| WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1506 | Let's go magnet-fishing with new words | From the provided list, write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer. | 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 |
| 1460 | These new words are on fleek | From the provided list, write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer. | H |
| 1417 | Dead Letters, our obit poem contest | Write a poem of no longer than eight lines (plus an optional title) about someone who died in 2020. | H |
| 1389 | TankaWanka 4: Haiku plus tu | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. | 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. | H |
| 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 |
| 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. | I H H |
| 1313 | Dead Letters -- our obit poem contest | Write a poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2018. | H |
| 1305 | Hits and Googles | Find us either a Googlenope -- a phrase in quotation marks that generates no previous hits -- or a Googleyup, a phrase that surprisingly does have hits. | H H H H H H 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. | H |
| 1276 | What 4? A limerick contest | Use a limerick using one of the provided lines as Line 5. | 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 |
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 |
| 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. | H |
| 1231 | TankaWanka 3: Haiku Plus Tu | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. The poem must consist of five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables in that order. And at least two of the lines must rhyme. | H |
| 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 |
| 1208 | A RIP-roaring year: Obit poems | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2016. | 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. | H |
| 1156 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2015. | H |
| 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. | H |
| 1129 | Right in the pampootie | Write a humorous short poem (eight lines or fewer) incorporating one of the 50 provided words. | H |
| 1124 | Heed! Indeed: Advice verse | Write one of the provided reminders as a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer. | H |
| 1105 | A lit obit of fun | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2014. | H |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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. | H |
| 1076 | Dactyly fractyly | Send us some double dactyls that conform to Gene Weingarten's rules. | H |
| 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. | H |
| 1062 | Scanning the headlines | Write a rhyming poem about something currently in the news. | H |
| 1054 | Dead letters | Write a short, humorous poem commemorating someone (or maybe even something) who died in 2013. | 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. | H |
| 1004 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem about anyone who died in 2012. | H |
| 983 | Limerixicon IX | Supply a humorous limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters "eq-" through "ez-". | H |
| 978 | A reason to rhyme the news | Write a short verse about something that's been in the news recently. | H |
| 952 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2011. | H |
| 933 | Stories that count (to 56) | Write a humorous story in exactly 56 words. | H |
| 931 | Limerixicon 8 | Supply a humorous limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters ea- through -el. | H |
| 924 | Doomed to repeat it | Create "Unreal Facts" about history. | 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. | H |
| 920 | Sarchiasm | Write an original chiasmus, in which the elements of a phrase are inverted for comedic effect. | H |
| 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 H |
| 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. | H |
| 893 | Give us a hint | Write a humorously witty story in 25 words or fewer. | H |
| 850 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2009. | H |
| 829 | Limerixicon 6 | Supply a humorous limerick prominently featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters di-. | H |
| 827 | Caller Idiot | Name a real product or company and supply a stupid question or complaint for the consumer hotline person. | I |
| 777 | Limerixicon 5 | Supply a humorous limerick featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters da-. | H |
| 748 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about a well-known personage who died in 2007. | I |
| 734 | Turnaround Time | Write a rhyming couplet containing two words that are anagrams of each other. | I |
| 726 | Limerixicon 4 | Supply a humorous limerick based on any word in the dictionary beginning with cl- through co-. | H |
| 725 | Beggars For Description | Describe, without being boring, a cartoon to fit any of the provided captions. | I |
| 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 |
| 666 | Bedevil Us | Give a mini-sermon explaining how some innocuous object or event signals the End of Days. | I |
| 648 | Caller IDiot | Name a product or company and supply a stupid question to ask the consumer hotline person. | A |
| 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. | L |
| 338 | WHO WANTS TO WIN A TOILET? | Propose even greater depths of shameless, tasteless sleaze to which Fox TV is likely to sink after the noisome debacle of "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? | D |