John Fuller sets a Christmas puzzle

As Christmas draws ever closer, poet John Fuller sets us a puzzle perfect for the big day.

We all have our own ideas of what Christmas might be about, steering our guilty way through islands of hedonism with their hoarded treasures and prepared feasting, towards – what? For me, and probably for many of us, it’s a pagan occasion. Much as I enjoy singing carols, that’s on a par with trying out the old piano duets again, or struggling through a Trio Sonata with a brandy on the piano, as Poulenc advised. Lighting candles or making up a crèche has no religious significance for me (many of our crèche figures are Indian gods and animals in any case). But the real aim of Christmas is to surprise and please, with the exchange of presents ever hoping to get it right for once.

Everyone plays games at Christmas, and the Christmas cracker has long enshrined the riddle

So for me this season is about surprising and pleasing, and also about teasing. Our family Christmas centres on quizzes, puzzles and a treasure hunt for grandsons. I suspect it’s true for a lot of us. After all, everyone plays games at Christmas, and the Christmas cracker has long enshrined the riddle. However trivial a riddle may be, it embodies a poetic truth of some kind.

One of the best riddles I remember being circulated at a festive dinner was scribbled out by the poet Auden on the back of his place-card: “What did the French poet say to his publisher?” You could tell from the wicked pleasure on his face that such Delphic interrogation was for him a form of flirtation. And so it is with all puzzles. We pose the impossible question, and engage the attention of those we care for and want to impress. Which is also why poetry is much like puzzling. And why the giving of Christmas presents is often couched as a puzzle (“You’ll never guess what this is”; “Here’s something you can’t use in the kitchen”; etc). It dramatises our love for the recipient and the desire for an immediate response. (The answer to Auden’s riddle was: “Je méditerai. Tu m’éditeras.”)

Every year, my family produce crosswords or quizzes that involve identifying book or film titles from pictorial rebuses, or guessing composers from brief musical extracts, or naming wines. I have already set my usual puzzle for Christmas. It takes the form of a piece of writing that contains hidden words all on a theme that will be distractingly quite different from the theme of the piece itself. To give you an idea of what it is like, here is part of one from a few years ago:

Untamed Largenesses

Papers I’m monitoring suggest
Cosmography’s a list of stars.
Should I service these sour sophists,
These earth-bound musclemen,
Tin-eared to the brass orb
(That great Sequin celestial),
Who murmur: “I think I will . . .:
Or timidly: “Mind the gap!”
Pleased to scorn elemental truths?
Like traitor angels they stand at ease
Each Adam’s son, and wildly cheer,
In ugliness and fear (but used to it).
A fighting man goes where he will,
But anger in Eridanus, suburban anarchy’s
The outcome. O vile monsters!
Shall I map each constellation?
Cram but a needle through the spheres?
Shall I throw an entertainment?
If I give a longing glance above,
Sharp luminescent points appear.
Shall I furnish a rondeau?
Hello, Quattrocento!
Come, lonely sky!

There are 29 words in one category hidden in this rigmarole. Can you find them? Or do you, on the other hand, think it’s nonsense masquerading as a poem? Well, at least it saves me buying Christmas cards.

For many years I edited a quotations-guessing competition called Nemo’s Almanac, which appeared in this pre-Christmas period. It had been invented by a mad governess in 1891 to amuse (and educate) her charges, and had gradually widened its sphere of circulation. You have a year to find the authors of themed quotations, six to every month, and I can assure you it is highly addictive. I passed on the editorship to Alan Hollinghurst, who had always been alarmingly good at it. Now it is edited by the poet Nigel Forde. If you want something to keep you awake over the sloe-gin and chocolates (or to give as a Christmas present) you can get it from him at The Gate House, Burnby Lane, Pocklington, YO42 1UL (£3, or £10 for four copies).

(answers to the puzzle, in order of appearance: medlar, persimmon, physalis, service, soursop, clementine, sorb, quince, apple, cornel, orange, date, damson, lychee, ugli, arbutus, mango, tangerine, banana, lemon, peach, rambutan, rowan, fig, plum, pear, sharon, loquat, melon)

You can Click & Collect The Dice Cup from your local Waterstones bookshop or buy it online at Waterstones.com