WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
---|---|---|---|
1614 | The Tile Invitational XI | Make up new words with the letters we give you | T H |
1613 | What's the Worst That Could Happen? | After the election, we mean. And be funny about it. | H |
1612 | Asterisky Business | Put words in Horace's mouth: Tell us a joke that not everyone will get. | H H H 3 |
1611 | Ask Backwards XLIII | We give you the 'answers'; you tell us the questions. | M H |
1610 | Wryku | Write a haiku about something in the news. | T H H |
1609 | Saved! | Tell us funny ways to be thrifty in these parlous times | H |
1608 | Stick It | An election bumper sticker contest | H H H |
1607 | Funny, Init? | Compare two people who have the same initials. | T H H H H H H H |
1606 | The Cold New Trend | What would be an even sillier new fad than decorator refrigerator shelves? | M H |
1605 | Get Thee to a Punnery | Change a quote slightly and credit it to someone else. | T H H H |
1604 | Call Your Dog | Give us creative names for various pets | H H |
1603 | Hu-boy, It's Limerixicon XXI | Write a limerick featuring a word beginning 'hu' or 'hy'. | H H |
1601 | Stop, Hey, What's That Sound? | Tell us what these noise-words mean. | H H 3 |
1600 | Taylorgaters | Take a line from a 'Tortured Poets' lyric and rhyme it with one of your own. | T |
1599 | Picture This | It's our caption contest. | T |
1598 | Same Difference | We give you a random list of things, and you tell us how any two are alike or different. | H 2 |
1597 | The Farce of July | Give us new ways to celebrate Independence Day. | H 2 |
1596 | History for the tl;dr Crowd | Sum up an event for the 21st-century reader in a rhyming couplet. | H H H 2 |
1594 | So Good! So Bad! So Ugly! | We bring back a classic contest | 3 |
1593 | Qwerty Lashes | Write us something funny from just a few letters of the keyboard. | H |
1592 | It's Parody Time | Write a funny song about ... anything you like! | H |
1591 | Our Typo Humor | More fun with headlines. | T M H H H H H |
1590 | All You Need Is Ink | Take a line from a Beatles song and rhyme it with your own. | L H H H |
1588 | Colt Fusion | Because of our munificense and guilt, you get a full hundred foal names to 'breed' for 'grandfoals' | H H H H H |
1587 | The Trite Stuff | Replace some well-worn phrases with better ones. | H H H H |
1584 | Seeds of Change | Make an anagram of a name-brand product. | H H H |
1583 | A Thousand Words | Write a funny poem about the artwork of your choice. | H 3 |
1582 | You're Workin' on a Chain, Gang | A classic connection game. | W H H H H 4 |
1581 | SOTU-Speak | Use words from Biden's State of the Union speech to write some lines for another oration. | H H 4 |
1580 | Hi, Anxiety! | Tell us some funny ways to stress yourself out. | M H H |
1577 | Why the #$%#$% Not? | The Washington Post is looking for some bold ideas -- Let's show it some! | H |
1576 | Praise the Lurid! | Give us clickbait headlines for mundane stories. | H |
1575 | The Ughscars and the Phewlitzers | Give us an idea for a bad book or movie. | H H |
1574 | Oh, Grandpa, Stop! | Turn a 'dad joke' into a less-tame 'grandpa joke' | T H H H 2 |
1573 | The Invitational Week 55: Tour de Fours — Be STUD-ly | Give us a new word or phrase containing 'DUST' in any order of letters. | H |
1572 | S Is for Smartass | Presenting the Devil's Alphabet Soup | L H H |
1571 | Dead Letters, our annual obit contest | Write a funny verse about someone who died in 2023. | H 3 |
1570 | The Invitational, Week 52: Replaying Around -- The 2023 retrospective, Part II | Enter or reenter our Week 26-50. | H H |
1569 | Look Back in Inker -- Our 2023 retrospective, Part 1 | Enter or reenter our Week 1-25 contests. | L H H H H |
1568 | Nextra! Nextra! | Tell us the funny news events from 2024 | T H H H |
1567 | Picture This | A caption contest | T H |
1566 | Well, the Good News Is ... | Put a positive spin on a bad-news headline | H |
1565 | Oh, For Namesakes! | Compare two people who share part of a name. | L H H H |
1564 | "Air" "Quotes" | A new forefinger contest | H H |
1562 | Rhyme and Rhyme Again | Write a funny "monorhyme", a poem whose lines all rhyme on the same sound. | W H H |
1561 | Let It Be a Lesson to Us | Tell us some things to be learned from Costco, the bathroom, TV shows, etc. | T |
1560 | The 'Hole Story | Write us a funny 'Am I The Asshole' question | H |
1559 | As the Word Turns | 'Discover' new words by snaking through this random grid | M H H |
1558 | It's Parody Time | Send up the news with those songs and videos you do so well | T M 4 |
1557 | Tailgating On the Highway | Pair a Dylan line with your own rhyming one | W L H |
1556 | Cross Us Up | Mirror a phrase, more or less | M H H H H 4 |
1555 | Do You Have to Spell It Out for Us? | Give us "backronyms" | H H |
1553 | Doody and Muldoon | Write a Muldoon, a four-line poem that features at least two body parts and a place name, and at least one rhyme. | T H |
1552 | A Mirthday Party | Link two people who share a birthday | T H H |
1551 | Ask Backwards XLII | We give the answers. You give the questions. | H |
1550 | Holy Moly, It's Limerixicon XX | Write a limerick featuring a word beginning "ho-". | W H H H 3 |
1549 | The Tile Invitational X | It's our 10th running of this coin-a-word game. | H |
1548 | Poll-ish Jokes | Come up with a ridiculous reader poll. | T M |
1547 | Alphabettering | Write a funny sentence containing all 26 letters. | H H |
1546 | Put It in Bee-verse | Write a funny poem using a spelling bee word | M H H H 2 |
1545 | Their Base Behavior | Tell humorously how some business or organization could alter its product or message to appeal to Trump’s cult. | H H |
1544 | Same Difference | Tell us humorously how items on the list are alike, different, or otherwise linked. | H H 4 |
1543 | F Things Up | Neologisms by adding Fs or changing letters to F | W M H H H 4 |
1542 | Your (B)ad Here | Tweak an ad slogan to use it for another product | H H |
1541 | Wrong enough for ya? | Fake facts about the weather | M |
1539 | Get Real, Reel | Name a scene in a movie, a TV show, or literature, and tell us how it might be revised (perhaps less satisfyingly but far more realistically) | T |
1538 | Rhymes Against Humanity | Write a four-line poem about people in the news, using either of two poetic forms | L H H |
1537 | A Crooning Achievement | Write a lyric for a politician to sing. | T 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'. | M H H H H |
1535 | The Poops Diorama | Make some funny art with toilet paper and send us a photo. | M H |
1534 | Pun for the Roses | Our renowned horse name 'breeding' contest returns! | H H 4 |
1532 | We Bee Back With Neologisms | Make up words using letter sets from the NYT Spelling Bee game | H |
1531 | The Worst New Contest Ever | Describe something that would be worse than a second Trump presidency | H H H |
1530 | Mess With Our Heads | Reinterpret any headline by adding a 'bank head'. | T H H |
1529 | Hello, Dall-E! | Our new contest partners you and a machine. | H |
1528 | It's Our Birthday. Party Like It's 1993. | As the Invite turns 30, enter your choice of contests from our year of infancy | H H |
1527 | Film Flim-Flam | Use all the letters in a movie title to make a new movie | H H H H H 2 |
1526 | Poke Us Till We Giggle | Write a "poke", or a joke recast as a rhyming poem | T H H H H |
1524 | Picture This | A caption contest | 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 | H H H 4 |
1521 | Send Us the Bill | Our "Joint Legislation" contest | H |
1520 | Nextra! Nextra! | Read All About it. Predict the big news events of 2023 | H H |
1519 | Dead Letters | The post-Post humor contest barely skips a beat as the Czar and Empress begin with the annual obit poems. | H H H |
1518 | The final Post edition | Some all-time favorite entries | H H |
1515 | Munich-ipals -- European "sister cities | Choose any two or more towns from the 51 countries in Europe/Eurasia and come up with a joint endeavor the “sister cities” would undertake. | H H 3 |
1513 | You're such a card | Come up with a greeting card rhyme for an un-greeting-card occasion. | H |
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. | W H |
1511 | The inside word--our 'air quote' contest | Highlight part of a word, name or short phrase in “air quotes” to give the word a new meaning or description. | H H H H H |
1510 | Only U (or A, E, I or O) | Write a humorous univocalic poem — one that uses only one of the vowels A, E, I, O or U | H H |
1509 | MASH MASH: combine 2 one-word movies | Combine two single-word movie titles to make a new movie and describe it. | H |
1508 | Tour de Fours XIX —Laughtime Achievement | Coin a word or phrase containing the letters E-L-D-N — consecutively but in any order — and describe it. | H H H H H 4 |
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 |
1505 | Munici-pals | Choose any two or more real U.S. or Canadian towns — they need to show up on a Google search — and come up with a joint endeavor they would undertake. | H H H H 2 |
1504 | All set — anagram all 100 Scrabble tiles | Write a Scrabblegram — an anagram of all 100 tiles in an English-language Scrabble set (your choice for the two blanks). Any punctuation is fine. | W T L H |
1503 | Sing of your supper--parodies about food | Write a humorous song on the subject of food. | T |
1502 | It's Hi-time for Limerixicon XIX | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any word, name or term beginning with “hi-. | H H 2 |
1500 | These go to 15 | Make up a word or phrase whose Scrabble letter values add up to exactly 15 (no blanks!) and define it. | W H H |
1499 | Picture This, a cartoon caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | T |
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. | H H |
1497 | The if-word | Give us a "what if" scenario and its humorous result | T |
1496 | Same Difference -- compare two items on this list | Tell us humorously how any two (or more) items on the provided list are alike or different, or linked in some other way. | H H H |
1494 | Put it in bee-verse | Write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer that includes at least one of the words used in Round 4 or later of this year's bee; OR: write a joke in Q&A form that uses at least one of the words. | W H 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. | M H |
1492 | Set us right -- conservative humor | Send us conservative-leaning humor in a Q&A joke format or a knock-knock joke. | T M H H |
1491 | The add biz | Choose any word, name or phrase beginning with A throough E, then add any single letter of the alphabet to it -- one or more times -- and define the result or show how it would be used. | H H |
1490 | It's parody time -- sing the news | Write a satiric song about anything in the news these days. | M H H |
1489 | Let's movie things around | Rearrange the words of a movie title to create a new movie, then describe it | H H |
1488 | Let's recycle! | Come up with humorous uses for ANY product or combination of products listed at RepurposeMaterials.com, including but no restricted to the provided list. | M |
1487 | Colt following -- now it's the grandfoals | Breed" any of the "foal" names provided in today's results (including the intro) and give the "grandfoal" a name that reflects both names. | H H |
1486 | No can do: Signs of incompetence | Give us a clue that someone was incompetent in a given field. | H H |
1485 | Switchcraft -- transpose two letters in a word | Switch the positions of two letters within a word, name, title or phrase, then describe the result. | H H H H |
1484 | Two ways about it | What's something (printable) you could say in two -- or more -- of the provided situations. | T |
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. | M H |
1481 | Mess with our heads | Reinterpret some actual headline (or a major part of it), from any publication, print or online. | T |
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. | L H H H |
1478 | It's a small, small world | Write a humorous poem, eight lines max, using only words from the provided list of 1,000 most common English words. | T L H H 2 |
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. | M H |
1475 | Hail to the Commanders! | Write a song (set to any familiar tune) or shouted cheer for the Washington Commanders. OR: Write for any other D.C. institution, e.g., the Metro, the Senate, the National Zoo, The Washington Post. | T |
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. | P 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 H |
1470 | Your add here -- a prefix feast | Add a "prefix" -- by which we mean at least one syllable of any kind (but not multiple words) -- to the beginning of any word in well-known phrase, name, book title, etc., and describe the result. | L I H H H H H 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 H |
1468 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1440 through 1464. | M H |
1466 | Be invitationally correct | Give us a funny "correction" that a newspaper or magazine might offer. | T H |
1465 | Put your '22 cents in for our annual pre-timeline | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2022. | T |
1464 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | T |
1463 | Fork over some (new) Spoonerisms | Write and original Q-A joke featuring a spoonerism. | T M H H |
1462 | Time for a new career? | Tell what would happen if any two people switched professions or other roles. | T |
1461 | It's the eponymy, stupid | Create an eponym -- a word based on the name of a well-known person -- define it, and perhaps use it in a humorous sentence. | H H H H H |
1460 | These new words are on fleek | From the provided list, write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer. | T H |
1459 | And we quote: 'It's Parody Time' | Write humorous first-person lyrics for a song "by" some particular person. | M |
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. | H |
1457 | What is Ask Backwards XL? | You are on "Jeopardy!"; various answers are provided. You provide the questions. | P M H H |
1456 | The hunting of the snark | Ask an insulting rhetorical question in the form (or a variation) of "Is that your _______ or _______? | M |
1455 | Good idea! Or not. | Cite a "good idea' and, with a small change of wording, a "bad idea". | H |
1454 | Punku 3 -- haiku with a pun | Create a haiku containing a pun or similar wordplay. | H H H H 2 |
1453 | Haven't read it -- mis-subtitle a book | Choose any book title listed on Amazon and misinterpret it by adding a subtitle. | T L |
1452 | As the Word Turns | Discover" a word or multiword term that consists of adjacent letters -- in any direction or several directions, up, down, back, forth, diagonally -- in the provided grid, and provide a humorous definition. | M L H H |
1451 | Could have said it worse ourselves | Give us a humorously bad "first draft" of a famous line from history, literature or entertainment. | M |
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. | M |
1449 | Let's have a get-together | Begin with a real name; append to it a word, name or expression so that they overlap; and finally define or "quote" the resulting phrase or name. | H H H |
1448 | Hear, hear -- it's Limerixicon XVIII | Supply a humerous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any word, name or term beginning with "he-". | T H |
1447 | Give it to us straight | Take any sentence from an article or ad in any publication (print or online) dated July 29 through Aug. 9, 2021, and intepret it in “plain English". | H |
1446 | Clue us in -- and we spill the beans | Write novel clues for as many as 25 answers in the provided grid, across or down, first substituting your own letters for any covered ones. | M H H |
1445 | Put it in bee-verse -- poems with spelling words | Write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer that includes at least one of the words used in Round 8 or later of this year's bee; OR: write a joke in Q&A form that uses at least one of the words. | W |
1444 | It's a whole new all-game | Slightly change the name of a sport, sports event or similar pastime to create a new one, and briefly describe it. | T 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 |
1442 | Same difference, or missing links | Choose any two (or more) items from the utterly random list above and say how they're different, alike or otherwise linked. | H |
1441 | \'Rick rolling: songs as limericks | Sum up or otherwise reflect a well-known song as a limerick. | T H H |
1440 | It's parody time! | Write a satiric song about anything in the news these days. | M H |
1439 | Vowel Movement: The Musical | Choose a song title; remove all the vowels; then add back as many vowels as you like to create a new title, and describe the song. You might also provide a line or two of lyrics. | T H H |
1438 | Nothing but the untruth: Fake trivia about the law | Give us some bogus trivia about the law -- lawyers, courts, judges, police, odd laws, terminology, what have you. | H |
1437 | One-offs: A 'typo' neologism contest | You're a fat-fingered typist: Change a word, name or phrase by either adding or substituting one letter that's adjacent (in any direction) to the original one on a regular QWERTY keyboard, or by doubling the correct letter. | W H H H H |
1436 | Haven't seen it: Fun with movie titles | Misinterpret a movie title in a supposed plot description. | L |
1434 | Go ahead, mate my bay: Grandfoals | Breed" any two of this week's inking foal names and name the "grandfoal. | H H H H |
1433 | Questionable Journalism | Choose any sentence (not a headline!) in an article or ad in The Washington Post or another publication dated April 22 through May 3, and write a question it might humorously answer. | M H |
1432 | Turn tale and run with it | Offer a new angle on a folk tale, nursery rhyme, children's song, etc., with a short poem, mini-story (under 100 words) or song parody. | H 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. | M |
1430 | Back to racing speed with the 'foals' | Breed" any two of the provided names of the 100 horses nominated for the 2021 Triple Crown races and name the "foal" to humorously play off both parents' names. | 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. | T |
1427 | Rocky of ages, or Badenov for you? | State any historical event -- right up to 2021 -- in the provided "A, or B" format. | T M H H |
1426 | Mess with our (or others') heads | Reinterpret an actual headline (or a major part of it) by adding a bank head, or subtitle. | M H 2 |
1425 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | T 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 |
1423 | Muddled heads: Headline anagrams | Choose a headline (or part of a headline) in any print or online publication dated Feb. 11-22 and rearrange all its letters into an anagram. | H H 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 |
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. | T L H |
1419 | Send us the bill -- '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 |
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. | T 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. | T H H |
1416 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1388 through 1412. | T H 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. | M H H H |
1414 | Divining comedy: 2021 predictions | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2021. | M H |
1413 | We're finna give you some new words | Write a poem of eight lines or fewer featuring one or more of the provided terms. The terms must be used as they're defined in the new m-w.com listing. | T H H H |
1412 | Jumble bells -- anagram a song line | Rearrange all the letters in a song title, or a line (or more if you dare!) from a song. Optional: Offer a parody of the original tune (or a few lines of it) that refers to the new title. | 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 |
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 H |
1408 | Re-Organization | Slightly change the name of a nonprofit organization and describe it. | H |
1406 | The news could be verse | Write a poem based on a recent news article, in which the lines' first letters spell out the title or subject of the poem. | T 3 |
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. | M H H |
1404 | Ask Backwards XXXIX | The answers are provided. You supply the questions. | T H H |
1403 | Who was that masked man? | Current a short listing for a current or past TV show that has a coronavirus story line, or one reflecting some other issue in the news right now. | M |
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 H H H H |
1401 | How hai? A joke-haiku contest | Write a joke (roughly) in the "It's so xxx" genre as a haiku. | H 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. | T H 2 |
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. | T M |
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 M |
1396 | Hail Limerixicon XVII: Write a limerick featuring a 'ha-' word | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "ha-". | H H H 4 |
1395 | Add nauseam: A plus-one contest | Add a "plus one" to some familiar numerical grouping, true or fictional | T 2 |
1394 | Two movies, one line | Cite a real or coined line, or give a description, that could work for two different movies, plays or TV shows. | H H |
1393 | Second chance (acned conches?) for anagrams | Describe any of the provided anagram businesses, or offer its slogan. | H |
1392 | Picture this -- caption these cartoons | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided Bob Staake cartoons. | T 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 |
1390 | 'Same difference' for a new time | Explain how any two of the items in the provided list are similar, different or otherwise linked. | 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. | M |
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 H H |
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. | T H H 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. | M 3 |
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. | H H H |
1379 | Your wish: A pun -- a star | Tell a joke, in your choice of form, whose punchline is a pun on a song title or lyric. | W T H H 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 |
1376 | Get thee to a funnery | Add a character (or more) to a Shakespeare play and supply some resulting dialogue. | T H |
1373 | Prime time for some Amazon reviews | Send us a humorous "review" for any of the provided Amazon-listed items. | T |
1371 | The Tile Invitational VII | Create a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or phrase) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | T |
1370 | What's in a name? | Write something about a well-known person, real or fictional, using only the letters in that person's name. | T M H H 4 |
1369 | Shoot us some oops | Tell us a concise original joke that revolves around a typo or misheard word. | H |
1368 | Picture This -- cartoon captions | Supply a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | 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. | T H H |
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. | W H H |
1364 | Clue us in | Supply clever, funny clues for as many as 25 of the words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | H H |
1363 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1334 through Week 1359. | M 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 H H H H H |
1360 | The lyin' in winter: Seasonal fictoids | Give us some untrue trivia about winter or things that occur in winter. | T |
1359 | Back up in the air (quotes) | Write a sentence or two and highlight an "air quote" that spans two or more words (and two sentences if you like). | T H H H H 2 |
1357 | It's parody time! | Write a satirical song about anything in the news right now, set to a familiar tune. | H |
1356 | Ask Backwards 38 | Sixteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. | H |
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. | M 4 |
1354 | As the Word turns 5: Taking our vowels | 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 |
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. | M |
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. | H |
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. | T H |
1348 | Same difference | Explain humorously how any two or more of the provided items are alike, different or otherwise connected. | H H |
1347 | Reologisms | Write a clever, funny definition for any of the provided Loser-concocted words and phrases, and/or show they'd be used. | M 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. | M H H H |
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 H 2 |
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 2 |
1341 | Portmanteautapping from E to R | Coin a portmanteau word beginning with E through R, in which the words overlap by at least two letters, and describe it. | M H H H |
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. | H H H |
1339 | Songs for a modern error | Write humorous lyrics about some modern woe, set to a familiar tune. | H H |
1338 | Picture This -- cartoon captions | Supply a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | T |
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. | T H H H H H |
1335 | Put it in bee-verse! Or . . . | Write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer that includes at least one of the provided words, used in Round 9 or later of this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee; OR: write a joke in Q&A form that uses at least one of the words. | M H 4 |
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. | H H 2 |
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 |
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 |
1331 | Paste Imperfect | Choose a headline or sentence from The Post or another publication, print or online, dated May 9-20, 2019. Then change that headline or other text by: A. Deleting up to 40 consecutive characters from it (put brackets around the deleted text); B. Adding up to 40 consecutive characters from the same article or ad (write the additions in capital letters); or C. Both A and B, as long as the added text goes at the end of your headline or sentence. |
T M |
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 H H H |
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. | T H H H 3 |
1327 | Mess with our (or anyone's) heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline (or a big part of a headline) by writing a bank head, or subtitle. | T H H |
1326 | Foaling around | Breed" any two names from the provided list of 100 horses and name the foal to reflect both names. | T H H |
1325 | Stand up and jeer | Give us some original standup jokes that would have been good at this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner. | M |
1323 | Selected shortened subjects | Delete one or more letters from the beginning or end (or both) of a movie title and describe the resulting movie. | H H |
1321 | Pumping Prime: Amazon reviews | Send us a humorous "review" (like the provided samples from our earlier contests) for any of the provided items. | H |
1320 | Questionable journalism | Find any sentence (or a substantive part of a sentence) that appears in the Post or another publication, in print or online, dated Feb. 21-March 4, and pair it with a question it might answer. | 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 H H 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. | M H H H H |
1317 | Punku 2: Haiku with puns | Create a haiku containing a pun or similar wordplay. | H 3 |
1316 | Lies, damn lies, with statistics | Tell us some bogus trivia using "statistics" or some bogus quantitative meaure. | T |
1315 | Clue us in -- our reverse crossword | Supply clever, funny clues for as many as 25 of the 74 words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | M H |
1313 | Dead Letters -- our obit poem contest | Write a poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2018. | M H 3 |
1312 | Neologisms in TOUR de Fours XV | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter block T-O-U-R and describe it. The letters may be in any order. | T |
1311 | Nextra! Nextra! The year in preview | Name some humorous event to happen in 2019. | M |
1310 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1282 through Week 1306. | H H |
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 H 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. | M |
1303 | Neologisms to di- for | Replace a digraph in an existing word or phrase with another digraph to make a new term. | T H H H H H |
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. | H |
1301 | Tell us a Fib(onacci) | Write a humorous poem of 20 syllables divided among six lines like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. And a least two -- any two -- of the lines must rhyme. | T M L |
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 H H H 4 |
1297 | A different type o' headline contest | Change a letter in an article or ad in the Post or another publication dated Sept. 13-24 by adding or subtracting one letter; substituting a letter; transposing two letters; or changing spacing or punctuation; and then add a "bank head. | H H H H H |
1296 | A, we're Adorbs: New-word poems | Use one or more of these words new to M-W.com in a humorous poem of eight lines max. | H H |
1295 | Really, now? A matter of degree. | Tell us an indication to some problem, followed by an even more dire sign. | M 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. | M H H |
1293 | Constitutional unconvention | Humorously translate or explain some part of the U.S. Constitution. | H |
1292 | Golly gosh, it's Limerixicon XV | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term, beginning with "gl-" through "go-". | T H H 3 |
1291 | Film flam -- movie anagrams | Rearrange the letters of a title of a movie or play to make a new title, then describe the new work. | H H H H |
1290 | Bobbing for Witte words | Come up with both an object/situation and a neologism for it. | H H 2 |
1289 | Fake gnus: bogus animal trivia | Tell us a fictoid -- a humorously false "fact" -- about the nonhuman animal kingdom. | T M |
1288 | Your results may vary | Write a funny disclaimer or warning for some product or service. | 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. | 2 |
1286 | Mind your P's and B's (and more) | Replace one or more P's in a word, name, or multi-word term with a B or with another letter and define or describe the results. | T |
1285 | That is so wrong! | Supply a trivia question along with both the correct answer and a cleverly "wrong" guess. | H H |
1284 | Same difference | Explain how any two of the items in the provided list are similar, different or otherwise linked. | T H |
1283 | Put it in Bee-verse | Write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer that includes one of the provided words, all from the 2018 National Spelling Bee. | M H 3 |
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. | H |
1280 | A la'ugh' a minute with 'air quotes' | Highlight part of a word, name or short phrase in "air quotes" to give it a new meaning or description. | H H H |
1278 | Colt following: The 'grandfoals' | Breed" any two of the 68 foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names, in the style of today's inking entries. | M H H 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 |
1276 | What 4? A limerick contest | Use a limerick using one of the provided lines as Line 5. | T H H |
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. | 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. | T H |
1273 | Restocking the Cabinet | Explain why a particular person -- or thing -- ought to fill a Cabinet post or other U.S. government position. | M H |
1271 | Yodel Doyle's praises with a D-O-Y-L-E neologism | Coin a new word or phrase that contains the letters D, O, Y, L and E. | H H H |
1270 | The Style Invitational turns 5 x 5 | Write a witty poem, on any subject, in any of these forms: A. Five lines of five syllables each B. Five lines of five words each C. Five lines of iambic pentameter |
T M 2 |
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. | T H H |
1268 | Playing pinocchio | Tell us some humorously bogus trivia about the news media or the publishing or broadcasting industries. | M |
1267 | Jingle bungle | Suggest an ill-advised spokesman (dead or alive, or fictional), along with a humorously noooo slogan or jingle. | H H |
1266 | The Tile Invitational V | Create a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or phrase) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | T H H H H |
1265 | Parody for the course | Write a song relating to a class or course of instruction, or to school in general. | H 3 |
1264 | A cry for Yelp: 'Review' any place | Write a humorous review, positive or negative, of anyplace (real of fictional) one might visit. | T T 4 |
1263 | Playing the short game | Using the three-letter Olympic national abbreviations and/or the abbreviation for any college, tell what would happen if one abbreviated team played another. | H |
1262 | Clue us in -- a backward crossword | Supply one or more creative clues for the provided filled-in crossword grid -- as many as 25 clues in all. | H H H |
1261 | Post mortems -- our annual obit poem contest | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2017. | H |
1259 | Beat the banned with euphemisms | Come up with creative euphemisms for the provided words, or for other words that might offend someone or other. | 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. | M H H H H |
1256 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Provide a funny caption for any of the provided cartoons. | T |
1255 | Tour de Fours XIV: SANT is coming | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter-block S-A-N-T; the letters may be in any order, but there may be no other letters between them. | H |
1254 | Inkorporation--a change-one-letter contest | Change the name of a present or past business, store or agency (not just a product) by adding one letter, deleting one letter, transposing two letters or substituting one letter for another. | T H |
1253 | Fashion x fiction: More fake trivia | Tell us some totally bogus trivia about clothing or fashion. | T H 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. | T |
1251 | Thanking outside the box | Tell us something to be thankful for. | H H |
1250 | Poems of the year(s) | Write a humorous poem incorporating three or more terms from a particular year or era listed on Time Traveler. | M |
1249 | Ask Backwards 36 | Choose any of the 15 provided items and follow it with a question that it could humorously answer. | T 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. | T M |
1246 | Questionable journalism | Find any sentence (or a substantive part of a sentence) that appears in The Post or another publication, in print or online, dated Sept. 21-Oct. 2, and pair it with a question it might answer. | H H |
1245 | Call us reprehensible . . . | Complain in a humorously missing-the-point way about something that has appeared in The Washington Post (in print or online) recently, or in another publication. | M H |
1244 | Primed for product reviews | Send us a creative "review" for any of the provided items that are listed on Amazon. | T |
1242 | Generation Yux | Give us a "then/now" joke. | I H H H H H H |
1241 | Less taste, more fill-in | Give us a novel clue for any word or phrase in which the remaining letters in the provided crossword puzzle fit, across or down. | M H H |
1240 | We GIVE you Limerixicon XIV | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "gh-" or "gi-". | H H 2 |
1239 | MASH 3 | Combine two movie titles and describe the result. | H H |
1238 | D-E-F Comedy Jam (or E-D-F, etc.) | Coin a threeword phrase (you may add an insignificant word or two) whose words begin with D, E and F — in any order — and describe it. | L H H H H |
1237 | Our alliteracy campaign | Rewrite an existing headline from any publication, print or online — about something in the news from July 20 to 31, by using alliteration. | H |
1236 | Portmanteaux faux | Explain--inaccurately but amusingly--how a real word is a combination of two or more words, with an illustrative sentence, as in the provided examples, or some other funny way. | W H H |
1235 | The Sound of Science | Write humorous lyrics on the subject of science or technology, set to a well-known tune. | T H H H |
1233 | Not | The Loser Community gets a week off (actually two) from writing contest entries and will have to find something else to do during staff meetings, sermons, romantic breakups, etc. | H H |
1232 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | M |
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 |
1229 | Gorey bits from A to Z | Send us one of more edgy rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. | T H H H |
1228 | That movie is SO about you | Name someone who was the "secret inspiration" for a certain movie. | H |
1227 | Celebrate ortho-diversity! | Name and describe a new life form -- and no letter in the term may be used twice. | H H |
1226 | Colt following: The 'grandfoals' | Breed" any two of the 61 foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect both parents names. | W H H H H |
1225 | The Ideas of March | Suggest a march for some group or field, along with one or more slogans. (You might also, or instead, comment on the march with some pertinent wordplay.) | H H |
1223 | Post again out to mislead public! | Write a humorously sensationalistic, misleading headline on an otherwise mundane article or ad published in The Post or elsewhere from April 13 to April 24. | T H H |
1222 | Foaling around | Breed" any two of the provided racehorses nominated for this year's Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont; and name the foal to reflect both of them. | H H 4 |
1221 | Who's kidding whom? | Take two people from history, past or present, and tell what their child would be like | H H 3 |
1220 | O pedantry, O pedantry | Give us some humorous pedantry. | M |
1219 | Cast your Bred upon us | Write a Lik the Bred verse about someone in the news lately. | T |
1218 | Mess with our -- or anyone else's -- heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in the Post (print or online or another publication dated March 9-20) by writing a bankhead, or subtitle. | H H H |
1217 | Mergers you wrote: Combine two businesses with puns | Give a clever name for a combination of two or more businesses. | T H H |
1216 | As the word turns | Create a word or multi-word term that consists of adjacent letters -- in any direction or several directions -- in the provided grid, and provide a humorous definition. | H H H |
1215 | A so-so contest (How so-so is it?) | Write a humorous exaggeration in the form "x is so y that . . . | H H 3 |
1214 | The alternaugural address | Write a humorous passage — a “quote,” an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything — using only words that appear in Trump’s inaugural address. | M H |
1213 | Punku | Write a haiku that incorporates a pun. | T H H H |
1212 | The Tile Invitational IV | Give us a five-, six- or seven-letter word (or two words) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | H H |
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. | H H |
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. | T M |
1207 | Clue us in -- a reverse crossword | Supply clever, funny clues to up to 25 of the 72 words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | H H H H |
1206 | Do-over the do-over -- enter any of the year's contests | Enter (or re-enter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1149 to 1202, except for Week 1152, last year's do-over. | H H |
1205 | Could we just have a do-over? Yes, we could. | Enter (or re-enter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1149 to 1201, except for Week 1152, last year's do-over. | H H H H |
1204 | Well, at least . . . | Note some good news for the coming year to comfort -- or "comfort" -- those who are depressed about the change of presidential administration. | H |
1203 | You've got the powers | Tell us what you would do if you had one or more of the six magical powers provided. | H |
1202 | Don't be afraid of the dark | Write lyrics to a song that, in some way, express hope. | T |
1201 | Tour de Fours XIII: What's there to NOVE? | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter block N-O-V-E. | H H H H |
1200 | The definitive dozen | Supply a word, name or multi-word term along with a wry definition or description; together, the term and description must total exactly 12 words. | H H H H |
1198 | Give it to us straight | Take any sentence from an article or ad in any publication dated Oct. 20 to Oct. 31 — or from an online article dated within that period — and translate it into “plain English". | M |
1197 | Picture This -- It's a Bob Staake caption contest | Write a caption for any of the cartoons provided. | M |
1196 | Hyphen the Terrible | Combine either half of a hyphenated word or compound term with either half of another such term to create a new hyphenated term, and describe the result humorously. | H H |
1195 | Don't change a letter! | Alter a movie title only by changing word spacing, changing capitalization, and adding or deleting punctuation marks, accents, etc., then describe the result. | W T M |
1194 | Nyetymologies: fake word origins | Provide a humorously untrue explanation for the derivation of a word. | T H H |
1193 | Poedtry | Write a Poed, which consists of four lines: The first line contains six one-syllable words. The second line contains three two-syllable words. The third line contains two three-syllable words. The fourth line contains one six-syllable word (or a name totaling six syllables. And at least two of the lines must rhyme. | T L H H |
1192 | Ask Backwards | The 15 provided phrases above are the answers. You provide the questions to as many as you’d like (up to 25 entries total). | H H 4 |
1191 | Mess with our heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in The Post (print or online) and dated Sept. 1-12 by writing a bank head, or subtitle | T H |
1190 | You're workin' on a chain, gang | Create a chain of no more than 15 proper nouns — names of people (real or fictional), products, places, etc. — including one title of a work — in which each name relates somehow to the previous one. | W H H H H H H H |
1187 | Just drop it, okay? | Drop the last letter from an existing word, phrase or name and define the result. | H H |
1186 | We're always happy to verse you | Write a humorous poem, of any form, about or “by” the anagram of anyone’s name. | T M H |
1184 | Plan C -- a third candidate? | Explain why some novel person (or thing) should be president; you could also suggest a president-veep ticket. | H |
1183 | C'mon, be honest with us | Write something in roughly the form "If X were more honest, (then) Y. | T H H |
1182 | Where in the wor(l)d? | (1) On What3words.com, find one or more humorously appropriate (or ironic) three-word codes at a particular place; or 2) find a three-word code, tell us where it is, and tell us what ought to be there. | T H H |
1181 | Put it in Bee-verse | Write a short, humorous poem using one of the 36 provided words, all from the 2016 National Spelling Bee. | W M H |
1180 | Strip search! | Find a line of text from any comic strip or panel that appears on the Post's comics pages or on washingtonpost.com/comics, dated anywhere between June 16 and June 27, and either (a) supply a question that the original line could answer, or (b) follow it with your own line of dialogue or reply. | T H H |
1179 | Blasted alphabetical contests . . . | Coin a three-word phrase whose words begin with A, B and C -- in any order -- and describe it. | P H H H |
1178 | A ______ of collective nouns | Propose one or more funny new names for groups of things. | T H H H |
1177 | The ballad box | Write a song related to this year's elections, set to a familiar tune. | H |
1176 | Let 'er RIP: Write an obit line | Write a humorous line or two for someone's obituary -- either for a particular person (dead or not) or for a fictional or generic one. | H H H |
1175 | Good luck with 13 | Make up a word whose Scrabble letter values add up to exactly 13, and define it. | M H H H |
1174 | Colt following -- It's time for the grandfoals | Breed" any two of the 57 foal names that got ink this week and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names. | H |
1173 | Tinker with the recipe | Slightly change the name of a food or brand of food (or something else in the food industry) and describe it, or write a slogan, jingle, etc. | H 4 |
1172 | Pieces of 'Pie' | Write a short passage -- an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything -- using only words that appear in the song "American Pie". | H H |
1171 | What's my (next) line? | Take a line from any song and pair it with your own second line to make a humorous rhyming couplet; the second line should match the rhythm of the first, rather than the second line of the song itself. | T M H H |
1170 | Derby or not Derby | Breed" any two of the provided racehorses nominated for this year's Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont; and name the foal to reflect both names. | H |
1169 | Be caustic by acrostic | Review or otherwise describe a movie, book, play or TV show (or Internet equivalent) with words whose first letters spell out the name of the work. | M H H H |
1168 | Asterisky business | Tell us an original joke whose punchline can't be understood without knowledge -- not necessarily scientific -- that most of us don't have (which you'll supply with a concise explanation). | M H 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 H |
1166 | Questionable journalism | Take a sentence (or most of a sentence) that appears in text (not a headline) in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com dated March 10-21 and make up a question that the sentence could answer | M H |
1165 | B all you can B | Change a word, phrase or name by adding one or more B's, and/or by replacing one or more letters with B's, and define your new term. | M H H H H |
1163 | Put it in reverse | Spell a word, name or phrase backward and define the result in a way that relates to the original. | H H H H |
1162 | An 8-year Re-Onion | Write a fictional Onion-type headline. | H |
1161 | Give us four Pinocchios | Tell us some false "facts" about politicians, present or past. | T L |
1160 | A remeaning task | Redefine an existing word or two-word term beginning with P through Z. | T M I H |
1159 | It's all in the game | Come up with a funny/ridiculous board-type game and describe it. | H 2 |
1157 | Clue us in -- a backward crossword | Supply clever, funny clues to up to 25 of the words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | H |
1156 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2015. | H H H |
1155 | Vowel movement | Choose a title of a book, movie, play or TV show; drop all the vowels (including Y when it's used as a vowel); then add your choice of vowels -- as many as you like -- to create a new work; and describe it. | W H H H |
1154 | Tabby Road -- songs for cats | Write a song for -- or about -- cats or other animals, set to a familiar tune. | T |
1153 | Be three-paired | Choose two or more entities represented by a single three-letter combination from IAA through LZZ, found at the provided link, and say how they are alike or different or have some connection. | W H |
1152 | Oops? You do it again. | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 1098 through Week 1148, except for Week 1101, last year's do-over. | T H H H |
1150 | A deviant character | Change the name of person or animal -- real or fictional -- by adding or subtracting one letter; substituting one letter for another; or switching the positions of two nearby letters, and describing the results. | T H H 3 |
1149 | Gestures of depreciation | Suggest ways to celebrate National Love Your Lawyer Day -- or a made-up "holiday" celebrating some other profession. | T H |
1148 | It's TankaWanka II | 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 it must include at least one rhyme. | H H |
1147 | It's E-Z find-a-word -- yours | Create a word or multi-word term that consists of adjacent letters -- in any direction or several directions -- in the provided grid, and provide a humorous definition. | H |
1145 | A DICEy situation | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter block D-I-C-E. | H H H 3 |
1144 | Someone else's business | Name a real brand, along with something else it would be a better name for. | H H H |
1143 | Ask Backwards | Provided are 15 answers, separated by asterisks. You supply the questions. | H H H H 2 |
1142 | Two-faced tweets | Combine two well-known names into a Twitter handle, and write a tweet (no more than 140 characters and spaces) that that portmanteau person might write. | H 4 |
1141 | Mess with our heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in the Post (print or online) Sept. 17-28 by writing a bankhead, or subtitle. | H |
1140 | You're giving us a bad name | Cite a REAL brand name, past or present, note its original use, and then say what sort of product, organization, etc., that name would be bad for. | H |
1139 | A little sixty-four play | Fashion an entry by selecting one element from each of the provided menu groups. Make sure you indicate the combination you chose (e.g., 2-C-iii). | H |
1138 | Show us your touché | Offer an elegantly snide (and original) insult of anyone living or dead. | H |
1137 | Be a published author! | Give us a spicy title for a boring book, real or imagined. | H |
1136 | Gaah! It's Limerixicon XII | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "ga-". | M H H |
1134 | The 'Sty'le Invitational Red'ux' | Put quotation marks around part of a word, name or phrase and define the result. | T 3 |
1133 | Are 'hew ready? A contest for clerihews | A clerihew is a humorous four-line rhyming poem about a person whose name is mentioned in the first line; in fact, the name must be at the end of that line (or constitute the whole line) so that it has to rhyme with something. The rhyme structure (and we don't want "lazy" rhymes) is AABB: the first line rhymes with the second, the third with the fourth. | T H H H H |
1132 | You and what army? Military fictoids | Give us some comically bogus trivia about the military, past or present, ours or theirs. | H 3 |
1131 | One man's trash | Suggest a humorous way to reuse one or more of the items listed above -- or anything else advertised on RepurposedMaterialsinc.com. | H |
1130 | Yux Redux: Play on a foreign phrase | Make a word play on a foreign phrase or term (or English phrase using foreign words) and describe it. | M I H H H |
1129 | Right in the pampootie | Write a humorous short poem (eight lines or fewer) incorporating one of the 50 provided words. | W T H H |
1127 | From the creators of . . . | Think up a spinoff of a real TV series, past or present, and furnish a description or bit of dialogue. | T H |
1124 | Heed! Indeed: Advice verse | Write one of the provided reminders as a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer. | H |
1123 | The Tile Invitational III | Give us a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or two words) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided seven-letter sets. | T H |
1122 | Colt Following: 'Grandfoals' | Breed" any two of the 65 foal names that got ink this week and name the offspring to reflect the parents' names. | H H 4 |
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. | W H H |
1119 | We want hue so bad | Invent a name for a color and describe it. | H H |
1118 | Breed 'em and weep | Breed any two of the provided 100 racehorses nominated for this year's Triple Crown events and name the foal the reflect both names. | H |
1117 | You got another sing coming | Write a song about a topic or person lately in the news, set to a familiar tune. | T L |
1116 | Punning in place | Create a new term using only the letters in a place name. You don't have to use all the letters, but you can't use a letter more often than it appears in the word. | M H H |
1115 | Our type o' headline | Change a headline in an article or ad in the Washington Post and then add a "bank head" or subtitle. | T H H 4 |
1114 | Awww together now | Write us a humorous headline -- from the past, present, or future -- that puts an optimistic perspective on some otherwise not-so-promising news. | H |
1113 | Our occasional parodies | Write a song celebrating someone's birthday or other personal occasion (rather than, say, a holiday), set to a familiar tune. | L H |
1112 | Some SHARP words | Coin a word or short term that includes all the letters S, H, A, R, and P. | I H H H H |
1111 | When you riff upon a store | Use a wordplay on a song title as a name or slogan for a real or imagined business. | T H H H H H H |
1110 | The mama of all humor | Write a [Someone’s] Mama joke for some well-known figure, past or present, real or fictional. | H H |
1109 | Fictoids of Columbia | Tell us some humorously untrue “facts” about Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area. | T H H H |
1108 | Hearts of dorkness | Write a humorous Valentine's Day sentiment to someone (or to some organization), either real or fictional -- either from you or from someone else you name. Plus an all-new option: We'll also be willing to run at least one really funny, clever, well-executed graphic. | H H |
1107 | Send us the bill | Combine two or more names from the list of members of Congress on this page to "cosponsor" a bill based on their combined last names, and state its purpose. | H H |
1106 | Show your resolve | Suggest a New Year's resolution that someone might make 100 or more years in the future. | T M H |
1105 | A lit obit of fun | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2014. | W H |
1104 | A pair of threes | Choose two or three entities represented by a single three-letter combination beginning with E- through H- — see the links at bit.ly/abbrevs-e-h — and say how they are alike or different. | M H H H H H H 3 |
1103 | Themes good enough for us | Suggest an existing song to be used as the theme for a TV series or program for comic effect. | T |
1102 | Let's get Sirius | Suggest a new radio channel and describe it. | H H |
1100 | Pun and ink -- the feghoot | Contrive an elaborate scenario that ends in a novel groaner pun on a familiar expression, title, etc. | M L H H 2 |
1099 | Questionable journalism | Take a sentence (or most of a sentence) that appears in an article in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com dated Nov. 20 through Dec. 1 (in print, any article from those days' papers), and make up a question that the sentence could answer. | T H H |
1098 | Prime time for some Amazon reviews | Send us a creative "review" for any of the provided items that are listed on Amazon. | H |
1097 | Futz your sign | Select a line from one of the horoscopes appearing anytime from Nov. 6 through Nov. 17 in the Washington Post's daily Style or on washingtonpost.com and "clarify" it with a translation or extra "information". | H 3 |
1096 | Picture this | Write a humorous caption for any of the provided Bob Staake cartoons. | M |
1095 | TankaWanka! | 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 it must include at least one rhyme. | H H H H |
1094 | TAXI's the fare for Tour de Fours XI | Coin a word or hyphenated term that contains the letter block T-A-X-I; the letters may be in any order, but there may be no other letters between them. | H H 2 |
1092 | Are we having funds yet? | Suggest a humorous fundraising "challenge" for any organization. | H |
1091 | Good idea! or not. | Come up with a good idea and, through a small change in wording, a bad idea. | H H |
1090 | Talk undirty to us | Write a humorous poem in any form (no more than eight lines) that includes one or more of the provided words; the word must make sense in the poem in its TRUE meaning. | H 2 |
1089 | It's E-Z Find-a-Word -- your own! | Create a word or multi-word term that consists of adjacent letters -- in any direction or several directions -- in the provided grid, and provide a humorous definition. | H |
1088 | Ask backwards with our answers, your questions | Supply the questions to as many of the 16 supplied answers as you like. | H H H 3 |
1086 | Playing the dozens | 1. Start with any 12-letter word, name or multi-word phrase. 2. Add one letter OR drop one letter OR substitute another letter OR switch the position of two letters to create a new term, as in the examples given. 3. Define or describe the result humorously. |
I H |
1085 | Eww-venirs: Ideas for gift shops | Suggest a humorous--but NOT horribly tasteless--tchotchke, T-shirt, etc., from a real or imagined gift shop at a particular tourist site. | H |
1084 | Limerixicon XI: Fi-, fo-, go! | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "Fl-" through "fo-". | H H 2 |
1082 | Band on the pun | Alter the name of a music group or performer slightly -- not necessarily by just one letter, but enough so it's obvious what the original is -- and describe it in some way. | T H H H |
1081 | It's the stupidity, stupid | Write us stupid questions that will make us laugh. | M |
1080 | McGonagall with the windiness | Memorialize a modern "tragedy" in a poem burdened with hilariously overwrought verse; lame, forced rhymes; and painfully uneven meter. Get the badness across in one verse of no more than eight lines. | M |
1079 | Little piddle riddle | Ask a question and answer it with a rhyme. | H H |
1078 | Hyphen the Terrible | Combine one side of any hyphenated word or compound term with one side of another word to make a new hyphenated term, and define it humorously. Both halves must appear in the same issue of The Post or another print newspaper, or in writing published the same day on washingtonpost.com or another online publication. | H H H H 4 |
1077 | Time marches Swiftly | Give us a novel Tom Swifty, playing on either an adverb or a verb (e.g., "We care about the little people, the BP chairman gushed"). | H H |
1076 | Dactyly fractyly | Send us some double dactyls that conform to Gene Weingarten's rules. | H |
1074 | Let's go parody-hopping | Describe a stage or movie musical in a parody of a song from a different musical. | H |
1073 | Bank shots: Mess with (y)our heads | Quote a headline appearing in the Washington Post, washington.com or another publication, print or headline, dated May 22 to June 1, and supply a "bank" headline that either misinterprets it, as in the examples above, or comments wryly on it. | H H |
1072 | The Tile Invitational | Come up with a 5-, 6-, or 7-letter term by scrambling any of the provided seven-letter ScrabbleGram sets, and define it. | T H H |
1071 | A pair of threes | Choose two or three entities represented by a single three-letter combination at bit.ly/3letterabs and say how they are alike or different. | H H H H H |
1070 | Colt following -- our grandfoals contest | Breed" any two of the foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect the parents' names. | H 3 |
1069 | It's a small, small world | Write a humorous poem of no more than eight lines -- it doesn't have to rhyme -- using only the top 1,000 words on Wiktionary.org's list of the most common among 20 million words found in movie and TV scripts. | L H |
1068 | An iffy proposition | Suggest some humorous action that you would take if you were in someone's position, more or less in the form "If I were _____ my first act would be _____. | H |
1067 | A(t)tribute to your wit | Alter a well-known quote slightly and attribute it to someone else. | T M H H H |
1066 | It's mating season | Breed" any two from the provided list of 100 of the 3-year-old racehorses nominated for this year's Triple Crown and name the foal to reflect both names. | H H |
1065 | The ands have it | Slightly alter ANY well-known phrase in the form "A-and-B" -- it doesn't have to be Latinate/Anglo-Saxon -- and define it. | H H |
1063 | Same difference | Take any two items from the provided list and explain how they're similar or different. | T |
1062 | Scanning the headlines | Write a rhyming poem about something currently in the news. | H H 2 |
1061 | Less taste, more fill-in | Give us a novel clue for any word or phrase in which the remaining letters in the provided crossword puzzle fit, across or down. | M |
1060 | Picture this | Write a caption, or captions, for one or more of the provided cartoons. | T |
1059 | With parens like these . . . | Add some words in parentheses to a well-known song title to make it funnier in some way. | H |
1058 | Eastwood Ho | Create a good-bad-ugly progression. | H |
1056 | Weather or nuts | Coin a term relating to the weather, climate, etc. -- either literal or figurative -- and define it. | H |
1055 | Oh, K! | This week, to commemorate both Kevin Dopart and his 1K ink blots: Change a word, phrase or name by adding one or more K's, and define your new term. | H |
1054 | Dead letters | Write a short, humorous poem commemorating someone (or maybe even something) who died in 2013. | H |
1052 | Clue us in | Come up with up to 25 creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms that appear in the provided grid. | H H |
1051 | Love the tiny tail stain! | Create an anagram -- a text with the letters rearranged -- of any text (except merely someone's name), of any length, referring to something or someone in the news. | L H H 2 |
1050 | Just redo it | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 1000 through Week 1046. | H H |
1048 | Ask Backwards | You supply the questions to as many of the provided answers as you like. | H H H |
1047 | Bank shots | Quote a headline appearing in The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com or another publication, print or online, dated Nov. 14 to Nov. 25, and supply a humorous "bank" headline that either misinterprets it or comments wryly on it. | H H |
1045 | Songs for the asking | Take a sentence, phrase or title from a song and provide a funny question it might answer. | I H |
1044 | Play it safe | Come up with a comically safety-conscious rule for the workplace or elsewhere. | T |
1043 | Rechanneling celebrity | Describe a TV reality show featuring a celebrity pursuing some unlikely endeavor. | H |
1042 | Tour de Fours X: Go SANE | Create a new word or two-word term containing the letter block S-A-N-E -- in any order, but consecutively, and define it. | W H |
1041 | What have you got to lose? | Answer a question, real or rhetorical, that appears in a song. | H |
1040 | IRS my case | Schedule A: Suggest a novel way for the government to determine taxes. Schedule B: Suggest a deduction that you'd like to take, or that some real or fictional person past or present might like to take. Schedule C: Suggest a cause you'd rather check off $3 for. |
M H H |
1039 | Shookespeare | Combine any of the words in Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, in any order, to create a humorous sentence or longer passage. | T H |
1038 | It's like this, see | Answer a simple question with a ridiculously argued answer citing various connections and parallels. | W T M H H |
1036 | Just for liffs | Use a real place name, from anywhere in the world, as a new term. | H H |
1035 | The Empy 500 | Explain what news Bob Staake is trying to tell in any of the provided drawings. | 4 |
1034 | What's to like? | Supply an original joke of the form "I like my [your choice] the way I like my [something else of your choice]: [some clever, funny parallel]. | T |
1033 | LimeriXicon | Supply a humorous limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "fa-". | H H |
1032 | Hid stuff | Explain the symbolism "obviously" evident in any well-known site, artwork, etc., in 75 words or fewer. | T |
1031 | The 'Sty'le Invitational | Choose any word, name, or short term; emphasize a key, suddenly pertinent part of it with quotation marks; then redefine the word. | H H |
1030 | The cinquain feeling | Write a clever cinquain. The five-line form is straightforward: first line, two syllables; second line, four syllables; third line, six; fourth line, eight; fifth line, two. | T H H 2 |
1029 | Ditty Harry | Write a descriptive theme song for a well-known movie, set to a well-known tune. | H |
1027 | Built for two | Give humorous related names for any pair of features in a given building, organization, etc. | T H |
1025 | In so many words | Create an original backronym for a name or other term, especially one that's been in the news lately. | T M H H H 2 |
1024 | Gorey thoughts | Send us some edgy rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. The pairs are AB, CD, EF, GH, IJ, KL, MN, OP, QR, ST, UV, WX, and YZ. | H |
1023 | Hai there, Martians! | Write one or more humorous haiku that will greet the Martians or share a little nugget of what life is like on Earth. | 4 |
1022 | What's the diff? | Explain how any two of the provided items are alike or different. | T |
1021 | 'Gram theft | Come up with a term by scrambling any of the letters sets in the provided list, and define it. | T H |
1020 | Colt following | Breed any two of this week's winning foals and name the grandfoal. | H H |
1019 | What a turnoff | Tell us some creative things that children and families could do during Screen-Free Week. | L |
1018 | Reologisms | Write a clever, funny definition for any of the Loser-concocted neologisms from Week 1014 as well as from Week 1000 that deserve better definitions than their creators offered at the time. | H 2 |
1016 | Foaling around | Breed any two of the horses nominated for this year's Triple Crown races and give the foal a name humorously reflecting the names of the parents. | H H H |
1015 | Faux re mi | Give us some humorously false trivia about music or musicians. | I 4 |
1014 | Join now | Combine the beginning and end, or the beginnings and ends, of any two words in single Washington Post story or ad published March 21 to April 1 into a new word or two-word phrase, and define the result. | H H H H |
1013 | Har monikers | Write a riddle that uses a pun of a person's name in the answer. | H H H |
1012 | The news at 5 | Write a limerick about a recent news event. | T H 4 |
1011 | Top these! | Try your hand at any of the contests mentioned in this look back. | H H H H H H H |
1010 | Picture this | Write a caption for any of the five provided cartoons. | T M |
1009 | What's in a name? | Write something about some person, real or fictional, using only the letters in the person's name. | H H 3 |
1007 | Clue us in | Come up with creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | H H H H H H |
1004 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem about anyone who died in 2012. | L H H |
1002 | Wring out the OED | Make up a false definition for any of the listed OED words. | H |
1001 | Make us ROFL | Give us a funny, original acronym. | H H |
1000 | We now have 4 digits; you now have 7 letters | Choose any word, name or two-word term beginning anywhere from T through Z; then add one letter, drop one letter, substitute one letter for another, or transpose two adjacent letters, and define the result. | M H |
999 | Drectrospective | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 946 through Week 995, except for Week 948. | M H H H |
997 | Unworthy causes | Name a dubious charity and describe its mission. | H H 3 |
996 | A Life-Time opportunity | Combine two magazines or journals and describe the result, supply a marketing pitch, or suggest a story or two that it might publish. | T H H |
993 | Versus, verses | Write a short "rap battle" between any two characters, real or fictional. | M |
991 | Tour de Fours IX | Create a new word or two-word term containing the letter block V, O, T, and E and define it. | H H |
990 | Indecent relations | Pair two people, real or fictional, who have the same last name; say how they're alike or different, or something they might do (even in fantasy), as a pair. | H H |
988 | A faster break | Suggest ways to make sports and other leisure activities more time-efficient or exciting. | T |
987 | Bank shots | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com from Sept. 6 through Sept. 17 and reinterpret it by adding a "bank head," or subtitle. | H |
986 | Hear here! | Give us a sentence or short dialogue that would be a lot funnier if a word in it were mistaken for a homophone of that word. | H |
984 | Another brilliant contest | Write something whose words begin with consecutive letters of the alphabet. | H 3 |
983 | Limerixicon IX | Supply a humorous limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters "eq-" through "ez-". | H H 3 |
982 | The parody line | Set your own, humorous words to the tune of a well-known song--except that you must preserve one of the original lines. | H H H H |
980 | Def jam | Supply a humorous definition for any of the provided Loser-penned neologisms. | H |
978 | A reason to rhyme the news | Write a short verse about something that's been in the news recently. | H |
977 | Lost in Translation 2.0 | Translate a line of text from English into another language using Google Translate; then copy that result and translate it back into English. You may also make intermediate steps into one or more other languages. | M H H H |
976 | Join now! | Combine the beginning and end of any two words or names in this week's Style Invitational or Style Conversational columns to make a new term, and define it. | T H H H |
975 | Gone mything | Debunk a "Sixth Myth" about one of more of the recent "5 Myths" topics provided. | H |
974 | Eat our dust! | Write a limerick humorously describing a book, play, movie, or TV show. | W H H H |
973 | A real triple crown | The horses in this week's list either produced no inking "foals" in Week 965, or ran in the Kentucky Derby but weren't on the initial list. "Breed" any two and name the foal. | H H |
972 | Trends and neighbors | Choose any two items on the provided list and explain how they are alike or different. | H |
970 | Couple it | Take a line from any well-known poem and pair it with your own second line to make a humorous couplet. | H H 3 |
969 | Colt following | Breed any two "foals" in today's results, and name the grandfoal. | H H 2 |
967 | Overlap dance II | Create a phrase that overlaps two terms, each of two words or more, and describe the result. | T H H |
966 | Inkremental change | Start with any word or name, and create a series of words that change by one letter at a time, until you come up with a related word or name. | T I H 3 |
965 | Foaling around | Breed any two of the horses in this year's Triple Crown races and name their foal. | H H H |
964 | The Grossery Bag? | Suggest a design and/or slogan to go on the side of the ardently desired Style Invitational Loser Bag. | H |
963 | The overlap dance | Send us a Before & After "person" whose name combines two people's names, real or fictional (okay, you can use animals' names, too), and describe the person in a funny way. | H H |
962 | Questionable journalism | Take any sentence (or a major part of it) that appears in the Post or in an article on washingtonpost.com anytime from now through March 19 and supply a question it could answer. | H |
961 | The end of our rhops | Write a funny passage or headline whose words all have the same number of letters. | W H H H |
959 | Out of network | Move a current or former TV program (or type of programming) to a different network and explain what would change. | H |
958 | All's Weller | Write a "wellerism," a sentence that starts with a quote, often a short proverb, and goes on to include some sort of wordplay on something in the quote. | T H |
955 | Twits' twist | Create a phrase by combining a word or phrase with an anagram of that word or phrase, and define or describe it. | H H H 2 |
953 | Clue us in | Come up with creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms in the crossword puzzle that's already run in The Post. | H |
952 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2011. | H H |
950 | Of all the nerve! | Give us a humorous example of hypothetical chutzpah. | H |
948 | Look back in Inker | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 891 through 945 (except for Week 896, which was the same contest for the previous year). | T M H H |
947 | Tour de Fours VIII: Neologisms | Come up with a new word or two-word term that includes the letter block N-O-E-L, in any order but with no other letters between them, and define it. | H H 2 |
946 | Another round of Bierce | Write a clever definition of a word, name or multi-word term. | H H H H |
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. | T |
943 | Ask backward XXIX | You are on "Jeopardy!" You supply the questions for as many of the provided answers as you like. | H |
942 | Singular ideas | Give us an idea for a contest for which there's likely only one good entry. | T H |
941 | They don't say! | Give us a quote that a particular person, present or past, real or fictional, sooo wouldn't have said. | T |
940 | Our type o' headline | Change a headline by one letter, or switch two letters, or change spacing or punctuation, in a headline (or most of a headline) appearing on an article or ad in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com from Oct. 7 through Oct. 17, and elaborate on it in a "bank" headline (subhead). | T H H H H |
938 | Free and Lear | Write a limerick using the first two lines of any of Edward Lear's 115 limericks plus your own remaining three lines. | T H H H H |
936 | Hoho contendere | Slightly alter a well-known foreign-language term and define it. | T H |
935 | The 400 blows | Write a humorous poem--choose your form--about the Virginia earthquake, Hurricane Irene or another well-known natural event. | T H |
934 | Same difference | Explain how any two items in the provided list are similar or different. | H H 2 |
932 | We'll call them your-mama jokes | Tell us an original "your mama" joke. | H H |
931 | Limerixicon 8 | Supply a humorous limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters ea- through -el. | W T H H H H |
928 | Play feature | Use the title of a movie as the answer to a riddle or other question. | H |
926 | Outrageous fortunes | Come up with a fortune cookie line that you'd like to see. | T H |
925 | A remeaning task | Redefine a word in the dictionary beginning with I through O. | H H H H H |
924 | Doomed to repeat it | Create "Unreal Facts" about history. | H |
922 | A Banner Week | Write entirely new, humorous lyrics to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner”; they can be on any subject. | H H |
921 | Give Us Willies | Write an original Little Willie poem, perhaps reflecting our current era. This is a venerable four-line genre in which Master W. does some nasty thing and doesn't tend to learn to be a Good Boy by poem's end. | L H |
920 | Sarchiasm | Write an original chiasmus, in which the elements of a phrase are inverted for comedic effect. | H H H H H H H H H 4 |
919 | Good Luck With 13 | Alter a 13-letter word, phrase or name by one letter (add a letter, drop a letter, switch two letters somewhere in the word, or substitute one letter for another) and describe the result. | H |
918 | Colt Following | Breed any two "foals" in today's results, or one foal with one of the real horse names used in today's entries--and name the "grandfoal." The name may not exceed 18 characters, including spaces, and your entry shouldn't remotely duplicate any of today's results. | H H 2 |
917 | Wryku | Write a haiku--a sentiment that can be broken into three lines with exactly five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third--on any subject that's been in the news in the last couple of weeks. | M H |
916 | Bank shots | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from April 22 through May 2 and reinterpret it by adding a "bank head," or subtitle. | H |
915 | Picture this | Write a caption for any of the cartoons pictured here. | M |
914 | Foaling around | Breed any two of 100 of the almost 400 horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown races, and name the foal. | M H H |
913 | Bring up the rear | Move the last letter of an existing word or name to the front of the word, and define the new term. | H |
912 | Pair-a-phrase | Lift a word that appears inside a longer word; pair it with the original word to create a phrase; and define it. | H 3 |
910 | Your ad here | Slightly alter an advertising slogan so that someone else could use it. | H H |
909 | Reprizing | Suggest humorous uses for one or more of the items above, alone or in combination. | M |
908 | Recast away | Fire an actor or actress from a movie or TV show, past or present, and offer a replacement for the role. | T M H |
907 | Naming rite | Come up with a creative, somehow fitting sponsor for some public facility or part of one. | T H H |
906 | Your mug here | Give us a new design for the Loser Mug. | H H |
904 | We move on back | Move the first letter in a word or name to the end of that word and define the resulting word. | H H H |
903 | Bill us now | Combine the names of two or more members of Congress as co-sponsors of a bill. | H |
901 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2010. | H H H 2 |
900 | Dear us! | Submit a "Dear Blank" letter to us instead. | W |
899 | Clue us in | Send us funny, clever clues for any of the words already in this grid. | H H |
896 | Other people's business | Describe what might happen if any of the above institutions (a) were run by an institution of your choice or (b) ran an institution of your choice. | H 3 |
895 | Picture this | Supply a caption for any of these cartoons. | H 4 |
894 | Look Back in Inker | Enter any Style Invitational from Week 841 through Week 890 (except for Week 844). | H H |
893 | Give us a hint | Write a humorously witty story in 25 words or fewer. | H |
892 | Get a move on | Change the location of something for humorous effect. Provide an explanation if you wish. | H H 2 |
891 | Mirror, Mirror | Write a word-palindrome sentence, in which the first and last words are the same; the second and next-to-last, etc. | H H H |
890 | Double-teaming | Combine the names of any two pro sports teams -- even from different sports -- and describe the result. | M |
889 | Tour de Fours VII | Coin and define a humorous word that includes -- with no other letters between them, but in any order -- the letters P, O, L and E. | W L H H H H H H H |
888 | It's the eponymy, stupid | Coin a word or expression based on the name of a well-known person, define it, and perhaps use it in a sentence | H H H 3 |
887 | Plus-Fours | Write a limerick whose third or fourth line is one of those listed above. | H H H H H |
886 | Look both ways | Give us a new term that's a palindrome and define it. | T H H 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 H H H |
882 | Limerixicon VII | Supply a humorous limerick prominently featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters dr-. | H H H H H H H 2 |
881 | What's in a name? | Take the name of a person or institution. Find within it a hidden message. | H H H H H |
880 | Our greatest hit | Start with a real word or multi-word term or name that begins with Q, R or S; add one letter, subtract one letter, replace one letter with another, or transpose two adjacent letters; and define the new word. | T H H H |
877 | Quipped from the headlines | Write a rhyming couplet about some matter in the news. | H |
876 | Oilies but goodies | Write lyrics somehow related to the oil spill, set to an existing tune. | H H H H |
875 | Fail Us | Give us a funny Learn From My Fail-type lesson, 30 words or fewer, true or not, in your own words or attributed to a famous personage. | H |
874 | Stat Us | Write a funny Facebook status line. | H |
873 | Back to Square 1A | Replace the shaded letters in this grid with your own letters to come up with a different word or phrase -- either an existing word or one you make up -- and define it humorously. | H H H |
872 | Har Monikers | Combine the first parts of each word in a famous person's or character's name -- in order -- and define it or use it in a sentence that somehow refers to its source. | H |
871 | Remarquees | Change a movie title by one letter (or number, if the title includes a number) and describe the new film. | H H |
870 | Let's play Nopardy | Describe any of the above phrases in the form of a question. | M H 3 |
869 | Clue us in | Send us funny, clever clues for any of the words already in this grid. | H |
867 | Back in the saddle | Breed any two of the foals in today's results -- OR one foal with one of the actual horses used in today's entries, and name the grandfoal. | H H 3 |
866 | Natalie Portmanteau | Begin with a real name; append to it a word, name or expression so that they overlap; and finally define (humorously, of course) the resulting phrase. | T H H H |
864 | Oonerspisms | Spoonerize a single word or a name by transposing different part of the word (more than two adjacent letters), and define the resultant new term. | H H H H H |
863 | It's Post time | Breed any two of 100 of the almost 400 horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown races, and name the foal. | H H H |
860 | Ten, Anyone? | Humorously define or describe something or someone in exactly 10 words. | H H H |
858 | Same OED | Make up a false definition for any of the words listed below. | H |
857 | All FED Up | Create a brand-new word or phrase that contains a block of three successive letters in the alphabet -- but the series must go backward through the alphabet. | H |
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. | T H |
855 | The news could be verse | Sum up an article (or even an ad!) in any Washington Post print or online edition from Feb. 6 through Feb. 15 in verse. | T M H |
853 | It's easy as DEF | Create a brand-new word or phrase that contains a block of three successive letters in the alphabet; the series must go forward in the alphabet, not backward. | H H |
852 | Small, Let's get | Write a rhopalic sentence (or fanciful newspaper headline) in which each successive word is one letter shorter. | H H 4 |
851 | Going to the shrink | Downsize the title of a book, movie or play to make it smaller or less momentous and describe it. | M H |
850 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2009. | H H H 4 |
849 | Homonymphomania | Create a new homonym (or homophone) for any existing word and define it. | H H |
848 | Up and addin' | Compose a humorous rhopalic sentence (or multiple sentences) in which each word is one letter longer than the previous word. | W H H H H |
847 | Questionable journalism | Find any sentence (or a substantive part of a sentence) that appears in The Post or in an article on washingtonpost.com from Dec. 11 through Dec. 21 and come up with a question it might answer. | M H H H H |
845 | Reologisms | Write a description for any of 50 genuine Loser-created neologisms. | H H H H H |
844 | Healthy choice | Enter any Style Invitational from Week 790 through Week 840, except for Week 793 and Week 798. | M H H H 2 |
843 | Prefrains | Provide a sentence or two of lead-in to the first line of a well-known book, poem, or song. | H H H |
842 | Ask backwards | Here are your 12 possible answers. Tell us your joke in the form of a question, please. | H |
841 | Food for naught | Alter the name of a food or dish slightly and describe the result. | M H |
840 | Frittering away the neurons | Give us some more colorfully useful phrases; they don't have to be in the X'ing-the-Y form. | H H |
839 | Overlap Dance | Overlap two words that share two or more consecutive letters -- anywhere in the word, not just at the beginning or end -- into a single longer word, and define it. AND your portmanteau word must begin with a letter from A through D. | H H |
838 | Picture This | Provide a caption for any of these pictures. | H |
835 | Tour de Fours VI | Coin and define a humorous word that includes -- with no other letters between them, but in any order -- the letters T, H, R, and E. | H H |
834 | Fractured Compounds | Combine two full words within any single article appearing in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com into a hyphenated compound word, and define or otherwise describe the result. | M H H H H H H 2 |
833 | Our Greatest Hit | Start with a real word or multi-word term or name that begins with M, N, O, or P; add one letter, subtract one letter, replace one letter or transpose two adjacent letters; and define the new word. | H H H |
832 | Clue Us In | You supply one or more clues for the words in a filled-in grid. | H H H H H H |
829 | Limerixicon 6 | Supply a humorous limerick prominently featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters di-. | H H H H H 4 2 |
828 | Inhuman Puns | Make a pun on the name of a familiar group, organization or company, and describe it or provide a quote from it. | M H H |
827 | Caller Idiot | Name a real product or company and supply a stupid question or complaint for the consumer hotline person. | L |
826 | The Inside Word | Take any word -- this may include the name of a person or place -- put a portion of it in quotation marks, and redefine the word. | H H H H H |
825 | Disinstrumentals | Write some words to music that has no words. | W |
824 | Jestinations | Give us a slogan for any city or town. | L H H |
823 | Wryku | Compose a humorous (or at least wry or clever) haiku. | H H |
821 | Spit the Difference | How are any of the items on the list above alike or different? | H |
820 | Be Mister Language Person | Supply a Mister Language Person-type question and answer. | H |
819 | Art Re-View | These objects are not what they seem to be, at first glance. They are something else entirely. What are they? | M H |
818 | Name the Day | Cite an actual holiday or one of those silly commemorative days, weeks or months for which you can find previous evidence, and supply a snarky description or slogan. | H |
817 | Flopflip | Reverse the first half and second half of a word or name and define the result. | H |
816 | Googillions | Come up with an original phrase that generates at least 1 million listings on a Google search. | T H H |
815 | Wittecisms | Create an original word containing -- in any order -- at least a W, an I, two T's and an E. | H H H H |
814 | There Will Be Bloodline | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in this week's results, and name their foal. | H H H H H |
813 | Aw, Shocks | Give us a humorous example of the "shocking -- not. | T H H |
812 | Rx-Related Humor | Offer up some entirely false medical or psychological "fact. | T |
810 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Breed any two of the more than 400 horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown races and provide an appropriate name for their foal. | H H H |
808 | Take Us At Our Words | Create a humorous poem or other writing using only the words contained in this week's Style Invitational column or results. | H H H H H 3 |
807 | Pretty Graphic Expressions | Express some insight as an equation or other mathematical expression. | H H H |
805 | Brand Eccchs | Give us an original name in any of the above categories (not an actual badly named product). | H |
804 | Our Type o' Joke | Change a headline by one letter, or switch two letters, in a headline (or most of a headline) appearing on an article or ad in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com between Feb. 14 and 23, and elaborate on it in a "bank" headline (subhead) or a brief first sentence of an article that would run under it. | H H |
803 | The Pepys Show | Write a humorous diary or journal entry for someone, famous or not, for any point in history. | M H H H 2 |
801 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. You supply one or more of the questions. | H |
800 | Compairison | Briefly define or sum up an existing word or short phrase, then change it very slightly and do the same with the result. | T H H H H |
799 | Send Us the Bill | Come up with legislation that, given their names, two or more freshman senators or representatives might sponsor together. | H |
798 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem commemorating someone who died in 2008. | M H H H |
797 | Be Resolute | Make a humorous resolution for some particular person or institution to accomplish next year. | H |
796 | Sincerest Flattery | Make up a pun on a familiar name of a real of fictional person and provide a fitting description or quote. | H H H H H H H 4 |
795 | Stimulate Us | Tell us what the government ought to be spending our money on. | H |
793 | Take The Fifth | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 725 through Week 789. Each entry must include the word "five" of "fifth" or something fiveish, or -- depending on your favorite anniversary tradition -- something involving (a) wood or (b) silverware. | H H |
792 | Clue Us In | Compile a set of funny alternative clues to a crossword penned by Ace Constructor Paula Gamache. | H H H H |
791 | The 1K Club | Supply a chain of 20 names -- they may be names of people, places, organizations, products, etc., but they must be names -- beginning and ending with "Chris Doyle. | H H 2 |
790 | If Only! | Explain how the world would be different had some event not occurred. | W |
789 | Doctrine in The House? | State a humorous, original "doctrine" for a person or other entity. | T H |
787 | Tour de Fours V | Coin and define a humorous word that includes -- with no other letters between them, but in any order -- the letters M, I, N and E. | H |
786 | Top of the Staake | So get your thoughts provoked for No. Umpteen of our cartoon caption contest. | H |
785 | The Ballad Box | Write a short, humorous song somehow relating to the presidential campaign, set to a familiar tune. | M H H H H H H |
783 | The Shill Game | Name a celebrity or fictional character to endorse a real product or company. | T H H H |
782 | That's the Ticket! | Explain why any of the items on the list below is qualified to be President of the United States. | H |
781 | Our Greatest Hit | Start with a word or multi-word term that begins with I, J, K or L; either add one letter, subtract one letter, replace one letter or transpose two adjacent letters; and define the new word. | H H H H H H H H 5 |
780 | Location, Location, Location | Say how you know you're in a particular place. | H H |
778 | Tied Games | Combine any two sports or nonathletic activities into a single sport or game. | H |
777 | Limerixicon 5 | Supply a humorous limerick featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters da-. | W M H H H H H H |
775 | Ad-dition | Combine the beginning and end of any two words appearing in any single advertisement in The Post or on washingtonpost.com, from today through Aug. 4, and then define the new word. | H H |
773 | Always Looking for Sects | Coin a religion or belief system and tell us its basic tenet or distinguishing characteristic. | H H 3 |
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. | M H |
771 | Groaner's Manuals | Come up with a humorous name for a guide or manual for, or a book about, a particular enterprise or organization. | H H H H |
769 | Splice Work If You Can Get It | Combine two words -- overlapping by at least two letters -- into what's known by polysyllabic types as a portmanteau word, and by the rest of us as mash word, and define it. | H H H 3 |
766 | Think to Shudder | Come up with scenarios that are even more awkward (and more imaginative) than the wincers mentioned above. | H |
764 | Can You Up Chuck? | Come up with entirely new and funny Chuck Norris Facts. | M |
763 | Another Time Around the Track | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in this week's results, and name THEIR foal. | H H H H H |
762 | Look This Up in Your Funk & Wagnalls | Supply the pair of terms listed at the top of a page of any print dictionary to indicate the first and last listings on the page, and define that hyphenated term. | H |
760 | Whacksy Buildup | Describe any of these Googlewhacks in the form of a question, "Jeopardy"-style. | H H H H H |
759 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Breed any two of the 100 horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown and provide an appropriate name for their foal. | H H H H H |
758 | Wrong Address | Using any of the words of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in whatever order you like, create your own passage. | H |
757 | Gorey Thoughts From A to Z | Send us some rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. | H H |
755 | Take Another 'Whack | Send us a phrase of two or more words that produces exactly one Web page on the Google search engine and describe the phrase. | H H H H 2 |
754 | Canny Similarities | Cite a humorous "uncanny similarity" between any two of the very different people listed above. | H H 2 |
753 | Hot Off The Riddle | Supply a simple riddle and both the wholesome answer and the (printable) Invitational answer. | H 4 |
752 | The Might-Mates Right | Fill out any of these five "you just might" joke-templates. | T H |
751 | Strike Gold | Slightly change the name of an existing or former TV show to create a program that can scab the writers' strike. | H H |
749 | Opus 266, No. 3 | Take any common word or two-word term beginning with any letter from A through H and give it a new definition. | T H H H H H H H |
748 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about a well-known personage who died in 2007. | H H |
745 | Hurry Up and Slow Down! | Suggest particular ways that would slow life down, or ways that would speed it up. | H |
744 | You OED Us One | Make up a humorous and false definition for any of the words listed below. | M H H H H |
742 | Clue Us In | Give us a whole new set of clues to a crossword puzzle penned by Ace Constructor Paula Gamache. | H H |
735 | Look Back in Inker | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 680 through Week 731. | H H |
734 | Turnaround Time | Write a rhyming couplet containing two words that are anagrams of each other. | L H H H H 2 |
733 | Just Drop It, Okay? | Drop the first letter from an actual word or term to make a new word or term, and define it. | H H H H |
732 | The Chain Gang | Supply a chain of 25 names -- they may be names of people, places, organizations, products, etc., but they must be names -- beginning and ending with "George W. Bush. | H H 5 |
729 | Otherwordly Visions | Take any sentence in an article or ad in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com from Sept. 1 through Sept. 10 and translate it into "plain English. | H |
728 | Tour de Fours IV | Coin and define a humorous word that includes -- with no other letters between them, but in any order you like -- the letters S, A, T and R. | M H H H H |
726 | Limerixicon 4 | Supply a humorous limerick based on any word in the dictionary beginning with cl- through co-. | H H H H 3 |
724 | Abridged Too Far | Sum up a book, play or movie in a humorous rhyming verse of two to four lines. | I H |
723 | Name Your Poison | Create a name and recipe for a cocktail and, if you like, describe when it might be served. | H H H |
721 | Know Your Market | For any of the provided photos, supply two captions: one that would appeal to The Style Invitational and one that would appeal to the Harrisburg Patriot-News. | H |
720 | The Course of Humor Events | Sum up a historical event in a two-line rhyme or other clever and pithy epigram. | W H H H |
719 | We Har the World | Come up with a creative name for a sports team for a town or city anywhere outside the United States. | H H H H H H |
718 | Put Our Heads Together | Create a new, funny headline from the words of any headlines appearing anywhere in a single day's Washington Post (or on washingtonpost.com) | H H H |
716 | The Hard Spell | Write a humorous poem featuring one of the 75 words we've selected from this year's National Spelling Bee. | H H H H H |
715 | Your Mug Here | Send us an idea for a slogan for the back of the new Loser T-shirt. | W |
714 | Amalgamated Steal | Merge two or more company or product names into a new, ORIGINAL company or product. | H H H H H 3 |
712 | Another Time Around the Track | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in the results of Week 708, and name THEIR foal. | H H H H 4 |
711 | Join Now! | Hyphenate the beginning and end of any two multi-syllabic words appearing anywhere in the April 29 or May 6 Style or Sunday Arts section, and then define the compound. | H H H H H 3 |
708 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Breed any two from a list of 100 of the horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown races and provide an appropriate name for their foal. | H H H H H 4 |
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. | W H H H H |
706 | Questionable Journalism | Take any sentence that appears in The Post or in an article on washingtonpost.com from March 24 through April 2 and come up with a question it could answer. | H H 3 |
704 | Another Game of Tag | Create vanity plates for well-known people, real or fictional. | H |
700 | Stump Us | Come up with someone's slogan for the 2008 presidential campaign. | H |
699 | Our Greatest Hit | Take a word, term or name that begins with E, F, G or H; either add one letter, subtract one letter, replace one letter, or transpose two letters; and define the new word. | H H H H H H H H |
697 | We Beg You To Differ | Take any two items from the truly random provided list and explain why they are different or why they are similar. | H |
696 | Send Us the Bill | Come up legislation the newly-elected members of Congress might sponsor together. | H |
695 | Dead Letters | Write a poem about someone who died in 2006. | W H H H |
692 | Reinkernation | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 640 through Week 688. Every entry must include the word "three" or "third" or a creative variation. | H |
691 | Haven't Got a Clue | Make all the clues in the provided crossword ooh-clever or at least ah-that's-funny, even the little words. | W H H H H H H H |
689 | Busted Play | Come up with a more objectionable or stupid toy than a working fart-powered toy rocket. | T |
687 | Whatever Were They Thinking? | Tell us (A) What someone might say in some situation, and (B) what that person was actually thinking when he said A. | H H 3 |
684 | Backtricking | Spell a word backward and define the result, somehow relating the definition to the original word. | H |
681 | Ticket to Write | Write a jingle for a business (or its product), organization or government agency, set to a Beatles song. | H H H |
676 | Tour de Fours III | Coin and define a word containing -- with no other letters between them, but in any order you like -- the letters L, E, A and F. | H H H H 3 |
674 | Limerixicon 3 | Supply a humorous limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with ca-. | W H H H H H H |
671 | Join Now! | Hyphenate the beginning and end of any two multi-syllabic words appearing anywhere in the July 16 Style or Sunday Arts section, and then define the compound. | H H H H H H H 3 |
670 | A Test of Character | Change a word or phrase by only one letter -- substitute one letter for another, add a letter or transpose two letters -- and explain how they are different or similar. | H H H H H H |
669 | Huddled Messes | Suggest some bad advice for new arrivals to this country (legal or illegal). | H |
668 | Cut From the Chase | Write an original John-Bunnell-style wrap-up to a crime story -- or one for a more minor transgression. | 3 |
665 | Your One-in-a-Million | Coin the millionth word in the English language and define it. The word must end in -ion. | H H H 4 |
664 | A Thousand Times?! No! | Come up with a new signature line for Russell Beland's -- or anyone else's -- e-mails. | T |
663 | Worth at Least a Dozen Words | Interpret any of the provided cartoons as you see fit in a caption. | H |
661 | Name Any Good Movies Lately? | Give us a funny new title for an existing movie. | T M H |
660 | Foaling Down: The Next Generation | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in this week's results, and name THEIR foal. | T H H H H H |
659 | Tell Us a Fib | Compose a six-line poem with the following number of syllables per line: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. It must be about a person or topic currently in the news, and two successive lines must rhyme. | T H H |
658 | Not in the Cards | Send us ideas for cards that would likely be ruled "FBN" (Funny, But No) by Hallmark but F&YYY by the Empress. | H H |
657 | Nuts Fruit | Send in funny (but printable) images of real pieces of fruit. | H |
656 | It's Post Time | Breed any two from a list of 100 of the more than 400 3-year-old racehorses nominated for this year's Triple Crown races, and name their hypothetical foal. The foal's name cannot exceed 18 characters and spaces combined. | H H H H H H H 3 |
655 | Laughing Inside | Take any article appearing in The Washington Post or online on washingtonpost.com from today through April 3 -- the more serious and/or mundane its headline, the better -- and write a funny poem or other passage using only words that appear in that article. | W T L H H H |
653 | It's the Eponymy, Stupid | Coin a word or expression based on the name of a well-known person, define it, and perhaps use it in a sentence | H |
652 | Ask Backward | You are on "Jeopardy!" Above are the answers. You supply the questions. | H 2 |
649 | Across the Wide What? | Give us some Virginia-appropriate lyrics for "Shenandoah. | W |
645 | A Hearty Har Har | Write up a Valentine's sentiment to any personage, or to someone in some generic category. | W H H |
644 | Winter Limp Picks | Brighten up the Winter Olympics with some new events and rules. Alternatively, you can suggest a commercial or ad campaign that could be tied in with the Winter Games or one of its sports. | T |
643 | The Post's Mortems | Give us a rhyming poem about some notable who died in 2005. | H H |
642 | It's Open Season | Come up with a brand-new word and its definition. The words must begin with O, P, Q, R or S. | H H H |
641 | Dreck of All Trades | Come up with a business that combines two or more disparate products or services, and tell us its name and/or something else funny about it. | H H H H H H 3 |
638 | The Little Bummer Boy | Come up with an idea (and title, if you like) for an original Christmas movie or TV special that provides an antidote to all the sap, and give us a brief synopsis. | H |
636 | A Song From Tex Arcana | Write a verse of a song about sea urchin sushi or any of the other provided ostensibly unlyrical topics. | H H H |
635 | I've Told You a Hundred Times | Enter any Style Invitational from Week 536 to Week 631. Your entry must be substantially different from the original winners. | W H H H H |
634 | Mess With Our Heads | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from today through next Sunday, and change its meaning by adding either a "bank headline," or subtitle, or the first sentence of an article that might appear under it. | H |
632 | Live On, Sweet, Earnest Reader (Inc.) | Give us an original backronym for a company or product. A backronym is a fake etymology that often gets in a little dig at the subject. | H H H H |
630 | Hyphen the Terrible | Combine the beginning and end of any two multisyllabic words in this week's Invitational, and then define the compound. | W H H 2 |
629 | Odd Couplings | Marry or otherwise combine famous names and supply the result. | H H H 4 |
627 | Per-Verse | Write a limerick or other short poem with comically awful rhyming. | H |
624 | Limerixicon 2 | Supply a limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with bd- through bl-. | W T H H H H H H H H H H |
623 | Try to Remember | Give us an original mnemonic for any list that someone might want to remember. | W H H H |
622 | Our Sunday Constitutional | Write a new article or amendment to the Constitution, using on the words contained in the existing document (including amendments). | L H H H H 3 |
621 | Questionable Journalism | Take any sentence that appears in The Post or in an article in washingtonpost.com anytime through Aug. 8 and supply a question it could answer. | H H |
619 | WordCount Us In | Write a poem of no more than four lines containing four or more consecutive words on the WordCount list. They must occur in the sentence in the order they appear on the list. | T H A 4 |
618 | Of D.C. I Sing | Give us a song about Washington, set to a recognizable tune. | H H |
617 | Best the Best | Write something about any famous personage that uses only the letters in his or her name. | W H H H H H H |
613 | Tour de Fours II | Create and define a word that includes, consecutively, E, R, A and N. in any order. | H H H H H H H H H 4 |
611 | Ask Backwards, Erudite Edition | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the sophisticated answers. You supply the questions. | H H |
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. | H H |
609 | A2D2 | Give us some funny "corrections" to brighten up Page A2. | H |
607 | Contest Fodder Created! | Produce absurdly parochial views of historical events. | H H |
606 | The News Could be Verse | Translate the fine prose of Washington Post articles into verse. Choose any article appearing in The Post of on its Web site from April 17 through April 25. | H H 3 |
605 | Truly Stupendous Ideas | Name two people with the same initials (the people can be living or dead, real or fictional) and explain how they are similar or different. | H H 3 |
604 | Fun for the Roses | Breed any two of the horses on a list of those qualifying for this year's Triple Crown races, and tell us a good name for their foal. The name of the foal must be no more than 18 characters, including spaces. | H H 2 |
603 | Sui Genesis | Take one or two of the 50 chapters of the KJV Book of Genesis and draw thou from them, using words in the order in which they appear in the original, your own passage. | L H H H H |
602 | Take a Letter -- Again | Take a word, term or name that begins with A, B, C or D; either add one letter, subtract one letter, replace one letter, or transpose two letters; and define the new word. | T H H H 5 |
600 | Top of the Inking | Tell us some ways the District of Columbia will change now that we have the Nationals. | H |
598 | Site Gags | Come up with an appropriate name for a cafeteria--or meeting room, or an employee lounge, or some other workplace spot--for a particular institution. | T H H H |
597 | Eccchsibits | Come up with some alternative museums and exhibits for the nation's capital. | H |
596 | Take Her Words for It | Use the words of this week's Ask Amy advice column, as a pool from which to compose your own useful (or useless) thoughts. You may ignore or change capitalization or punctuation. | L H |
594 | History Loves Company | Name an appropriate corporate sponsor for some historical event or for someone's life story. | T H H H H |
593 | Take This, Job, and . . . | Come up with some entertainingly awful things that a Job's comforter might offer. A Job's comforter is someone who seems to be offering sympathy but instead just makes the person feel worse, either intentionally or unintentionally. | H H 3 |
592 | We Got Gamy | Offer us a concise idea for a Super Bowl commercial, or some innovative halftime entertainment, or some inappropriate sponsors, or some ideas for improving the game itself. | H |
591 | Dead Letters | Write rhyming poems about notable personages who have died in the past year. | H |
590 | Send Us the Bill | Come up with a bill sponsored by any combination of the newly elected members of Congress and explain the purpose of the bill. | H H H |
589 | Hyphen the Terrible (New Edition!) | Combine the beginning of any multi-syllabic word in this week's Invitational with the end of any other multi-syllabic word in this column (or in this week's Web supplement) to coin a new word, and then define it. | H H H H H H H H |
587 | The B-List | Come up with an In-Out list for 2005, or other pairings. | H H |
586 | God's Will (and Won't) | Complete either of the following: "If God hadn't wanted us to ----, God wouldn’t have ----"; "If God had wanted us to ----, God would have ----. | H H 3 |
585 | It's Parody Time | Offer, in the holiday spirit of goodwill, some advice--as constructive and unifying as Loserly suggestions always are--to our nation's leaders (or the loyal opposition) as we prepare for the next four years. This advice will be set to the tune of some winter holiday song, either religious or secular. | H H H H 3 |
584 | Deliver Us a Post | Come up with some new Cabinet or other positions that the president could establish, and describe the job responsibilities. | H |
583 | Mess With Our Heads | Take any headline, verbatim, from the Washington Post or its Web site from today through next Sunday, and reinterpret it by writing either a "bank headline"--or subtitle--or the first sentence of an article that changes the original meaning entirely. | H H H |
582 | Perversery Rhymes | Update a nursery rhyme or children's song with an edgier text. | H |
581 | Evil Things in Store | Think of evil or just plain stupid practices that the staff of a retail or other establishment might perpetrate. | T |
580 | United Nations | Combine the names of any two countries in the world and describe the new hybrid country. | H H H |
579 | Another Brilliant Contest! Do Enter! | Write us a sentence or phrase consisting of words beginning with consecutive letters, in the A-to-Z direction. | H H H |
578 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" Above are the answers. Send us the questions. | H |
577 | Teledubbies | Slightly change the title of a TV show, past or present, and describe it. | H H 5 |
576 | Well, Excuuuuse Us! | Come up with new excuses for any common human shortcoming or imperfection. | T H |
573 | Thine Ad Goest Here | Propose biblical and other literary passages, poems, etc., that could benefit from product placement. | H |
572 | The Limerixicon | Supply a limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with ai- through ar-. | H H H H |
571 | A Tour de Fours | Create and define a word that includes T, H, E, and S in any order. The letters must appear consecutively. | I H H H H H H H H H H 5 |
570 | Timeline Rhyme Lines | Produce colorful chronological couplets about some historical event. They must rhyme and be in good meter. | H H H 4 |
569 | Murphy's Lore | Give Eric Murphy advice he deserves on the provided questions. | H H 3 |
568 | Tome Deftness | Make a pun or similar wordplay on a book title. | L H H H H H 4 2 |
567 | A Running Gag | Explain how any of the provided bizarre cartoons by Bob Staake relates to the current presidential campaign. | H H |
566 | Get Whack | Type a two-word phrase into the Google search engine that produces exactly one result. | H H H H H H H |
565 | Anthem Is as Anthem Does | Give us a verse for an alternative U.S. national anthem, set to any well-known tune. | W H H H H |
564 | Redefine Print | Redefine any word from the dictionary. | H H H |
563 | Take Two | Take any two of the provided items and explain how they resemble or differ from each other. | H H |
562 | The LMNs of Style | Write a funny sentence (or more) that you spell with only the sounds of the names of letters and those of numbers 1 through 9. | T H H 4 2 |
561 | Deform of a Question | Take any sentence appearing in The Washington Post or washingtonpost.com today through June 14, and make up a question to which the sentence could be an answer. | T H H H |
560 | The 97.5-Meter Dash | Suggest some time- and cost-saving measures so the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens will open on time. | H H H |
559 | Your Slogan Here | Come up with a clever slogan or sign for a business. | W T H H H H 3 |
558 | Set Us Right | Send us conservative-leaning humor in any of the provided genres. | H 2 |
557 | Oh, for Namesakes! | Take two people, real or fictional, who share some element of their names and explain the difference between them. | H H H 3 |
556 | So Zoo Us | Combine any two kinds of animals, give its name and describe it. | H H H H |
555 | A Tsk, A Task | Come up with a super-wholesome passage of 25 words or fewer that would likely be banned by the admirable, ever-vigilant Neopets.com site. | H H |
554 | Love the Tiny Tail Stain | Write an anagram based on a name or event that's been in the news recently. | W H H H H H H H H H 3 |
553 | Picture This | Tell us what's going on in one or more of the provided cartoons. | H H |
552 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Breed any two of the horses on a list of those qualifying for this year's Triple Crown races, and tell us a good name for their foal. Maximum 18 characters, including spaces. | H H H H H 6 |
551 | Lost in Translation | Find us some comical translations-and-back using Google translator. Feed some passage of English text into the tool--25 words max--and ask it to translate it into one of the five languages offered; then copy the result back into the tool and ask it to translate that back to English. | H H H |
549 | Show Us Your Best Quantities | Come up with novel units of measure, and explain or quantify them. | H H H H 4 |
548 | Inklings | Tell us about certain people's childhood experiences and behaviors that hint at their destinies. | H H H |
547 | Give Us a Bad Name | Take an existing product or business name and pair it with an incompatible one. | 3 |
546 | A Nice Pair of Cities | Choose any two or more real U.S. towns and come up with a joint endeavor they would undertake. | H H H H 4 |
545 | Put It in Reverse | Spell a word backward and define it, with the definition relating in some way to the original word. | H H H H H |
544 | You Gotta Have Heart | Write us some valentine sentiments from one particular person (real or fictional) to another. | W L H |
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. | W T H H |
542 | Discombobulate Us | Come up with both an object/situation and a neologism for it, something that Bob Levey would never have stooped to print in his column. | W T H H H H H |
541 | Celled Up the River | Give us a delicious scenario, in which a cellphone yakker's yakking could be taken profitably out of context. | H H |
540 | Revisionist History, or Badenov for You? | State any news event (or old event) in the style of the Rocky-and-Bullwinkle teasers about the next show. | W H H H H H H H |
539 | Dead Letters | Pay tribute in verse to someone who died in 2003. | H H 4 |
538 | Try, Try Again | Enter any previous Invitational. Your entry must be substantially different from the original winners. | H H H |
537 | The New York Post | Liven up any article appearing in The Washington Post or its Web site over the next eight days by giving it an irresponsibly sensationalistic headline. | T H H H |
536 | And the Horse He Rodin On | Come up with some words we can stick in the back of The Inker. | H H |
535 | Picture This | Can you tell us what astonishing news Bob Staake is trying to pass on with cartoons? | H H 2 |
534 | The Feminine Touch | Propose how any male-dominated occupation or institution would change if it suddenly became female-dominated. | T H H H |
533 | Breed Apart | Mate the clones of any two famous real people, living or dead--a male and a female, please--and hypothesize what traits or skills their offspring might have. | T H |
532 | Short Pans | Come up with a terse review (four words or fewer) of any work of art. | W H H H |
531 | Your Cynic Duties | Come up with a saying that sounds as if it's going to be inspirational, but winds up being cynical, misanthropic or sad. | H |
530 | Tri Harder | Take any word, alter it in three ways--by adding a letter, by subtracting a letter and by changing a letter--and redefine all three new words. | H |
529 | United We Stanza | Summarize in four rhyming lines of verse any famous document, theory, principle or speech. | H H H 3 |
528 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H H H H H |
527 | Rite of First Defusal | Come up with witty or bizarre things to say to defuse the tension in awkward moments. | H 5 |
526 | Conventional Wisdumb | Answer any of the provided questions. | H |
525 | It Won't Belong Now | Tell us which of three cartoons provided does not belong, and why. | H |
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. | H H |
521 | Hyphen the Terrible | Take the first half of any hyphenated word in today's Washington Post (or Tuesday's USA Today) and combine it with the second half of any other hyphenated word in the same story, and define the new word it produces. | H H H H 2 |
519 | Hey, Baby, What's Your Sector? | Come up with pickup lines that could be heard only in Washington. | T H 3 |
518 | Say, Kids, What Time Is It? | Fill in the blanks in the following sentence: "You know it's time to ------ when ------. | H H H 3 |
515 | A Cellebration of Tasteful Living | Come up with ways that Martha Stewart can prettify and improve her new prison surroundings using only her skills, her impeccable taste and those resources available to her. | H H H |
513 | It's Delete We Can Do | Come up with very bad subject lines for spam e-mail--lines that will guarantee instant deletion, sight unseen. | H |
512 | Live On, Sweet, Earnest Reader | Take the name of any person--living, dead, fictional--and use the letters of his name, in succession, to form the first letters of an expression appropriate to that person. | W H H H H |
511 | It All Impends | Tell us what is something unusual about to happen in the provided cartoons. | H 4 |
510 | Universal Embarrassment | What would you like to see Miss Universe Pageant contestants asked live, on national TV? | H |
508 | Letter Rip | Take a word from the dictionary, add, change, or delete a single letter, and redefine the word. | H H H H H 2 |
507 | Crocktails | Come up with a drink named for something or someone associated with Washington and describe the drink. | T 3 2 |
506 | The Battle of All Mottoes | Provide a slogan for any federal department agency, department, office, etc. | H H H 5 |
505 | The Rule of Dumb | You are given $1 million. Conditions: (1) You must spend it all. (2) You must use it in a way that neither directly nor indirectly works to your financial benefit. (3) You may not use it to alleviate the suffering of anyone on Earth, or for any public-spirited project other than the joy of stupidity. | H H |
504 | Life Is Snort | Write a schmaltzy last line of a "Life Is Short. | H |
503 | Doody and Muldoon | Write poetry that out-Muldoons Paul Muldoon, the Princeton professor who won this year's Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Your poem must be a single quatrain, containing at least one rhyme and references to at least two body parts and one geographic name. | W H |
501 | Questionable Sentences | Take any sentence appearing anywhere in today's Washington Post and make it the answer to a question. | T H H |
500 | Ergo-Nomics | Create a sillygism--a syllogism that doesn't quite work. | T H H |
499 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Mate any two of the horses qualifying for this year's Triple Crown and tell us the name of their foal. Maximum 18 characters, including spaces. | H H 2 |
498 | Unamazing But True! | Submit a true fact that is of absolutely no use, but interesting in a weirdly Invitationalist way. | T H |
496 | The Style Invitational: The First Dreckade | Submit new entries to any of the old contests listed, and try to beat The Very Best of the Past 10 Years. | H H H H H H 3 |
495 | Words of One Syl- . . . Um, Just Short Words | Take some complex issue of any sort and explain it to all us morons entirely in words of one syllable. | 4 |
490 | Eyes on Reprise | Submit any good entries you might have thought of, for any previous contest, after the deadline passed. | H H H H H H H H H H H H H 4 |
489 | Combo, First Blood | Combine two people whose names contain a common element, as in the examples above. Then describe the person, or provide a quote he or she might have uttered. | H H 2 |
487 | Eee! Rotica | Come with a passage in a novel that ineptly describes hanky-panky. | H |
486 | A Word From Our Co-Sponsors | Come up with bills the new members of Congress might sponsor. Each bill must have at least two sponsors. | W |
485 | Asterisky Business | Write a joke with a punch line depending on knowledge so esoteric that it requires an asterisked explanation. | H H H H H 2 |
484 | Manufracturing | Take any product and explain how it would be different if it were designed by a different existing company. | H H |
483 | Obitter Fate | Give us an obit headline for some famous person, currently living or dead. | H |
482 | Inspect Our Gadgets | What are these gadgets? What do they do? | T |
481 | Homonymphomania | Create a new homonym of any existing word, and define. The new word must be spelled in such a way that is obviously pronounced identically to the original word. | H H H H H H |
480 | In No Uncertain Terminations | Come up with a way to stop any unwanted overture in its tracks. | T |
479 | Invest Case Scenario | Suggest new companies in which it might be unwise to invest. | T |
478 | Do You Mindset? | Anticipate items for the Mindset List for the freshman class of the year 2020. | H |
476 | Portmanteautapping | Make a new word by squishing together two existing words. The constituent words must share at least two letters. | H H H H H H 4 |
474 | Alphabettering | Create a sentence that uses each letter of the alphabet at least once but that would never be heard on the politically correct, genteel, rarefied air of NPR. | T H H H 6 |
472 | Water Stupid Idea | Propose bad ideas for saving water in the continuing drought. | T H |
470 | Czar Har | Take the name of someone famous, rhyme it with a product, and describe the unholy union. | H H |
469 | Playing Check-In | Suggest appropriate hotel check-in names for any celebrities, past or present, living or dead. | H |
468 | Ism This Stupid? | Take any common prefix and attach it to any well-known "ism" and define the new term. | H H H 2 |
466 | Spit the Difference | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | W H |
462 | Cast Away | Come up with a terrible bit of miscasting in a movie or TV show, past or present, real or imagined. | 7 |
459 | Stock Humor | Look at any of the abbreviated company names in the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange listings in any newspaper's business section and suggest what business the companies might be in. | T H H |
455 | Comixing | Create new comic characters by crossing two existing characters, then describe the character. | T H |
454 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H H |
453 | Haiku 2 U2 | Write a haiku summarizing the career of any American politician, living or dead. A haiku is generally defined as a nonrhyming poem, of three lines. The first and last lines are five syllables; the middle line is seven. | H H 3 |
452 | Russellmania! | (1) Design one or more steps for a 12-step program for the recovering Invitationalaholic; (2) Propose a devious method by which we might lure Russell Beland back. | H 2 |
451 | Make Your Pix | Which two of the provided cartoons are related, and how? | 4 |
449 | Cut and Pastiche | Create a new, funny headline from the words of any headlines appearing anywhere in today's Post. You cannot subdivide words. | H H H H H H 3 |
448 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Mate any two of the horses qualifying for the Triple Crown races this year and propose a name for their foal. No name may exceed 18 characters, including spaces. | H H H H H 6 |
447 | Acronimble | Take any of the provided witty statements and use the first letters in each of the words to create a brand-new, unrelated funny statement. | H H H H H 2 |
445 | Another Round of Bierce | Add a few entries to Ambrose Bierce's famous "Devil's Dictionary. | H H H 3 |
444 | Advice Squad | Take any letter from today's advice columns and answer it in the voice of someone famous, living or dead. | H |
443 | Sick Humor | Come up with modern diseases of Washington life. | H H H H H H H |
441 | Spit the Difference | Take any two nouns that appear on the front page of today's Washington Post and explain how the nouns differ from each other. | W H H H H |
440 | Picture This | What is going on in these cartoons? | H H |
438 | What's the Pun Line? | Ask a question and answer it, somewhere incorporating the name of a least one famous person. | W T H H H H |
433 | Takes a Break | No contests until mid-January. Czar ran biographies of Russell Beland, Sarah Gaymon, John Kammer, and Paul Kondis, each containing one lie. | T |
431 | Please Bear With Us . . . | There is no contest. Czar ran biographies of Chuck Smith and Jean Sorensen, each containing one lie. | T |
430 | OMB Directive No. 2 | Revisit any contest The Style Invitational has ever run, and rewrite our tawdry past by proposing a new first-prize winner serious and/or decorous enough to please the Ombudsman. | T H |
429 | Shark Instruments | Tell us what would be a sign that any current institution--TV show, newspaper feature, magazine, business, etc.--has jumped the shark. | W H H |
426 | Captions Courageous | Take any photograph or illustration from today's Washington Post and give it a more interesting caption. | H H |
425 | Hyphen the Terrible | Take the first half of any hyphenated word from any story in today's newspaper and combine it with the second half of any other hyphenated word in the same story, and propose a definition of the new word you've created. | W H H H |
424 | Osama Chanted Evening | Write poems about Osama bin Laden. | H H H H |
423 | Roling With Laughter | Take a character from one movie, use him or her to replace a character in a second movie, and then explain how this change would affect the second movie. | T H H 3 |
422 | Taught Language | Come up with lessons learned from (1) the movies, (2) popular songs, (3) romance novels or (4) the comics page. | T H |
419 | Don't Spare the Rodney | Come up with indications that one might not be getting no respect. | H H 5 3 |
418 | Xtreme Invitational | Come up with signs you are overdoing it any in any of the provided categories. | T |
417 | Initially Mistaken | Take any name of a person or thing, and construct an appropriate message using its letters, in order, as the first letters of the words of your message. | W H H H H |
416 | Diff'rent Jokes | Describe how things might have been different if a famous person, living or dead, had had one of the provided conditions. | H 2 |
415 | Sentence Us to Death | Take any sentence appearing anywhere in today's Washington Post, and invent a question that it answers. | H |
414 | No Rest for the Query | Complete the provided rhetorical question by filling in the blanks. It must be a put-down. | T |
413 | Bland Ambition | Come up with one or more items from an underachiever's list of midlife resolutions. | T |
412 | Painful Climaxes | Come up with statements that start really dramatically, but leave you sorta flat at the end. | H H |
411 | X's and Oaths | Take any oath, pledge, declaration or slogan and update it. | H |
410 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H H H |
408 | What's In a Name? | Take the name of any politician, living or dead, and construct an appropriate message from the letters of the name. You may use any letter as many times as you wish, and you may insert punctuation. | W H H H 3 2 |
407 | Adverbiage | Come up with a witticism or a joke by making a pun out of an adverb. Unlike Tom Swiftlys, your adverb must modify not a verb but an adjective. | W H H H |
405 | The "Sty"le Invitational | Take any word--this may include people or places--put a portion of it in "air quotes" and redefine it. You may not alter the spelling. | H H H H H H |
402 | Spitting the Difference | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | T H |
401 | A Matter of Degree | Describe a sign of some modest change in a situation and pair it with a sign of an extreme change in that same situation. | 2 |
398 | 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. | H |
397 | Sins of Omission | Omit a letter or letters from a real-life sign to create a name for a new business, comically different from the original. Describe the new business or include a slogan that explains it. | T H H H |
396 | April Foals | Mate any two of the horses qualifying for the Triple Crown races and come up with appropriate names for their foals. Maximum 18 letters and spaces. | H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H |
395 | Devilishly Clever | Describe someone's special little corner of Hell. | H H |
394 | 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. | H |
393 | Things Could Be Verse | Take any story in today's Washington Post and rewrite it into a rhyming poem of no more than eight lines. | H 3 |
392 | Everyone's a Comic | Choose any panel of any comic strip in today's Washington Post and improve it by replacing the original speech and thought balloons with your own, | U H |
390 | Canine Fashion | Write: 1. A caption for the provided image explaining what is happening; 2. An explanation of why the image is not photography but art; 3. A description of what additional items might be needed to make the image complete. Sex and potty jokes will be disqualified. | H |
387 | By Jingo | Come up with a joke that could be written and understood only by a Washingtonian. | H 3 |
382 | Pickup Schticks | Write inept pickup lines, by either sex, to either sex. | H H |
381 | Idiom Savant | Take any well-known idiom, or expression, and invent an interesting derivation for it. | H 3 |
380 | The New-Name Offense | Propose changes for the names of places and things that need it, either because there is something wrong with their name, or because another name would be so much more descriptive. | 2 |
379 | Rather Unusual | Come up with lines that could be uttered by Dan Rather, with his unbearably folksy excesses. | H H |
376 | Apply Yourself | Supply bad openings to college application biographies. | 5 |
374 | Bill Us Later | Take a well-known expression and update it for the new millennium. | H |
373 | An Extra Large Challenge | What should we put on the back of the new Style Invitational T-shirt? | H |
372 | Trial Balloons | Fill in the balloons. | H H |
371 | Ask Backward | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H |
368 | Hyphen the Terrible | Combine the first half of any hyphenated word in a story in today's paper with the second part of a different hyphenated word from the same story, and provide a new definition. | W H H H H H |
365 | Terse Verse | Ask a question and then answer it with a rhyme. Your answer can be as many words as you wish, but all must have the same rhyme. | U H H 3 |
364 | Low Marks | Come up with a new punctuation mark. Tell us what it looks like, and what it is used for, and use it in a sentence. | H H |
363 | It's Your Movie | Take the title of any movie and make it the answer to a riddle. | H H H H 3 |
360 | No Competition | Create a list of 25 names, each linked in some way to the name before, and you must begin and end with Mary Ann Madden. | W U H H H H H H H H |
359 | It's No Party | Come up with a new political party and its main political tenet. | H H 5 |
358 | Finish the Fire | Finish "We Didn't Start the Fire," to summarize 1990 to the present. | W H H H H H H H H H |
357 | Coming to a Bad End | Take some immortal line from literature or film and ruin it by adding a short phrase or sentence. | H H |
352 | A Laff Riot | Take the name of a company and/or its commercial product and provide it a new definition. | H H H |
351 | Dubya Fun | Take any well-known statement, expression, slogan, etc., and rewrite it the way Dubya might have said it. | H H |
350 | Employing Irony | Propose bad career choices. | 2 |
349 | Orienting Oneself | Produce a haiku using only words found in today's Washington Post. Your entry must have three lines, the first containing exactly five syllables, the second containing exactly seven syllables, the third containing exactly five. | H |
347 | 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. | H H H 3 |
344 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Envision the mating of any two of the 387 horses qualifying for this year's Triple Crown, and propose a name for their foal. The foal's name must be contained in 18 or fewer letters and spaces. | H H H H H 7 |
343 | Eastwood Ho. | Create a Good-Bad-Ugly progression. | H |
340 | ASK BACKWARDS 12 | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions? | H 6 |
339 | Campaignful Developments | Come up with signs that a presidential campaign might be in trouble. | H |
336 | THE "STY"LE INVITATIONAL | Choose any word and emphasize a single part of it, as though you were saying the word out loud with "air quotes" around the key part. Then redefine the word. You cannot alter the spelling of the word. | H |
329 | THE STYLE INVITATIONAL: HELL | Take the name of a person or institution. Find within it a hidden message. You may add spacing and punctuation, but you may not move letters around. | H 3 |
322 | YOU NAME IT | Take a well known pair or group of names, extend one of them in some manner, and explain how the group dynamic changes. | H H H |
314 | IT'S THE LIST YOU CAN DO | Start with the name of a famous person, living or dead, real or fictional, either a full name or partial name. Progress through a series of other names or phrases. Each name or phrase must be related to the prior item either by being a homophone or a definition. Eventually, arrive at a name or a phrase that is an appropriate pairing with the original name. | H |
79 | TERROR-DACTYL | Send us a double dactyl. The first line must be a nonsense phrase of five to seven syllables containing exactly two downbeats. The second line must be a name, in five to seven syllables but only two downbeats. The remaining six lines must contain four to seven syllables and two downbeats each, with Lines 4 and 8 rhyming. Somewhere in the poem, one line must consist of only one word. | 4 |