THEME: LIT

PUB DATE	WEEK	TITLE	SYNOPSIS	THEMES	LINKS TO THIS CONTEST	WINNER	LINKS TO RESULTS OF THIS CONTEST (usually published 2-4 Weeks later)
December 18, 1994	92	PLOTBOILERS	Tell us what excerpts from celebrities' novels might look like.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
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 | Contest image
May 7, 1995	112	POOP FICTION	Come up with the opening lines of a book so bad it will compel you to stop reading immediately; maximum 50 words.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
October 13, 1996	187	RACE TO THE FINISH LINE	In 75 words or fewer, continue in a productive fashion the story line of the provided real first lines of famous literary works.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
August 31, 1997	233	SEEKING PARODY	Take any paragraph appearing on Page A1 of today's Washington Post, and rewrite it in the style of any famous writer.	WAS LIT	Text file | Contest image
July 5, 1998	277	LIFE IN THE BLURBS	Come up a simple plot summary to help attract the modern audience to any classic work of fiction. It must be literally true and defensible.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
March 7, 1999	312	BOOKS AND BOOKS	Combine any two works of literature--no movies or TV--into one, give its title and describe it in a brief, appealing blurb that might appear in Publishers' Weekly.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
April 30, 2000	347 (XIV)	Capital Pun-ishment	Take an expression, or a lyric for a song, or any recognizable line of prose, and make it the punchline of an awful pun.	JOK LIT	Text file | Contest image
June 18, 2000	354 (XXI)	Everyone's a Critic	Adopt the style of a famous writer and review any of the provided dishes.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
September 17, 2000	367 (XXXIV)	Future Schlock	Come up with a line that will surely not appear in an upcoming work.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
March 25, 2001	394 (LXI)	Life in the Blurbs	Come up with a blurb used to sell a real or imagined book or movie that would be likely to have the opposite of the intended effect.	LIT MOV	Text file | Contest image
April 22, 2001	398 (LXV)	Animal Magnetism	Make great literature and/or a significant expression of the human condition out of the provided randomly-selected words. Use whatever punctuation you choose and any of the words, but only those words, and use them only once.	LIT CUL WOR	Text file | Contest image
October 7, 2001	422 (LXXXIX)	Taught Language	Come up with lessons learned from (1) the movies, (2) popular songs, (3) romance novels or (4) the comics page.	MOV MUS LIT COM	Text file | Contest image
February 24, 2002	442 (CIX)	Titletales	Take any real book or movie, change one word slightly, and describe the resulting new product.	LIT MOV WOR	Text file | Contest image
June 30, 2002	460 (CXXVII)	Pompous Assets	Come up with the first paragraph of a review of a real book or movie, past or present, that is narcissistic, pretentious, and self-aggrandizing.	LIT MOV	Text file | Contest image
July 21, 2002	463 (CXXX)	Retell Sales	Give us the beginning of any well-known story as retold by any famous person, living or dead, except for Ronald Reagan.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
October 27, 2002	477 (CXLIV)	A Load of Bulwer	Give us the beginning of incompetently written novel.	LIT	Text file | Contest image	Brian Barrett Chuck Smith	Text file (pub 11-10-02) Text file (pub 11-24-02)
January 5, 2003	487 (CLIV)	Eee! Rotica	Come with a passage in a novel that ineptly describes hanky-panky.	LIT	Text file
February 23, 2003	494 (CLXI)	Quote-idian	Take any extremely banal piece of familiar writing and rewrite it in the style of a famous writer, poet or lyricist.	LIT POE	Text file
September 21, 2003	524	Around Things Moving	Take the title of any book or movie, rearrange the words, and explain what the new book or movie is about.	LIT MOV WOR	Text file | Contest image
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
July 25, 2004	568	Tome Deftness	Make a pun or similar wordplay on a book title.	WOR LIT	Text file
August 29, 2004	573	Thine Ad Goest Here	Propose biblical and other literary passages, poems, etc., that could benefit from product placement.	POE REL LIT BUS	Text file
May 15, 2005	610	MASH	Find two well-known movies, plays, or TV shows whose title have a significant word in common, combine their titles, and describe the hybrid.	MOV LIT TEL WOR	Text file
November 20, 2005	637	Full Steam Ahead	Write a steamy passage of a novel that's ostensibly by some well-known person who isn't a novelist.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
February 19, 2006	650	King Us	Give us a scenario for a horror novel based on an everyday item.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
February 26, 2006	651	Show Us Some Character	Add a character to a book or movie and tell us what happens in it.	LIT MOV	Text file | Contest image
October 8, 2006	683	What a Piece of Work	String together words in a single scene, or two consecutive scenes, of "Hamlet" to produce one or more funny sentences, preferably unrelated to the original content. The words must appear in the order in which they appear in the play.	LIT WOR	Text file
November 12, 2006	688	Making Short Work	Write a humorous six-word story.	LIT WOR	Text file
December 24, 2006	694	Hopelessly Ever After	Offer up a gloomy interpretation of any ungloomy piece of writing.	LIT	Text file
February 11, 2007	701	Untitlement	Here are the covers for what just might be Bob Staake's next four books. What are they called and what are they about?	CAR ART LIT	Text file
April 1, 2007	707	What Would YOU Do?	Use only the words appearing in "The Cat in the Hat" to create your own work of "literature" of no more than 75 words.	WOR LIT	Text file
July 29, 2007	724	Abridged Too Far	Sum up a book, play or movie in a humorous rhyming verse of two to four lines.	POE LIT MOV	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
July 5, 2008	772	Make It Simile, Stupid	Translate a sentence or two of literature or other good writing so that "Los Angeles residents under 40" can appreciate it.	LAN LIT CUL	Text file
October 25, 2008	788	The Back End of a Bulwer	Give us a comically terrible ending of a novel.	LIT	Text file
August 22, 2009	831	A Big To-Do	Name a "bucket list" item for a well-known real or fictional character.	LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
November 14, 2009	843	Prefrains	Provide a sentence or two of lead-in to the first line of a well-known book, poem, or song.	LIT MUS POE	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 | Post e-version
January 9, 2010	851	Going to the shrink	Downsize the title of a book, movie or play to make it smaller or less momentous and describe it.	LIT MOV	Text file
February 13, 2010	856	Titled Puerility	Here are some untitled book covers. For any of them, tell us a title and synopsis of a book that will never be published.	ART LIT	Text file | Post e-version
September 18, 2011	937	Staake it to him	Write a caption for any of the five pages or details pictured from some of Bob's more than 50 picture books.	CAP ART LIT	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 | Contest image
May 6, 2012	970	Couple it	Take a line from any well-known poem and pair it with your own second line to make a humorous couplet.	POE LIT	Text file | Post e-version
May 13, 2012	971	Double booking	Come up with a double book with a humorous connection; the first title must be an actual book, while the other may be your own fictitious title or a second real book.	LIT	Text file | Contest image
June 3, 2012	974	Eat our dust!	Write a limerick humorously describing a book, play, movie, or TV show.	LIM LIT TEL MOV POE	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version	Chris Doyle	Text file | Contest image (pub 7-1-12) Text file (pub 8-19-12)
August 23, 2015	1137	Be a published author!	Give us a spicy title for a boring book, real or imagined.	LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
April 15, 2018	1275	That is the question	Choose a line from Shakespeare (or a significant part of a line) and pair it with a question that the line could humorously answer. (Conversational text)	LIT QUE	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
March 24, 2019	1324	Chapter and worse	Tell or describe a Bible story, or another classical or folk tale, very briefly (75 words would be lengthy) in the voice of a particular author or other person.	LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version	Frank Osen	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
April 21, 2019	1328	Hooked on 'classic': a do-over	Summarize a book or play by any author, or retell a scene (or even a moment) from one, in the style of some other person.	LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
April 28, 2019	1329	Shakespeare + Thee: Tailgaters	Select any line from a work by Shakespeare (poetry or prose) and pair it with your own line to create a humorous rhyming couplet.	LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
March 22, 2020	1376	Get thee to a funnery	Add a character (or more) to a Shakespeare play and supply some resulting dialogue. (Conversational text)	LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version	Mike Gips	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
November 22, 2020	1411	Back end of a Bulwer	Write a humorously awful final sentence or two to an imaginary novel. (Conversational text)	LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
February 7, 2021	1422	The Collaboratory	Think of a book, movie or song title. Then pair its creator, star, singer, etc., with an unrelated "collaborator" to produce a wordplay on the title. (Conversational text)	WOR MUS LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
March 28, 2021	1429	Forsoothsayers	Quote a line or so from any Shakespeare work, and exemplify it with a contemporary quote, real or imagined. (Conversational text)	LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
August 29, 2021	1451	Could have said it worse ourselves	Give us a humorously bad "first draft" of a famous line from history, literature or entertainment. (Conversational text)	HIS CUL LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
September 12, 2021	1453	Haven't read it -- mis-subtitle a book	Choose any book title listed on Amazon and misinterpret it by adding a subtitle. (Conversational text)	LIT	Text file | Contest image | Post e-version
YEAR 31 BEGINS