MM Links July 2012 Week 4 in The AnswerBank: Quizzes & Puzzles

MM Links July 2012 Week 4

This is King John 11 (aka Rockfirdill) here with my 4th (and final) attempt at being the MM setter.

I know now how careful one must be with these preambles! All must be triple checked etc. etc. 'cos you are such a highly intelligent bunch that any slight aberration from accuracy will be pounced upon! I refer to last week's effort on archery when Strix was absolutely right in pointing out that three fingers draw back a bow string, two under the arrow and one, the index finger, over the arrow. This allows for a slight holding of the arrow if needed before it is loosed.

I referred last week to my great love of birdwatching and all things to do with the animal kingdom. I must say that the great drop in some sections of the bird population is very worrying. I cannot believe that these days I am actually pleased to see a house sparrow. When my father acted as a bird recorder for Kensington Gardens in London I remember a survey then back in the fifties revealed about 6,000 sparrows. The last count a couple of years ago found 6! Does anyone remember the dawn choruses of that period - they were delightfully deafening. Just about every garden had its song thrush and blackbird,(therefore no slugs and snails), plus robins, wrens etc. etc. They all sang together and it was a serious dawn chorus. Talking about sparrows, we have three in the UK and one of those isn't a real sparrow (the hedge sparrow or dunnock is an accentor). In my second home, the USA, we had about 50 different sparrows about 10 of which I was able to record in my own Rockford garden over the years.

08:45 Sat 28th Jul 2012

rockfordill

Question Author

I blame the magpie among other predators for wrecking our bird life. I know that this is not a popular opinion these days but I go with Robin Page (The Daily Telegraph: Country Diary) on this one. Birdwatching as a youngster, I would be lucky to see one or two magpies in a day, now they are everywhere and in abundance! Before I finish am I allowed one final moan at the so-called animal rights activists who released several thousand mink (was it 6,500 Strix?) a few years ago and at a single stroke seriously damaged the fauna of Southern England. I have seen them take anything from kingfishers to cygnets. I'm sorry to say it but they are a devastating American predator.

Well it has been a delightful and interesting challenge being your setter for July - I really could not have done it without the great help of Gen2 on the IT side of things - when it comes to computers "I know nothing"!

rockfordill

Question Author

According to normal practice, for the everyday running of MM, I shall follow this rule on word length, in that each of my pre-selected link words contains at least four letters and at most eight letters. Stray outside this range and you will be wasting one of your attempts!

Each of the selected link words may go in front of, or behind my challenge word to make a new longer word or to make a well-known phrase or saying. The combination will never be a person's name.

The competition will officially close on Sunday Evening at 7.00pm, when gen2 will declare my pre-selected words and then apply the same rules for awarding points that have been applied during all MM Link Games in the past. My set of four words to have their links predicted should appear below at 9.00am.

grannydi

I'll go with you about the magpies, I got so fed up with the lack of small birds I bought a Larsen Trap, over the last 2 summers nearly 50 magpies have done to their rest and we now have many more small birds in our garden. I shall keep on trapping until their numbers are more reasonable.
By the way, it is perfectly legal and there are certain requirements to observe.

Christiana

Thanks in advance, Rockfordill, for what has been an interesting set of preambles, and for setting the links themselves.

rockfordill

Question Author

I, 'King John II' challenge you to predict my set of four links to go with my four challenge words:-

So looking back and looking forward here are King John II's last 4 challenge words for your consideration:-

ROBIN
LAST
NEXT
SETTER

Good Luck.