A PUZZLE COMPETITION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22985, 14 September 1936, Page 11

A PUZZLE COMPETITION

ro THE EDITOR Sir, —It is with surprise that the winning reply to the so-called “ Scripto Sum” competition is noted. The ingenuity of the promoters in deciding that the two letters “ ee ” are actually an “ordinary English word,” is reminiscent of the wiles of the “ confidence men,” so well beloved by the thriller-author. The definition of a word as being a collection of letters which have alone a meaning and sound makes this winning decision the more peculiar. I invite the promoters of this clever scheme to quote, from any newspaper, magazine, or novel, a sentence in which the two letters “ee” are used alone as an ordinary English word—excluding their use as suffix, prefix, or affix. It is as logical to take, say, the “xc from excluding and class these two as a word as it is to take “ ee ’ from any other word. Should this task prove unequal to the promoters’ versatile abilities, they may perhaps explain why the competitors’ entrance fees should not be immediately returned. . . l ... , A police investigation into this puzzle and its Winning interpretation would appear to be warranted, the more so because of the specious advertisement, “No high scores yet received,” implying what most obviously was, to say the least, incorrect. Competitions ot this class with such elastic solutions arc inimical to the public interest, and there surely exists somewhere in our Statutes some legislative protection against this “classy” manner of taking innocent competitors’ hard-earned shillings.—l am, etc., Z. Z.