| WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1408 | Re-Organization | Slightly change the name of a nonprofit organization and describe it. | H |
| 1300 | Botch office sensations | Add "13" to an existing movie title, and some humorous trouble to the plot. | 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. | H |
| 1217 | Mergers you wrote: Combine two businesses with puns | Give a clever name for a combination of two or more businesses. | H 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 |
| 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 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. | 3 |
| 1093 | You're only as rich as you fee | What are some really bad ideas for various businesses to make a few more bucks? | H |
| 1008 | Switched reels | Re-arrange all the words in the title of a movie, and describe the resulting work. | H |
| 882 | Limerixicon VII | Supply a humorous limerick prominently featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters dr-. | H |
| 861 | It's incumbent upon us | Combine the names of two or more freshman members of Congress to create "joint legislation." This week's pool of legislators includes only those who were elected to their seats before 1994, the first year we ran the freshman contest. | H |
| 846 | Season's gratings | Write a brief (50 words or fewer) holiday letter from a personage from past or present, or from fiction. | I |
| 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. | H 3 |
| 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 |
| 807 | Pretty Graphic Expressions | Express some insight as an equation or other mathematical expression. | H |
| 776 | An Act of Sunny Side | Note the silver lining in some otherwise disappointing turn of events. | H |
| 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. | I H |
| 756 | Mess With Our Heads | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from March 15 through 24 and reinterpret it by adding a "bank head," or subtitle. | 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 4 |
| 726 | Limerixicon 4 | Supply a humorous limerick based on any word in the dictionary beginning with cl- through co-. | H |
| 723 | Name Your Poison | Create a name and recipe for a cocktail and, if you like, describe when it might be served. | 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 3 |
| 710 | Aw, Shoot | Send us a funny, clever, entirely original photo featuring kitchen utensils and/or small household tools. | H H |
| 705 | Simile Outrageous | Come up with funny analogies, perhaps with some 21st-century references. | H |
| 698 | Let's Get Personnel | Send us some humorously creative questions that a job interviewer would ask an applicant, or some questions it might be fun to ask the interviewer. | H |
| 686 | It's Baaaaack! | Explain why you, or anyone else in particular, ought to have this fine oil-on-panel by Fred Dawson of Beltsville, or what it might be used for. | H |
| 684 | Backtricking | Spell a word backward and define the result, somehow relating the definition to the original word. | H |
| 682 | Punkin'd! | Send us a funny, clever, entirely original photo featuring one or more pumpkins and/or other vegetables. | W H H H H |
| 674 | Limerixicon 3 | Supply a humorous limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with ca-. | R |
| 673 | Mess With Our Heads | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Washington Post or on Washingtonpost.com from July 30 through Aug. 7 and reinterpret it by adding either a "bank headline," or subtitle, or the first sentence of an article that might appear under it. | H |
| 661 | Name Any Good Movies Lately? | Give us a funny new title for an existing movie. | H |
| 660 | Foaling Down: The Next Generation | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in this week's results, and name THEIR foal. | H |
| 657 | Nuts Fruit | Send in funny (but printable) images of real pieces of fruit. | H 1 |
| 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. | W H |
| 629 | Odd Couplings | Marry or otherwise combine famous names and supply the result. | H |
| 626 | Course Light | Come up with a comical college class, along with a description for the course catalog. | H |
| 624 | Limerixicon 2 | Supply a limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with bd- through bl-. | H |
| 617 | Best the Best | Write something about any famous personage that uses only the letters in his or her name. | H |
| 607 | Contest Fodder Created! | Produce absurdly parochial views of historical events. | 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 |
| 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. | H |
| 595 | Listing Precariously | Take the two subject listings at the top of any page of the Yellow Pages and create a dictionary definition for the compound word they form. | H |
| 594 | History Loves Company | Name an appropriate corporate sponsor for some historical event or for someone's life story. | 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 |
| 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 |
| 588 | Gadget If You Can | Tell us what these nifty, indispensable items are. | 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 |
| 582 | Perversery Rhymes | Update a nursery rhyme or children's song with an edgier text. | 3 |
| 580 | United Nations | Combine the names of any two countries in the world and describe the new hybrid country. | H H |
| 578 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" Above are the answers. Send us the questions. | H |
| 573 | Thine Ad Goest Here | Propose biblical and other literary passages, poems, etc., that could benefit from product placement. | H H |
| 572 | The Limerixicon | Supply a limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with ai- through ar-. | 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. | H |
| 570 | Timeline Rhyme Lines | Produce colorful chronological couplets about some historical event. They must rhyme and be in good meter. | H H |
| 566 | Get Whack | Type a two-word phrase into the Google search engine that produces exactly one result. | 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. | H |
| 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. | H 3 |
| 559 | Your Slogan Here | Come up with a clever slogan or sign for a business. | H |
| 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 H |
| 556 | So Zoo Us | Combine any two kinds of animals, give its name and describe it. | 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. | W H |
| 547 | Give Us a Bad Name | Take an existing product or business name and pair it with an incompatible one. | H |
| 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. | T L I |
| 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 |
| 544 | You Gotta Have Heart | Write us some valentine sentiments from one particular person (real or fictional) to another. | 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. | 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. | 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 |
| 538 | Try, Try Again | Enter any previous Invitational. Your entry must be substantially different from the original winners. | 2 |
| 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. | L H 3 |
| 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. | 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. | W |