THEME: HIS

PUB DATE	WEEK	TITLE	SYNOPSIS	THEMES	LINKS TO THIS CONTEST	WINNER	LINKS TO RESULTS OF THIS CONTEST (usually published 2-4 Weeks later)
October 17, 1993	33	POST IMPRESSIONISM	Give us the opening lines of a big story from American history as it might have been written by someone whose work appears in The Washington Post. Maximum 100 words. You must choose one of three news stories: "Lincoln Assassinated," "Stock Market Crashes" or "Man Walks on Moon."	HIS	Text file | Post PDF	Stephen Licht	Text file | Post PDF
July 17, 1994	73	LUNACY	Tell us what Neil Armstrong should have said upon stepping onto the moon's surface, instead of what he did, the greatest gaffe in the history of Historic Sayings.	HIS	Text file | Post PDF	Stuart Segal	Text file | Post PDF
April 9, 1995	108	NEAR MISSES	Come up with the first drafts of great lines in history, entertainment or literature.	HIS CUL LIT	Text file	Joseph Romm	Text file
November 19, 1995	140	WHAT IF YOU GIVE IT A TRY?	Come up with "What-If" scenarios and logical outcomes.	HIS	Text file	Russell Beland	Text file
September 29, 1996	185	WONDERLUST	Come up with replacements for the Seven Wonders of the World. To qualify, an object must really exist, and be manmade and, in some way, awesome.	HIS	Text file	Don Maclean	Text file
September 14, 1997	235	ROOTS	Make up historical explanations--they should be vaguely plausible--for the etymology of any term you wish. The term should be the punch line.	HIS WOR	Text file	Sue Lin Chong	Text file
March 15, 1998	261	WHAT IF YOU GIVE IT A TRY II	Alter some crucial moment in history, and then tell us the likely outcome.	HIS	Text file | Post PDF	Andrew B. Gibson	Text file | Post PDF
April 23, 2000	346 (XIII)	Greasy Kids Tough	Take any news event from history, recent or ancient, large or small, and rewrite it in 100 words or fewer as it might have appeared in KidsPost.	HIS	Text file	Mary Lou French	Text file
November 26, 2000	377 (XLIV)	Week MMDCXLIV	Provide a headline (and, if necessary, the first line of the text) for any article that will appear in The Washington Post on this day in the year 2050.	HEA HIS	Text file | Post PDF	Tom Witte	Text file | Post PDF
August 26, 2001	416 (LXXXIII)	Diff'rent Jokes	Describe how things might have been different if a famous person, living or dead, had had one of the provided conditions.	HIS	Text file	Drew Knoblauch	Text file
February 1, 2004	543	Read Our Leaps	Fill any readers of The Washington Post on Sunday, Feb. 29, 2032, on: (a) the day's lead news story; (b) the highest-flying company and its business; (c) the best-selling self-help book; and/or (d) the day's winning Style Invitational entry.	WAS BUS LIT STY HIS	Text file	Chris Doyle	Text file
August 8, 2004	570	Timeline Rhyme Lines	Produce colorful chronological couplets about some historical event. They must rhyme and be in good meter.	HIS POE	Text file	Russell Beland	Text file
January 23, 2005	594	History Loves Company	Name an appropriate corporate sponsor for some historical event or for someone's life story.	BUS HIS	Text file	Jim Getz Jennifer LaFleur	Text file
April 24, 2005	607	Contest Fodder Created!	Produce absurdly parochial views of historical events.	HIS	Text file	Anne Clark	Text file
July 1, 2007	720	The Course of Humor Events	Sum up a historical event in a two-line rhyme or other clever and pithy epigram.	POE HIS	Text file	Chris Doyle	Text file
October 27, 2007	737	No River, No Woods	Send us a funny parody of a well-known song, with lyrics that commemorate an occasion other than Christmas or Hanukkah.	POE HIS	Text file	Brendan Beary	Text file
November 10, 2007	739	Lies, All Lies	Give us some humorous fictional revelation about a current or past political figure.	HIS POL TRI	Text file	Joel Knanishu	Text file
March 29, 2008	758	Wrong Address	Using any of the words of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in whatever order you like, create your own passage.	HIS WOR	Text file	Barry Koch	Text file
June 21, 2008	770	A Knack for Anachronism	Take a famous historical moment, literary passage, or movie scene and place it in an entirely different age.	HIS LIT MOV	Text file	Rick Haynes Peter Metrinko	Text file
November 8, 2008	790	If Only!	Explain how the world would be different had some event not occurred.	POL HIS CUL	Text file | Post PDF	Chris Doyle	Text file | Post PDF
February 7, 2009	803	The Pepys Show	Write a humorous diary or journal entry for someone, famous or not, for any point in history.	HIS	Text file	Jeff Brechlin	Text file
December 5, 2009	846	Season's gratings	Write a brief (50 words or fewer) holiday letter from a personage from past or present, or from fiction.	HIS LIT	Text file	Peter Metrinko	Text file
June 19, 2011	924	Doomed to repeat it	Create "Unreal Facts" about history.	HIS TRI	Text file	Judy Blanchard	Text file
October 16, 2011	941	They don't say!	Give us a quote that a particular person, present or past, real or fictional, sooo wouldn't have said.	HIS	Text file	Larry Flynn	Text file
November 13, 2011	945	Laugh-baked ideas	Cleverly depict a person, event or phenomenon of the 21st century — real history as well as scenes from movies, books, videos, etc. — using edible materials, and send us a photo of your creation.	PIX HIS MOV LIT	Text file | Post PDF	Alethea Dopart Kevin Dopart	Text file | Post PDF
November 10, 2013	1046	Derive us crazy	Offer a bogus but funny explanation of how a particular expression originated.	HIS WOR	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version	Frank Osen	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version
March 16, 2014	1064	HistoRebuffs	Alter some moment in history and tell us -- in no more than about 50 words -- the likely outcome.	HIS	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version	Gary Crockett	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version (pub 4-13-14) Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version (pub 4-27-14)
April 26, 2015	1121	The an(n)als of civilization	Briefly describe some "bad day in history" -- you may be creative in what you classify as such -- and sum it up with a humorous heading. (Conversational text)	HIS	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version	Chris Doyle	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version
February 7, 2016	1161	Give us four Pinocchios	Tell us some false "facts" about politicians, present or past. (Conversational text)	HIS POL	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version	Jeff Shirley	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version
January 8, 2017	1209	Invented facts: A fictoid contest	Tell us a humorously untrue account of how a product or invention came to be, or got its name. (Conversational text)	HIS TRI	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version	Rob Huffman	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version
January 22, 2017	1211	The best tweets in history	Write a stupidly disparaging tweet (140 characters or fewer, including spaces) about some laudable figure of past or present, true or fictional. (Conversational text)	HIS	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version	Gary Crockett	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version
April 2, 2017	1221	Who's kidding whom?	Take two people from history, past or present, and tell what their child would be like	HIS	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version	Dave Matuskey	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version
November 4, 2018	1304	All the muse that's fit to print	Present a "what if" scenario and explain its effect.	HIS CUL	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version	Jesse Frankovich	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version
July 14, 2019	1340	Not-ables -- slightly alter a famous name	Slightly alter the name (make sure the original is obvious) of a famous personage -- past or present, real or fictional -- and describe the resulting nonpersonage, or offer a quote from that person, or both.	LET CUL HIS	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version	Jonathan Jensen	Text file | Post PDF | Post e-version