Creativity: Just hanging around

WIRE coat-hangers have been tangling the minds of readers for the past week, resulting in hundreds of creative suggestions. Retrieving the previous week's lost sock was very popular, as was using it for unblocking drains, breaking into cars, scratching backs, as a frame for butterfly nets or tennis rackets, pulling zips, as a car aerial, or as an imitation car aerial for drivers who are embarrassed at not having a radio.

We can now identify one Independent reader: he's the owner of the vehicle with an odd sock wrapped, for identification purposes, round its imitation aerial in the car park.

Other uses suggested by more than one person were a bat perch, water dowser, giant bubble-blower, emergency lavatory or fence repair kit, modern art sculpture and 'throw it away'. Other suggestions gaining honorable mentions include: earring for an elephant (James Murray), prosthesis for actors playing Captain Hook (R Dias and Ian Quayle), for hanging wire coat-hangers or hanging wire coat-hanger hangers (Ian Quayle), stitched into a jacket as a convenient means of storage of the wearer when he is not required (Mark Jones), replacement frame for cat's hang-glider (Chris Walker), dwarf trapeze (Jean Amsden) and to hang flouders on when fluke-treading (Mike Lock, who says it works).

James Ockenden's suggestion: 'Bend it into a vacuum-cleaner shape, present to Hoover, and get a free flight to the United States', sadly arrived, complete with bent hanger, after the closing date for this offer. So the Wire of the Week awards go to the following:

In the practical category, Alison Claybourne for her conveyor of rust to roots of hydrangeas (presumably to improve their colour) and Mrs V M Caird for her visual aid for a lecture on the Bermuda triangle.

In the humanitarian section: shared between Jeremy Clivaz's Zimmer frame for aged chihuahua ('appropriately modified', he says) and Matthew Powles' netless butterfly net, for the fun of chasing butterflies without catching them.

And in the silly category to Ms Lindsay Warden, whose orthodontic brace for a sabre- toothed tiger with buck teeth seems the ideal use.

This week we have chosen a more challenging object. Please write to Creativity, The Independent, 40 City Road, London EC1Y 2DB with any ways you can envisage using Canary Wharf tower.