WELL BELOW PAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 204, 30 August 1933, Page 16

WELL BELOW PAR.

RECONSTRUCTED PARAGRAPHS CRITICISED, PICTURE PUZZLE ARRANGED FOR NEXT WEEK. Dear Boys and Girls, — Entries were disappointing for the reconstruction puzzle arranged in the Budget a fortnight ago, in so far as both the number of contributions received and the standard of the work attained were concerned. Perhaps the puzzle was a little too difficult; perhaps Budgetites were busily engaged preparing their entries for the proverb contest which concluded last week; or may be, with the hurry and scurry of getting away for the holidays, boys and girls had not the time to give considered thought to the weekly competition. *■ Ray Kelly, a fifteen-year-old Whangarei reader, and J. T. Sheffield, age 16, of Sandringham, provided the two bright spots in a desert of uninteresting work. Their entries did not coincide word for word with the solution, but they covered the same ground and showed that they had taken the trouble to find out something of what the paragraph was all about. In awarding the first and second prizes the merits of these two contributions were carefully weighed before it was finally decided that the placings should be in the same order as the names appear above. It was surprising to find an eleven-year-old winning third prize, and we congratulate Russell Thompson on gaming Tplacf above some of the older competitors Alexa Holmes to whom th£ fourth cash prize was awarded, was the only contributor who inserted a date to indicate the time when the population of England was between four and five millions. No certificates of merit were won this week, so poor was the" standard. A real test in observation is provided in the puzzle arranged for to-day. The picfire printed elsewhere on this page contains many objects that begin with the letter "S" |— and it is the task of competitors SV) V^JjA**** ool^ to discover as many of these as l^> / /»//>> possible. For full particulars of this . competition see the announcement \)S^^*^ which appears elsewhere on this page. t^