A few solvers still persist in ignoring rule 2. It can hardly be because they fail to understand it, and this time we have refrained from mentioning any solver who has transgressed it.
Two or three solvers spelt “luxuriancy” with an e instead of an a. This was a pity, because it is much safer in a close competition to spell correctly.
There were not many fantastic readings to while away the tedium of adjudication. Perhaps the most curious was a rendering of the eighth line, found in several solutions:—
“And all be thine, O specify!”
Although the reading can be justified by the text, it has nothing else to commend it unless it be its eccentricity.
The eleventh line was often translated:—
“Should be so blind to testify.”
This we fail to understand from any point of view, because if the minus sign be taken for a line the text runs blineed, which, when you come to think of it, is rather a clumsy way of spelling blind. It is clear, at any rate to us, that the stroke cannot do duty for both the minus sign and line. If it could all would be well, thus:—
b line - ed = blind.
But enough! for our brain reels.