Anagram Competition Results

The competition that ended on the 30-April-2000 attracted about four hundred submissions of which about two hundred were of sufficiently high quality to be immortalised as part of the archive.

The judges decided to split the prize money between three of the submitted anagrams. The anagrams were:

"Prime Minister Tony Blair"="I'm Britain's Tory peril, men!"
This anagram has the virtue of being of a common phrase; being completely natural and also being excellent political satire ('Tory' means pertaining to the British Conservative Party which is Tony Blair's political opposition. A common criticism is that he has more in common with them than the traditional left wing policies of his own party.)

"United States of America"="Dine out: taste a Mac, fries."
It is impossible to sum up any nation in a single anagram but this one nicely draws attention to one thing that is instantly recognisable as belonging to American culture. Fast food also contrasts well to some of the classic old anagrams of the same subject (e.g. "Attaineth its cause: Freedom" for "The United States of America")

"Randall and Hopkirk (deceased)"="Real plonker and sad dickhead"
This is an old British television series recently remade (at great expense) by the BBC. One character is alive and the other is a ghost. The anagram has the virtue of being topical, satirical and being completely natural (in contemporary British slang English).

(The fact that two the three winning anagrams had strongly British themes was coincidence.)

Mick Tully submitted the first two anagrams winning two-thirds of the $500 prize ($333). Tony Barrell discovered the third (prize money: $167). Congratulations to both of them.

We are hoping to run a new competition in the near future. Eligible anagrams submitted to the archive before it is announced will be considered part of the next competition so there is no need to wait for the announcement.

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