RETURN TO STATS HOME PAGE

PERMANENT INKSTAIN FOR LEIF PICOULT



WEEK TITLE SYNOPSIS INK Types
1638/120 Pun for the Roses It's our annual horse 'breeding' wordplay contest. H
1636/118 Clue Us In We give you a partly filled-in crossword; you give us some words and funny clues. H
1633/115 Two Ways About It A contest for double-entendres. H
1632/114 EGOD! Coin a word including the letter block DOGE H 4
1631/113 Picture This Seven more pictures await your zany captions. H H H
1630/112 Be Mister Language Person Dave Barry is back with his own Substack, and here's a chance to remind him how to do this English-advice bit. H H H
1629/111 Ask Backwards Once again, we give the answers, you give the questions. H H
1627/109 The Alternaugural Address Write something funnier with the words from the latest Jan. 20 diatribe. H
1626/108 Bill Us Now A wordplay game to join congressional names to 'cosponsor' legislation. H
1625/107 Twits' Twist Fun with anagrams H H
1623/105 Dead Letters Write a funny poem about someone who died in 2024. H
1621/103 Redoer's Digest Our 2024 retrospective, Part 1. H H H
1620/102 Next Year in Review Give us some events for our 2025 timeline. 4
1618/100 Week 100! ...which we celebrate with a centennial contest H
1617/99 Mess With Our Heads Look at a headline and see a funnier meaning. H
1612/94 Asterisky Business Put words in Horace's mouth: Tell us a joke that not everyone will get. H
1610/92 Wryku Write a haiku about something in the news. H
1609/91 Saved! Tell us funny ways to be thrifty in these parlous times 4
1608/90 Stick It An election bumper sticker contest H
1607/89 Funny, Init? Compare two people who have the same initials. H
1606/88 The Cold New Trend What would be an even sillier new fad than decorator refrigerator shelves? H H H
1605/87 Get Thee to a Punnery Change a quote slightly and credit it to someone else. 3
1604/86 Call Your Dog Give us creative names for various pets H H
1602/84 We Got Game Tell us some funny ways to 'improve' a sport. H H
1601/83 Stop, Hey, What's That Sound? Tell us what these noise-words mean. H H
1600/82 Taylorgaters Take a line from a 'Tortured Poets' lyric and rhyme it with one of your own. H
1598/80 Same Difference We give you a random list of things, and you tell us how any two are alike or different. H
1597/79 The Farce of July Give us new ways to celebrate Independence Day. H
1596/78 History for the tl;dr Crowd Sum up an event for the 21st-century reader in a rhyming couplet. H
1595/77 Ebenezer Screwed Write us a funny comic strip on a certain sensitive subject H H H H 3
1594/76 So Good! So Bad! So Ugly! We bring back a classic contest L
1590/72 All You Need Is Ink Take a line from a Beatles song and rhyme it with your own. H H
1589/71 Wait Wait Right Here! Write some 'Not My Job' questions a la the NPR quiz show. H H 3
1588/70 Colt Fusion Because of our munificense and guilt, you get a full hundred foal names to 'breed' for 'grandfoals' H
1587/69 The Trite Stuff Replace some well-worn phrases with better ones. H H 4
1586/68 Pun for the Roses Our annual crazy-popular horse 'breeding' wordplay contest. H H
1585/67 Bring Up the Rear Move the last letter of a word to the front. H
1584/66 Seeds of Change Make an anagram of a name-brand product. H
1582/64 You're Workin' on a Chain, Gang A classic connection game. H
1581/63 SOTU-Speak Use words from Biden's State of the Union speech to write some lines for another oration. H H
1580/62 Hi, Anxiety! Tell us some funny ways to stress yourself out. L H
1579/61 Captions Courageous Write a description for any of six photos H
1578/60 The Pepys Show Give us a diary entry from anyone in history. H H H
1576/58 Praise the Lurid! Give us clickbait headlines for mundane stories. H H H H
1575/57 The Ughscars and the Phewlitzers Give us an idea for a bad book or movie. H H
1574/56 Oh, Grandpa, Stop! Turn a 'dad joke' into a less-tame 'grandpa joke' H H H
1573/55 The Invitational Week 55: Tour de Fours — Be STUD-ly Give us a new word or phrase containing 'DUST' in any order of letters. W H
1572/54 S Is for Smartass Presenting the Devil's Alphabet Soup H
1571/53 Dead Letters, our annual obit contest Write a funny verse about someone who died in 2023. H
1570/52 The Invitational, Week 52: Replaying Around -- The 2023 retrospective, Part II Enter or reenter our Week 26-50. H H 2
1569/51 Look Back in Inker -- Our 2023 retrospective, Part 1 Enter or reenter our Week 1-25 contests. H H H
1568/50 Nextra! Nextra! Tell us the funny news events from 2024 H H H H H
1567/49 Picture This A caption contest H H
1566/48 Well, the Good News Is ... Put a positive spin on a bad-news headline H H H
1565/47 Oh, For Namesakes! Compare two people who share part of a name. H H H
1563/45 The Perfect(ly Ridiculous) Gift Offer up some products for people-who-have-everything catalogs. H H H H 4
1561/43 Let It Be a Lesson to Us Tell us some things to be learned from Costco, the bathroom, TV shows, etc. H H
1560/42 The 'Hole Story Write us a funny 'Am I The Asshole' question H H H
1559/41 As the Word Turns 'Discover' new words by snaking through this random grid H H
1558/40 It's Parody Time Send up the news with those songs and videos you do so well H
1556/38 Cross Us Up Mirror a phrase, more or less H
1554/36 U (Heart) TFG's BFFs Reach out to beleaguered Trump supporters and bathe them in the warmth of your love, to help bind the nation’s wounds H H 2
1552/34 A Mirthday Party Link two people who share a birthday H H H
1550/32 Holy Moly, It's Limerixicon XX Write a limerick featuring a word beginning "ho-". H H
1548/30 Poll-ish Jokes Come up with a ridiculous reader poll. H H H H H H
1547/29 Alphabettering Write a funny sentence containing all 26 letters. H H
1544/26 Same Difference Tell us humorously how items on the list are alike, different, or otherwise linked. H
1543/25 F Things Up Neologisms by adding Fs or changing letters to F H
1542/24 Your (B)ad Here Tweak an ad slogan to use it for another product H
1541/23 Wrong enough for ya? Fake facts about the weather H
1540/22 Picture This It's caption contest time, with eight motley pictures to choose from. H
1539/21 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
1537/19 A Crooning Achievement Write a lyric for a politician to sing. H
1533/15 The Very Last 'Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions' Tell us a stupid question followed by a funny retort. H H
1532/14 We Bee Back With Neologisms Make up words using letter sets from the NYT Spelling Bee game H
1531/13 The Worst New Contest Ever Describe something that would be worse than a second Trump presidency H 3
1530/12 Mess With Our Heads Reinterpret any headline by adding a 'bank head'. 4
1528/10 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
1526/8 Poke Us Till We Giggle Write a "poke", or a joke recast as a rhyming poem H H
1524/6 Picture This A caption contest H
1523/5 Where in Hell ...? Name a "circle" for some "evil", plus a suitable punishment H
1522/4 Questionable Journalism Find a sentence published in the next week and tell us what question it could answer H H H 2
1521/3 Send Us the Bill Our "Joint Legislation" contest H 2
1520/2 Nextra! Nextra! Read All About it. Predict the big news events of 2023 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 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. H 3
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
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
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 3
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
1501 Try a little 'kindness' Tell about an “act of kindness” that you or someone else does that, well, won’t be appreciated. H
1499 Picture This, a cartoon caption contest Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. H
1497 The if-word Give us a "what if" scenario and its humorous result H
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
1492 Set us right -- conservative humor Send us conservative-leaning humor in a Q&A joke format or a knock-knock joke. W 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
1489 Let's movie things around Rearrange the words of a movie title to create a new movie, then describe it 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. 2
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
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
1484 Two ways about it What's something (printable) you could say in two -- or more -- of the provided situations. H 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. H
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. H
1477 Thinking outside the big box Send us a humorous "review" for any of the provided items listed on walmart.com<\em>. H H
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. H
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. 4
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 3
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
1466 Be invitationally correct Give us a funny "correction" that a newspaper or magazine might offer. H
1465 Put your '22 cents in for our annual pre-timeline Name some humorous news event to happen in 2022. H
1464 Picture this -- a caption contest Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. H H
1462 Time for a new career? Tell what would happen if any two people switched professions or other roles. 2
1457 What is Ask Backwards XL? You are on "Jeopardy!"; various answers are provided. You provide the questions. H
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. W H
1451 Could have said it worse ourselves Give us a humorously bad "first draft" of a famous line from history, literature or entertainment. 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. H 4
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
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. 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. 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. 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 H 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. H
1425 Picture this -- a caption contest Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. 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. H
1401 How hai? A joke-haiku contest Write a joke (roughly) in the "It's so xxx" genre as a haiku. H