Okay...the next little instalment of our cryptic adventure. The first two lines of each stanza have end rhymes but the last line of the first stanza rhymes with the last line of the second, and the third with the fourth. Got that? Just to inform you, those who tackle these poetic conundrums are in illustrious company – they have now been used as teaching tools at Manchester Grammar School and the famous Merchant Taylor Independent School.

 

 

Stray

---- are depleting

But cheaper than ------

This ten ----- just last

Till another day’s -------

 

And maybe cheap ----

Will help ---- up the time

Between things ---- to me

And the ------ I must do

 

It’s ----- my concerns

Sting my flesh like fresh -----

My complacency -----

That I ---- to be told

 

My ------- regret

Is I often ------

Till the -------- of fear

Barks me back to the ----

 

1.      Southern CGI animated tobacco products. (4)

2.      Consuming chapterless deception. (6)

3.      Force perhaps? (5)

4.      Element in pig-feeder is over. (7)

5.      Hear drink complain. (4)

6.      Absorb old drunkard. (4)

7.      Old poet said ‘It’s finished.’ (4)

8.      Decimates with gravity in those items. (6)

9.      It is correct that this is not left. (5)

10.  This poet has a unit in most hospitals... (5)

11.  Names unstable financial status. (5)

12.  Possess split without old money. (4)

13.  Last forever to learn craziness and Latin. (7)

14.  Make (like blacksmith) time to not remember. (6)

15.  Lassie hogs with deep confusion. (8)

16.  Collapse, like in origami. (4)