| WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1613 | What's the Worst That Could Happen? | After the election, we mean. And be funny about it. | H H |
| 1612 | Asterisky Business | Put words in Horace's mouth: Tell us a joke that not everyone will get. | H |
| 1610 | Wryku | Write a haiku about something in the news. | H |
| 1609 | Saved! | Tell us funny ways to be thrifty in these parlous times | H |
| 1608 | Stick It | An election bumper sticker contest | H |
| 1607 | Funny, Init? | Compare two people who have the same initials. | H |
| 1605 | Get Thee to a Punnery | Change a quote slightly and credit it to someone else. | H |
| 1602 | We Got Game | Tell us some funny ways to 'improve' a sport. | H |
| 1600 | Taylorgaters | Take a line from a 'Tortured Poets' lyric and rhyme it with one of your own. | I |
| 1597 | The Farce of July | Give us new ways to celebrate Independence Day. | 3 |
| 1590 | All You Need Is Ink | Take a line from a Beatles song and rhyme it with your own. | H H |
| 1587 | The Trite Stuff | Replace some well-worn phrases with better ones. | H |
| 1586 | Pun for the Roses | Our annual crazy-popular horse 'breeding' wordplay contest. | H H |
| 1570 | The Invitational, Week 52: Replaying Around -- The 2023 retrospective, Part II | Enter or reenter our Week 26-50. | H |
| 1569 | Look Back in Inker -- Our 2023 retrospective, Part 1 | Enter or reenter our Week 1-25 contests. | H |
| 1568 | Nextra! Nextra! | Tell us the funny news events from 2024 | H |
| 1567 | Picture This | A caption contest | H |
| 1561 | Let It Be a Lesson to Us | Tell us some things to be learned from Costco, the bathroom, TV shows, etc. | H |
| 1551 | Ask Backwards XLII | We give the answers. You give the questions. | H H |
| 1548 | Poll-ish Jokes | Come up with a ridiculous reader poll. | 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 4 |
| 1540 | Picture This | It's caption contest time, with eight motley pictures to choose from. | H |
| 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) | H H |
| 1529 | Hello, Dall-E! | Our new contest partners you and a machine. | H H |
| 1523 | Where in Hell ...? | Name a "circle" for some "evil", plus a suitable punishment | H |
| 1520 | Nextra! Nextra! | Read All About it. Predict the big news events of 2023 | 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 |
| 1503 | Sing of your supper--parodies about food | Write a humorous song on the subject of food. | H |
| 1497 | The if-word | Give us a "what if" scenario and its humorous result | H |
| 1493 | Frankly speaking with feghoots | Tell a feghoot -- a mini-story (a ridiculous one is fine) that ends in a groaner pun on a familiar expression, title, line from a song, etc. | H |
| 1492 | Set us right -- conservative humor | Send us conservative-leaning humor in a Q&A joke format or a knock-knock joke. | 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. | H |
| 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 |
| 1484 | Two ways about it | What's something (printable) you could say in two -- or more -- of the provided situations. | H |
| 1483 | Pun for the Roses -- our famous foal-'breeding' contest | Breed" any two of the provided names and name the "foal". As in actual thoroughbred racing, a name may not exceed 18 characters including spaces. | H |
| 1477 | Thinking outside the big box | Send us a humorous "review" for any of the provided items listed on walmart.com<\em>. | 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. | H |
| 1468 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1440 through 1464. | H |
| 1467 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1413 through 1439, except for Weeks 1414-1416. | W |
| 1466 | Be invitationally correct | Give us a funny "correction" that a newspaper or magazine might offer. | H |
| 1464 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | 3 |
| 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 |
| 1457 | What is Ask Backwards XL? | You are on "Jeopardy!"; various answers are provided. You provide the questions. | H |
| 1456 | The hunting of the snark | Ask an insulting rhetorical question in the form (or a variation) of "Is that your _______ or _______? | 4 |
| 1455 | Good idea! Or not. | Cite a "good idea' and, with a small change of wording, a "bad idea". | H |
| 1453 | Haven't read it -- mis-subtitle a book | Choose any book title listed on Amazon and misinterpret it by adding a subtitle. | H |
| 1450 | Putting the 'anoid' in humanoid | Humorously describe some aspect of our current society as a space alien and/or future anthropologist might interpret it. | H |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 1431 | The On-Our-Way-Back Machine | Tell us how (in some funny way) things will be different as we emerge from the pandemic. | H |
| 1429 | Forsoothsayers | Quote a line or so from any Shakespeare work, and exemplify it with a contemporary quote, real or imagined. | H |
| 1426 | Mess with our (or others') heads | Reinterpret an actual headline (or a major part of it) by adding a bank head, or subtitle. | H H |
| 1421 | Alternaugural Address '21 | Write a humorous passage -- a "quote", an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything -- using only words that appear in Biden's inaugural address. | H |
| 1416 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1388 through 1412. | H |
| 1414 | Divining comedy: 2021 predictions | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2021. | 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. | 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. | H |
| 1404 | Ask Backwards XXXIX | The answers are provided. You supply the questions. | 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. | H |
| 1401 | How hai? A joke-haiku contest | Write a joke (roughly) in the "It's so xxx" genre as a haiku. | H H |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 1386 | Colt following: It's the grandfoals! | Breed" any two of the 70 foal names that got ink this week and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names. | H |
| 1383 | Questionable Journalism | Choose any sentence (not a headline) in an article or ad in The Washington Post or another publication dated May 7 through May 18, and write a question it might humorously answer. | H |
| 1382 | For us, it's still Post Time | Breed" any two names from the provided list of 100 of the 145 previous Kentucky Derby winners, from 1875 to 2019, and name the foal to humorously reflect the parents' names. | H |
| 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. | H |
| 1376 | Get thee to a funnery | Add a character (or more) to a Shakespeare play and supply some resulting dialogue. | H |
| 1375 | Mess With Our Heads | Reinterpret an actual headline (or a major part of it) by adding a bank head, or subtitle. | H |
| 1372 | Trash talking, 1880-style | Write a quatrain or -- heck -- two of Balliol rhyme about some person. | H |
| 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. | H |
| 1367 | Pick me up at work, okay? | Give a pickup line from someone in a particular profession, or from a particular person or fictional character. | H H 3 |
| 1363 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1334 through Week 1359. | H |
| 1361 | 2020 vision -- the year in preview | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2020. | H H |
| 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). | L |
| 1356 | Ask Backwards 38 | Sixteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. | H 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. | H |
| 1353 | What's playing at the retroplex | Change a movie title to its "opposite" by reversing one or more words; then describe the new movie. | W H |
| 1352 | Hee-rotica -- Steamy prose for unsteamy life | Write a short steamy scene (100 words would be considered long) about a non-steamy event. | 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. | 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. | H 3 |
| 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 |
| 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. | 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 |
| 1337 | Lidder me this: anagram riddles | Write a Q&A joke (or an A followed by a Q, if you're into "Jeopardy!") in which the punchline contains an anagram or one or more relevant words or names. | H |
| 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 |
| 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. | H |
| 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. | H |
| 1324 | Chapter and worse | Tell or describe a Bible story, or another classical or folk tale, very briefly (75 words would be lengthy) in the voice of a particular author or other person. | H |