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Olymbering

31 July, 2012

Eight champions are arrayed below – perhaps our greatest athletes to compete at the Olympics. Your challenge is to dream up clues for three of them – no definition needed – and do likewise with a fourth current Olympian, your choice, as your final relay squad.

Best way to play this game is to do some warm-ups, trying out some wordplay approaches on any of the stars. Do the same with any 2012 athlete too, giving us the name and your clue.

That way, before Thursday 9pm, you will have isolated your best four – which must be three from this list, and one current nominee. Bring out the laureates:

Betty Cuthbert
Herb Elliott
Dawn Fraser
Cathy Freeman
Shane Gould
Marjorie Jackson
Shirley Strickland
Ian Thorpe
Plus one current Olympian…?

Ideal way to present your clues is with name (or initials) followed by your wordplay. (And parse your wordplay in brackets.) Like so:

IT: Swimming pro in heat? (&lit anag: PROINHEAT)

HE: Girl’s paunch, yet pronounced (homophone: her-belly-yet)

To keep our Games above suspicion, let’s choose an Olympic alias – another champ, or trope. While voting should be simple – just 5,4,3,2,1 for your favourite five veterans, and 3,2,1 for the best current Olympian. Podium honours recognise the best squad tallies. Go higher, faster, craftier.

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If you missed my riddle chat with Richard Fidler, then feel free to slurp the podcast at http://ab.co/1I9t1x5

Text-speak is creeping into Scrabble. Where do you sit?
OBVS I'm fine with it
Entrenched stuff - like LOL and OMG - but no more.
Words With Friends, maybe. Scrabble, no
Let the 'real' dictionaries decide first
Just the handy stuff, like FAQ and EUW
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