usual one month to the end of January (by email, snail mail, or blog-comment). The winning sentence will, of course, be given on the blog in early February.

Good luck, and Happy Christmas to all our customers, past, present and future.

Comments welcomed

Libre Livre always welcomes comments on our blog. Although it is easy enough to add them by using the 'comment' feature at the bottom of each post, some folk prefer to use email to let us know what they think.

Here, for example, is a comment we received recently:

Brilliant what a fantastic idea for a competition.

Both reviews really went to the nub of the issue: the way prizes were used both to motivate and influence behaviour. Come to think of it, a bit like bankers' bonuses.

I wonder if Mssrs Goodwin, Hornby et al might have benefited from such reading as 'For Honour Not Honours' by the great Gordon Stables.

And the winner is...

A lot of readers found our November competition quite a challenge, but two who didn't were our joint winners: KS of the Highlands and, coincidently, BS of the Valleys who will each receive their share of the prize before too long, weather permitting. Here are their entries:

All modern girls will love 'Georgie Merton or Only a Girl' by Florence Harrington. Stout hearted and active, Georgie has all the qualities her weak younger brother so badly lacks. When her natural instincts to protect him lead to a long and confining illness, Georgie's patient and uncomplaining acceptance of her fate wins the hearts of all who know her. Georgie Merton shows that modern girls can live active and useful lives without compromising their essential femininity.

'Island of Secrets' by C Bernard Rutley was a Sunday School prize. Dawn finds a tramp lying in the road and helps him to hospital where he dies, bequeathing her a treasure map. X marks the spot on a Pacific island. 'Dawn couldn't miss a chance of adventure like this.'

Well done to you both, thanks for entering and good luck for December's challenge, which will be issued soon.

We all have gremlins

Good-bye November, hello Winter. Snow everywhere, and expected to get worse. Still, it's an ill wind that blows no good, and our readers should find our December competition just the thing to pass the cold dark dreary hours - stand by, it will be announced shortly, along with the winner for November - which attracted some particularly high quality entries.

Meanwhile, I was rather tickled to discover recently that medieval scribes had a patron demon, Titivillus, who tricked them into making errors and omissions in their copies. I can personally vouch that he is still up to his games.