Play with words and win a grand

When a good friend of The Southern Cross offered to put up R1000 as a prize for a competition among readers, the editor and I quickly agreed that this had to be not only fun but religious too, and mentally challenging. So, I invite you: let’s play with words. You could win a grand!

We decided on an anagram competition. According to the online dictionary Wikipedia, “an anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging letters in a word or words resulting in a completely different meaning. It comes from the Greek anagramma, meaning “letters written anew”, and the passive participle of ana, “again” + gramma, “letter”.

For example, when you rearrange the letters in the word DORMITORY you can get DIRTY ROOM.

ASTRONOMER becomes MOON STARER. And the most popular anagram of GEORGE BUSH is HE BUGS GORE.

The rules of the competition are very simple. It is open to anyone who cares to enter, with the only proviso being that all the anagrams have to be of a religious nature.

Computer programmes are not allowed to be used. (Of course the judges will never know if you do get modern technology to give you a helping hand. God however, will). The judges will also check the Internet to see if possible winning entries have been pilfered from the Web.

The source word/s must be religious in nature, but the resulting anagram need not have a religious meaning — or vice versa. Obviously if both words have a religious meaning, it will impress the judges all the more.

So, if you’d like to receive R1,000 in cash, put your thinking cap on, break out a fresh piece of paper and a pencil, and get working. The competition will run to the end of this year, after which the winner will be announced. Apart from the R1,000 first prize there will be other consolation prizes of free subscriptions to The Southern Cross and copies of Owen Williams’ anthology Any Given Sunday.

To get things going I have selected some popular anagrams, all of which are intentionally of a non-religious nature, because — I must admit — I battled to come up with anything better than PARISH PRIEST = PERHAPS I STIR. (I thought I’d better stop after that, lest I get into trouble with the clergy!)

Here are my secular efforts:

DESPERATION = A ROPE ENDS IT
THE EYES = THEY SEE
A DECIMAL POINT = I’M A DOT IN PLACE
MOTHER IN LAW = WOMAN HITLER
GAUTENG = GET A GUN
MORSE CODE = HERE COME DOTS
SLOT MACHINES = CASH LOST IN ME
ELECTION RESULTS = LIES, LET’S RECOUNT
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE = I’LL MAKE A WISE PHRASE
DEBIT CARD = BAD CREDIT
CHRISTMAS = TRIMS CASH
NARCISSISM = MAN’S CRISIS
TELEVISION PROGRAMMING = PERMEATES ROOMS
MARGARET THATCHER = THAT GREAT CHARMER
SCHOOLMASTER = THE CLASSROOM
A SHOPLIFTER = HAS TO PILFER
LISTEN = SILENT

More courageous readers are invited to enter an entire phrase and its anagram into the competition. For example, here are two famous phrases and their anagrams:

From William Shakespeare: “To be or not to be: that is the question, whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…” becomes: “In one of the Bard’s best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.”

Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s famous quote as he stepped on to the surface of the moon: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”, becomes: “A thin man ran; makes a large stride; left planet, pins flag on moon. On to Mars!”

Entries can be e-mailed to