Contribute your own which obey.

Guess the simple rule operating in this apt poem.

Unlettered fellow will find this coincidental structure hard: Count on it!

Subject doesn't matter; speak of perfected jukebox or approximations,

Or even supercomputers and academic conversations.

Poems wholly without rhymes or meter triumph.

Can you write lawful lines that always follow this constraint?

Contribute your own which obey.

Dearest regards, James Dow Allen (mail address: jamesdowallen at gmail)

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One letter words are forbidden. That's about all I've got.

It also has no articles (a, an, the) which gives it a rather stilted feel to non-Russian-speakers, but again that doesn't seem enough.

I see it's tricky now, and sure enough it's hard to follow... I don't have time before my flight to try to put one together, so this response doesn't conform... except that a initial string of the first line follows the pattern.

It is not easy. Yea? No? As I had some good ideas, most led headlong to a dead end. Oh, this toy/puzzle may give anagrammers very many pleasures.

Phil Carmody cried 'hi, pity me

Why, son, why do we work hard on the task?

How neat! I shall try this another way:

'My, yes, we must never arrive without another.' Lardy Girl says 'Dang, that's such a leading clue'.

Grin! 'Sets every night, our sun' showed everyone how he'd encode a pattern inside. I considered the conceit at that point, but it wasn't correct. Now it seems it must be. I tame 'em, reward or no!

No, I really cannot be bothered. It's all tosh and too preposterously difficult to do.

Paul R

As Ilan admits - the rule might be found by carefully counting.

Please reply to drgmayer at hotmail dot com

Mabel had a suds-hue lamb, Its dread horns white as snow, And when the lamb and Mabel went, Her stray toads yelled 'Hello!'.

Mike Keith Word play, math, music:

[Sorry if this message doesn't reference the one to which I'm replying. Google Groups has given me 'Unable to retrieve message This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ' and the form for starting a new thread.]

I totally agree with you. Constrained writing is all very well as a sort of intellectual exercise, and might even entertain the reader. However, this sort of thing: 'Guess the constraint' is not. The constraint is always so complex that there is no way anyone could be expected to reach the answer. It would be attractive if the OP set up a Q&A so that the answer became gradually easier and easier to see (as in Petals around the Rose), but he doesn't, so it isn't.