In Competition No. 3301, you were invited to delete one letter in the title of a well-known novel and provide an extract from the new work.

This one pulled in the punters. Highlights included Russell Chamberlain’s All the Pretty Hoses and Ralph Bateman’s Bleak Hose:‘Water everywhere. Water up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; water down the river, where it rolls defiled by untreated sewage.