Red and Rover by Brian Basset for July 27, 2012

Try this Red: The rules to the game of Brockian Ultra-cricket, as played in the higher dimensions are strange and inexplicable. A full set of the rules is so massively complicated that the only time they were all bound together to form a single volume, they underwent gravitational collapse and became a black hole.A brief summary, however, is as follows:

Rule One:Grow at least three extra legs. You won’t need them, but it keeps the crowds amused.Rule Two:Find one good Brockian Ultra-Cricket player and clone him off a few times. This saves an enormous amount of tedious selection and training.Rule Three:Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall round them.The reason for this is that, though the game is a major spectator sport, the frustration experienced by the audience at not actually being able to see what’s going on leads them to imagine that it’s a lot more exciting than it actually is. A crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far less life-affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most dramatic event in sporting history.Rule Four:Throw lots of assorted items of sporting equipment over the walls for the players. Anything will do – cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis guns, skis, anything you can get a good swing with.Rule five:The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scores a ‘hit’ on another player, he should immediately run away and apologize from a safe distance.Apologies should be concise, sincere and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone.Rule Six:The winning team shall be the first team that wins.