| WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1526 | Poke Us Till We Giggle | Write a "poke", or a joke recast as a rhyming poem | 4 |
| 1519 | Dead Letters | The post-Post humor contest barely skips a beat as the Czar and Empress begin with the annual obit poems. | H |
| 1513 | You're such a card | Come up with a greeting card rhyme for an un-greeting-card occasion. | H |
| 1507 | All over the map! | Choose one of the contiguous 48 U.S. states or D.C. Then write a funny slogan for that state by “traveling a route” from that state into several others. Use the first letters of the states in your route as the first letters of the words in your slogan. | H |
| 1498 | V for Verses -- misuse a word in a poem | Write a short (eight lines or fewer), humorous poem that uses one or more words in other than their actual meanings. | W H H |
| 1493 | Frankly speaking with feghoots | Tell a feghoot -- a mini-story (a ridiculous one is fine) that ends in a groaner pun on a familiar expression, title, line from a song, etc. | H |
| 1471 | Tour de Fours XVIII: B-I-D-E with us | Coin a word or phrase containing the letters B-I-D-E -- consecutively but in any order, and describe it. | 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 |
| 1468 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1440 through 1464. | 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 |
| 1463 | Fork over some (new) Spoonerisms | Write and original Q-A joke featuring a spoonerism. | H |
| 1458 | Do adjust your set: TV anagrams+ | Use all the letters of any TV show (including streamed ones), past or present, to create new show; or it can be an episode of the original. | L H |
| 1457 | What is Ask Backwards XL? | You are on "Jeopardy!"; various answers are provided. You provide the questions. | H |
| 1456 | The hunting of the snark | Ask an insulting rhetorical question in the form (or a variation) of "Is that your _______ or _______? | H |
| 1450 | Putting the 'anoid' in humanoid | Humorously describe some aspect of our current society as a space alien and/or future anthropologist might interpret it. | H |
| 1448 | Hear, hear -- it's Limerixicon XVIII | Supply a humerous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any word, name or term beginning with "he-". | H |
| 1443 | The letters of the laws | Propose some law -- it doesn't have to be a serious issue -- and give it a name and an acronym, | 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 |
| 1425 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | 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. | 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 |
| 1420 | Singing on the job -- a parody contest | Write a humorous "work song" for any job or profession. Set it to any well-known tune. | W |
| 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 H |
| 1411 | Back end of a Bulwer | Write a humorously awful final sentence or two to an imaginary novel. | H |
| 1409 | Skip a groove: Drop a letter or more from a song title | Drop one or more letters from somewhere in the middle of a song title and describe the new song, and/or quote some lyrics from it. | H |
| 1407 | Your ad space (or space ad) here | Come up with an idea for promoting some commercial product or service (a) in space, (b) in a prison, (c) at a kindergarten, (d) by a football team or (e) in the White House. | H |
| 1397 | Trope springs eternal | Use any of the four provided standard settings -- (a) desert island, (b) bartender at a bar, (c) desert, (d) psychiatrist next to a couch -- and describe a cartoon that includes your choice of characters, along with a caption. | H |
| 1393 | Second chance (acned conches?) for anagrams | Describe any of the provided anagram businesses, or offer its slogan. | H |
| 1391 | No-covid zone -- a neologism contest | Coin a new word or phrase that lacks C, O, V, I and D and describe it. | H H |
| 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 |
| 1387 | Movie clips -- drop letters from the middle of a title | Delete one or more letters (they must be consecutive) from the middle of a movie title, and describe the resulting new movie. | H |
| 1384 | Of course there are stupid questions! | Give us stupid questions, especially ones reflecting Our Current Situation. | H |
| 1378 | It's (emergency) Parody Time | Write a song about life in the Age of Corona, set to a familiar tune (or even one of your own, if you perform it on video). | 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. | H H |
| 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. | H |
| 1360 | The lyin' in winter: Seasonal fictoids | Give us some untrue trivia about winter or things that occur in winter. | H H H |
| 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. | H 3 |
| 1350 | Here's inspo for new-word poems | Write a poem of eight lines or fewer featuring one or more of these recent additions to m-w.com. | 2 |
| 1347 | Reologisms | Write a clever, funny definition for any of the provided Loser-concocted words and phrases, and/or show they'd be used. | W 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 |
| 1339 | Songs for a modern error | Write humorous lyrics about some modern woe, set to a familiar tune. | H |
| 1338 | Picture This -- cartoon captions | Supply a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | H H |
| 1333 | Check your (homo)phones | Invent a homophone--a word that sounds the same as an existing word but is spelled differently--and define it. | H H H |
| 1317 | Punku 2: Haiku with puns | Create a haiku containing a pun or similar wordplay. | H |
| 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 | H |
| 1311 | Nextra! Nextra! The year in preview | Name some humorous event to happen in 2019. | H |
| 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. | H |
| 1306 | PolitiCaroling: A song parody contest | Write a song about something in the news lately -- political or otherwise -- using a Christmas, Hanukkah or New Year's tune. | 3 |
| 1302 | Ask Backwards 37 | Fifteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. Do one or more, up to a total of 25 A&Q's. | W 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 H |
| 1287 | It's parody time: Oldies for newsies | Write some song lyrics about something in the news these days, set to a familiar tune. | H |
| 1279 | Just do it -- the 'real' way | List some "accurate" directions for using some product or completing some task. | H |
| 1267 | Jingle bungle | Suggest an ill-advised spokesman (dead or alive, or fictional), along with a humorously noooo slogan or jingle. | H |