[Carl Childress]

[QUOTE=greymule]But I can't find anything wrong with the material you quoted,

"a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead."

What's wrong is that the pronoun he refers to Grasshopper, but all we have preceding the pronoun is the possessive Grasshopper's [voice]. I do think it's a bit of an overstatement to say, "Nobody pays attention to that [rule] anymore." It's easy to make up examples in which breaking that rule would be an obvious mistake.

Sad to say for my ego, you are right. Hope springs eternal: Perhaps "grasshopper" had been mentioned earlier in the sonnet, thought I. Unfortunately for me, there is NO antecedent for "he," even though everybody knows he is the grasshopper.

The Whistler participial phrase is not exactly squinting. Generally, squinting modifiers are in the middle of the sentence. Here's one I picked up from the internet: "Students who pay attention in class most of the time get higher grades."

I'd call the Whistler sentence "ambivaletly blind."

Moses Hadas is alleged to have written the second sentence. But pre-google, a professor of mine in grad school got away with attributing it to Samuel Johnson.

Oh, the NCAA question that started this is simply silly. A better question (to see if the student knew it was a pitch to the batter of either team that cancelled the appeal) would have been something like this:

Bases loaded, two outs, B2 should bat but B3 bats instead and doubles. Three runs score, but B3 is thrown out, trying for third. The teams change sides, and the pitcher completes his warm-up tosses. After the throw-down and obligatory throws around the infield, the batter steps in and the umpire makes the ball alive. "Wait!" says the coach who had been on defense in the previous half inning. "B3 batted out of order." True or False: It's too late for him to appeal.

"Flase," as some of my students used to write.