Christmas quizzes 2013/14

Of course, we hope you've enjoyed the clues this year, and found the – pretty obvious – answers each day. Now there's just the small matter of converting your twelve individual answers into prizes. You'll need one word to send to BtP (along with your prize selection ranking) in order to qualify for a prize (first three answers in against the clock) or a place in the BtP Homburg (random drawing of seven names) if we receive your correct answer by the end of 5 January, London time, GMT.

So long as you read this next bit carefully, you really can't go wrong ... we're handing it to you on a plate this year, as the idiom goes.

What you need is the letter that comes immediately before the first space in each correct answer you selected from the printed sheet you downloaded. Here are some made-up examples:

If the answers, and letters, above were part of the real Christmas Puzzles (which they are not), this is how the instructions – look in the white box – would go:

Easy, yes?

So here is how to work it out.

You're surely not going to have the energy to read through every Keith Reid song lyric at this time of night.

But you can do a lot of quick and useful work in your head. For instance, the clue says it's a rarity. (It usually pays to read the clues quite carefully).

Is it McGreggor? That song starts 'McGreggor was a soldier' ... but there is no letter 'M' in your answer, so it can't be that one.

Try something else.

Maybe it's Into the Flood? 'Tell you how the story stands' ... but there's no letter 'T' or 'Y' in your answer.

And so on, and so on.

So by a process of quick elimination, you'll come to realise that the letters w a f c h a i n – rearranged – stand for the words in the first line of the song War is not Healthy: 'War is not healthy for adults and children'.

Then, with the song buzzing in your ears from the great version on the recent download album MMX, you'll work out what the fortieth word is ... 'lunacy' and that's what you send us.

Along with your prize ranking of course: the full preference-order of all ten prizes eg [GAHBICJDEF]

Easy, no?

But not as easy as the real answer, and the real instructions. The stuff above is just a worked example: the real instructions are just a click away, here