There’s fun in doing crosswords
Where cryptic clues abound
Where words may not be as they seem
Nor even as they sound
Where a plant can bear a flower
But a river is a flower
And a castle has a tower
But a tractor is a tower
It’s a special place where homonyms
and synonyms abide
And homophones and heteronyms
Play happily side by side
Where a hare is always covered in hair
But a hairless bear is bare
And a rood’s a screen within a church
Where it’s awfully rude to stare
Where a sea can be an ocean
You can see how that may be
Or a bee can fly along a route
But a root is underneath a tree
And you don’t get rain in deserts
But if a king deserts his reign
He’ll probably get his just desserts
And be reined in again
With the last clue done, you feel you’ve won
But if one is left to write
Remember that a flower may be
A flower running to the sea.
Over fifty years ago, it took three people on train, several minutes to realise that the answer to ‘A blue flower’, _ I _ E, was the Nile.
Bruce Aiken 