Retired civil servant wins word game

Alfred Palma, a retired civil service administrative officer, is the winner of The Times word game which ended on May 24.

The prize includes an Albertours tour to Germany and the Netherlands, a Lm50 Malta International Airport tax free shopping voucher and a year's subscription to the Scrabble Club.

Mr Palma, who is better known as the author who translated plays by Shakespeare and Dante's Divina Commedia, said he had been trying his hand at the word game for the past six months in a spirit of competition.

He said it had taken him 20 years to translate the Divina Commedia, which has 14,000 verses.

So far he has published 12 and translated 30 of the 38 Shakespearean plays.

"Students studying the English bard find that reading the Maltese version of the plays helps them understand the original better.

"The odds, however, are against the artist who has to struggle and fork out money to see his work published," Mr Palma said.

A friend of Mr Palma's from Zabbar prompted him to try his hand at the word game.

In 1993, Mr Palma published a book of poetry entitled Preludji and published a translation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

The prize for the current word game includes a free place courtesy of Mondial on its tour to Antalya and the Turquoise Riviera in September.

The correct nine-letter words of the series were frostless, severally, greengage, annulment, sharpener and excepting or expecting.