WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
---|---|---|---|
1605 | Get Thee to a Punnery | Change a quote slightly and credit it to someone else. | H |
1588 | Colt Fusion | Because of our munificense and guilt, you get a full hundred foal names to 'breed' for 'grandfoals' | H H |
1586 | Pun for the Roses | Our annual crazy-popular horse 'breeding' wordplay contest. | H |
1544 | Same Difference | Tell us humorously how items on the list are alike, different, or otherwise linked. | T |
1541 | Wrong enough for ya? | Fake facts about the weather | H H |
1536 | Colt Following | Now that we have the winner and punners-up of our venerable foal-name contest, it's time for 'grandfoals'. | H |
1534 | Pun for the Roses | Our renowned horse name 'breeding' contest returns! | H |
1532 | We Bee Back With Neologisms | Make up words using letter sets from the NYT Spelling Bee game | H |
1523 | Where in Hell ...? | Name a "circle" for some "evil", plus a suitable punishment | H |
1522 | Questionable Journalism | Find a sentence published in the next week and tell us what question it could answer | M H |
1521 | Send Us the Bill | Our "Joint Legislation" contest | M |
1512 | Alphabetter | Write a 26-word sentence or other passage whose words each start with a different letter — except that the X in the X-word may appear elsewhere in the word, as long as the word has an “ex” syllable. | H |
1483 | Pun for the Roses -- our famous foal-'breeding' contest | Breed" any two of the provided names and name the "foal". As in actual thoroughbred racing, a name may not exceed 18 characters including spaces. | H |
1482 | The Tile Invitational IX | Rearrange the letters of any of the letter sets provided to create a new term, then define or describe; you may use all seven letters, but also just six or five. | H H |
1481 | Mess with our heads | Reinterpret some actual headline (or a major part of it), from any publication, print or online. | W H |
1480 | Oh, you don't really mean that | Define" inaccurately and humorously any of the provided words. | H |
1479 | It's a WordleVite! Write a prhase of 5-letter words | Write a phrase or sentence consisting of two to six five-letter words or names, then define it or say something funny about it. AND the Wordle part: once a letter is in the right, "green" place -- the same place as it is in the final word (like the P in "pouty" in the example provided) -- your subsequent words must keep those letters in their right places. | H |
1476 | Matchless humor -- show us some Googlenopes | Find us a Googlenope -- a phrase in quotation marks that generates the message "It looks like there aren't many matches for your search" -- or a Googleyup, a phrase that surprisingly does have hits. | H |
1474 | Hyphen the Terrible | Combine one side of a hyphenated word or phrase with one side of another such term -- either side can be the end or the beginning -- to create a new term. AND! Both halves of the term must come from the same issue of a newspaper (The Post or another one) or published the same day on its website, Feb. 3 through 14. | H |
1469 | Post Mortems 2021, our obit poems | Write a poem of no longer than eight lines (plus an optional title) about someone who died in 2021. | H |
1467 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1413 through 1439, except for Weeks 1414-1416. | H H H |
1465 | Put your '22 cents in for our annual pre-timeline | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2022. | H |
1464 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | H |
1463 | Fork over some (new) Spoonerisms | Write and original Q-A joke featuring a spoonerism. | L H |
1434 | Go ahead, mate my bay: Grandfoals | Breed" any two of this week's inking foal names and name the "grandfoal. | H |
1431 | The On-Our-Way-Back Machine | Tell us how (in some funny way) things will be different as we emerge from the pandemic. | H |
1429 | Forsoothsayers | Quote a line or so from any Shakespeare work, and exemplify it with a contemporary quote, real or imagined. | H |
1428 | The Tile Invitational VIII | Create a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or phrase) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | H H |
1424 | We Bee back -- a neologism contest | From any of the 30 provided Spelling Bee letter sets, coin a new term or phrase and describe it humorously. You must use the first letter in the set (anywhere in the word) plus any or all of the others, as often as you like. | L H |
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. | H H |
1421 | Alternaugural Address '21 | Write a humorous passage -- a "quote", an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything -- using only words that appear in Biden's inaugural address. | H |
1418 | Tour de Fours XVII: Just Undo It | Coin a word or multi-word term containing the letters U-N-D-O -- consecutive but in any order -- and describe it. | H |
1417 | Dead Letters, our obit poem contest | Write a poem of no longer than eight lines (plus an optional title) about someone who died in 2020. | H |
1415 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1360 through 1387, except for Weeks 1361-1363. | H |
1414 | Divining comedy: 2021 predictions | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2021. | H |
1411 | Back end of a Bulwer | Write a humorously awful final sentence or two to an imaginary novel. | H |
1410 | Legends of the fall -- more fictoids | Tell us some bogus trivia about autumn, or things that happen (or have happened) in autumn. | H |
1405 | Okay, once more around the track | Breed" any two of the provided foal names that got ink in Week 1400 and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names. | H |
1402 | The fourteeners--a neologism contest | Make up a word whose Scrabble letter values add up to exactly 14 (no blanks!), and define it. | H |
1400 | Back on track with our classic 'foal' contest | Breed" any two of the provided names of the 100 horses nominated for the 2020 Triple Crown races and name the "foal" to humorously reflect the parents' names. | H |
1399 | The lie-zy days of summer | Tell us some bogus trivia about the summer or things that happen or have happened in the summer. | H |
1398 | This is the year that is | Describe the year 2020 in a novel, colorful metaphor or simile. You may also offer an original graphic. | T H |
1392 | Picture this -- caption these cartoons | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided Bob Staake cartoons. | H |
1390 | 'Same difference' for a new time | Explain how any two of the items in the provided list are similar, different or otherwise linked. | T M |
1388 | Turning around a business | Create a business, product, organization or similar entity that contains a word, name or phrase and its anagram, and describe it. | H |
1386 | Colt following: It's the grandfoals! | Breed" any two of the 70 foal names that got ink this week and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names. | H |
1384 | Of course there are stupid questions! | Give us stupid questions, especially ones reflecting Our Current Situation. | P |
1383 | Questionable Journalism | Choose any sentence (not a headline) in an article or ad in The Washington Post or another publication dated May 7 through May 18, and write a question it might humorously answer. | H |
1382 | For us, it's still Post Time | Breed" any two names from the provided list of 100 of the 145 previous Kentucky Derby winners, from 1875 to 2019, and name the foal to humorously reflect the parents' names. | H |
1381 | Let's be equinoxious with fictoids about spring | Tell us some untrue trivia about springtime or things that happen or happened in the spring. | H |
1380 | Both sides now | Delete one or more letters (in a row) from a word or brief phrase to find another word, and define it. | P |
1376 | Get thee to a funnery | Add a character (or more) to a Shakespeare play and supply some resulting dialogue. | L |
1375 | Mess With Our Heads | Reinterpret an actual headline (or a major part of it) by adding a bank head, or subtitle. | H H H |
1374 | Versus' verses in a rap battle | Write a mini-"rap" between any two characters, real or fictional, as in the provided ERB example. | H 2 |
1373 | Prime time for some Amazon reviews | Send us a humorous "review" for any of the provided Amazon-listed items. | H |
1367 | Pick me up at work, okay? | Give a pickup line from someone in a particular profession, or from a particular person or fictional character. | L H |
1366 | Tour de Fours XVI -- It's the LIAR club | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter block L-I-A-R and describe it. | W |
1365 | Dead Letters, our obit poem contest | Write a poem of eight lines or fewer (plus an optional title) about someone who died in 2019. | 2 |
1363 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1334 through Week 1359. | H |
1362 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1307 through 1333, except for Weeks 1309-1311. | L H |
1360 | The lyin' in winter: Seasonal fictoids | Give us some untrue trivia about winter or things that occur in winter. | H H |
1356 | Ask Backwards 38 | Sixteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. | M |
1355 | The inside word | Highlight part of a word, name or short phrase in "air quotes" to give the word a new meaning or description. | H |
1353 | What's playing at the retroplex | Change a movie title to its "opposite" by reversing one or more words; then describe the new movie. | H H |
1352 | Hee-rotica -- Steamy prose for unsteamy life | Write a short steamy scene (100 words would be considered long) about a non-steamy event. | T |
1351 | What concept will you be for Halloween? | Give us a creative, clever idea for a timely Halloween costume (for one or more people) or an idea for a party or other activity. You may even send us a photo of an actual new costume you've created this year. | T |
1349 | Revise and extend these remarks | Go to congress.gov/congressional-record and click on the PDF for any day's Congressional Record. Choose any sentence (or substantial part of one) and write a question that it could answer. | H |
1348 | Same difference | Explain humorously how any two or more of the provided items are alike, different or otherwise connected. | T |
1347 | Reologisms | Write a clever, funny definition for any of the provided Loser-concocted words and phrases, and/or show they'd be used. | H |
1346 | AZ if -- balancing acts | Think of a new word or two-word phrase that begins and ends -- either way -- with one of the provided "alphabetically balanced" pairs. | H |
1345 | The confaketionary -- food fictoids | Tell us some comically false "fact" about food, drink or dining. | H 4 |
1344 | Well, that's just great -- It’s Limerixicon XVI | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "gr-". | H |
1342 | MRGRS: Mash 2 abbrevs. | Combine two acronyms or other abbreviations, whether of entities or expressions, into one big one, and describe it, offer a slogan for the new organization, etc. | H H |
1338 | Picture This -- cartoon captions | Supply a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | H |
1337 | Lidder me this: anagram riddles | Write a Q&A joke (or an A followed by a Q, if you're into "Jeopardy!") in which the punchline contains an anagram or one or more relevant words or names. | H |
1336 | Two ways about it | What's something (printable) you could say in two -- or more -- of the provided situations. | H |
1334 | Mull 'er over: A search for collision | Combine any two words, names, abbreviations, etc., from anywhere in the redacted Mueller report, in a two-word or hyphenated phrase and define it. | M H |
1332 | We'll call them Spellimericks | Write a humorous limerick that's an acrostic: a pertinent five-letter word or name spelled out by the first letter of each line. | H |
1330 | Spinoff x Time Is Now = Grandfoals Week! | Breed" any two of the 65 foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names. | H |
1326 | Foaling around | Breed" any two names from the provided list of 100 horses and name the foal to reflect both names. | W |
1321 | Pumping Prime: Amazon reviews | Send us a humorous "review" (like the provided samples from our earlier contests) for any of the provided items. | M |
1319 | The Tile Invitational VI | Create a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or phrase) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | H |
1318 | Love the tiny tail stain! | Create an anagram -- a phrase or sentence with the letters rearranged -- of any text (except merely someone's name), of any length. | H H |
1317 | Punku 2: Haiku with puns | Create a haiku containing a pun or similar wordplay. | M H H H |
1316 | Lies, damn lies, with statistics | Tell us some bogus trivia using "statistics" or some bogus quantitative meaure. | H 3 |
1314 | Bill Us Now -- 'joint legislation' | Combine two or more names from the provided list of the new members of Congress to “co-sponsor” a bill based on their combined last names, and state its purpose | T |
1313 | Dead Letters -- our obit poem contest | Write a poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2018. | T |
1309 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1255 through Week 1281. | 3 |
1308 | Picture this -- or these | This week you have two choices: (1) Write a caption for one or more of these pictures, or (2) explain what is wrong with the picture. You might also combine two pictures into one -- or all four into one. | M |
1307 | One-for-one for all | Replace one letter in an existing word, name or multi-word phrase with one different letter (in the same place in the word) and define or describe the result. | H |
1305 | Hits and Googles | Find us either a Googlenope -- a phrase in quotation marks that generates no previous hits -- or a Googleyup, a phrase that surprisingly does have hits. | H H H |
1300 | Botch office sensations | Add "13" to an existing movie title, and some humorous trouble to the plot. | H H |
1299 | OK, hivemind! A contest with new Scrabble words | Choose any two of the words in the provided list as the beginning and end of a humorous word chain of 6 to 14 words or phrases. | H |
1295 | Really, now? A matter of degree. | Tell us an indication to some problem, followed by an even more dire sign. | H |
1294 | As the word turns | “Discover” a word or multiword term that consists of adjacent letters — in any direction or several directions — in the provided grid, and provide a humorous definition. | H |
1285 | That is so wrong! | Supply a trivia question along with both the correct answer and a cleverly "wrong" guess. | H |
1282 | Picture This | Write a caption for one or more of the provided pictures. | H H |
1281 | We only have (googly) eyes for you | Send us a photo of something that you have made funny by pasting googly eyes on it; funny titles and captions are optional. | M |
1279 | Just do it -- the 'real' way | List some "accurate" directions for using some product or completing some task. | M H |
1277 | Come into Beeing with neologisms | From any of the 15 provided Spelling Bee letter sets, coin a new term of one or two words and define it humorously. You may also supply an especially clever or funny definition of a real term. | H H |
1274 | Heading for a foal -- our horse name 'breeding' contest | Your job is to "breed" any two names of the 360 horses nominated for this year's Triple Crown races and name the "foal" to reflect both names. | H |
1269 | Mess with our (or other) heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in The Post (print or online) or another publication and dated March 1-12 by writing a bank head. | 4 |
1267 | Jingle bungle | Suggest an ill-advised spokesman (dead or alive, or fictional), along with a humorously noooo slogan or jingle. | H H |
1264 | A cry for Yelp: 'Review' any place | Write a humorous review, positive or negative, of anyplace (real of fictional) one might visit. | H |
1260 | What lies (are) ahead for 2018 | Jokingly predict some news event to happen in 2018. | H H |
1258 | The year in redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1230 through Week 1254. | H |
1257 | The year in redo, Part 1 | Enter (or re-enter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1203 through Week 1229, except for Weeks 1205 and 1206. | H |
1256 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Provide a funny caption for any of the provided cartoons. | H |
1252 | It's a med, med, med, med world | Invent a clever name for a new medical product, and specify the condition it would treat. | H |
1251 | Thanking outside the box | Tell us something to be thankful for. | H |
1249 | Ask Backwards 36 | Choose any of the 15 provided items and follow it with a question that it could humorously answer. | H |
1248 | C'mon, fess up! | Send us a brief "confession" -- there will be categories for true and just-kidding. | H |
1247 | Script tease | Offer a quote from a script whose title you've given a different plot. | H |
1244 | Primed for product reviews | Send us a creative "review" for any of the provided items that are listed on Amazon. | H |
1243 | We bid you: No T-R-U-M-P | Coin a new term, or choose an existing one, whose letters do not include a T, R, U, M, or P, and write a humorous definition. | H |
1242 | Generation Yux | Give us a "then/now" joke. | 3 |
1239 | MASH 3 | Combine two movie titles and describe the result. | H |
1231 | TankaWanka 3: Haiku Plus Tu | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. The poem must consist of five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables in that order. And at least two of the lines must rhyme. | H |
1228 | That movie is SO about you | Name someone who was the "secret inspiration" for a certain movie. | H |
1220 | O pedantry, O pedantry | Give us some humorous pedantry. | H |
1213 | Punku | Write a haiku that incorporates a pun. | H |
1167 | So what's to liken? | Take any two items from the provided list and explain how they're similar or different, or connect them some other way. | H |
1162 | An 8-year Re-Onion | Write a fictional Onion-type headline. | H H |
900 | Dear us! | Submit a "Dear Blank" letter to us instead. | 4 |
894 | Look Back in Inker | Enter any Style Invitational from Week 841 through Week 890 (except for Week 844). | H |
885 | Mess with our heads | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from Sept. 10 through Sept. 20 and reinterpret it by adding a "bank head. | H |