3260. Folded newspaper © Bruce Goodman 8 July 2025

It was a clever way to promote the weekly newspaper. Cedric Humphries had started a newspaper – with local news and locally written opinion pieces. He had financed it out of his own pocket. Now, after several months, the newspaper wasn’t proving as popular as he had hoped. That was when Jenny, the assistant editor, came up with a competition. The reward would be a forty thousand dollar prize for the first to complete the crossword correctly that Jenny herself would devise. Naturally it was going to be unsolvable. The clues would look right but the answers would be haphazard letters that were meaningless. Thousands of citizens suddenly bought the paper, including a considerable number outside the local community. Everyone was stuck on 5 Across: What is a common name for a peacock? The answer was KFHUHKJMNBGGJ. No one won the competition. Nor did the editor (naturally) publish the solution. Everyone was so pee-ed off with the newspaper that it folded. Contact Author Back to Index Next Story Previous Story