WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
---|---|---|---|
1618 | Week 100! | ...which we celebrate with a centennial contest | H |
1617 | Mess With Our Heads | Look at a headline and see a funnier meaning. | 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 | 4 |
1608 | Stick It | An election bumper sticker contest | H |
1607 | Funny, Init? | Compare two people who have the same initials. | H |
1606 | The Cold New Trend | What would be an even sillier new fad than decorator refrigerator shelves? | H H H |
1605 | Get Thee to a Punnery | Change a quote slightly and credit it to someone else. | 3 |
1604 | Call Your Dog | Give us creative names for various pets | H H |
1602 | We Got Game | Tell us some funny ways to 'improve' a sport. | H H |
1601 | Stop, Hey, What's That Sound? | Tell us what these noise-words mean. | H H |
1600 | Taylorgaters | Take a line from a 'Tortured Poets' lyric and rhyme it with one of your own. | H |
1598 | Same Difference | We give you a random list of things, and you tell us how any two are alike or different. | H |
1597 | The Farce of July | Give us new ways to celebrate Independence Day. | H |
1596 | History for the tl;dr Crowd | Sum up an event for the 21st-century reader in a rhyming couplet. | H |
1595 | Ebenezer Screwed | Write us a funny comic strip on a certain sensitive subject | H H H H 3 |
1594 | So Good! So Bad! So Ugly! | We bring back a classic contest | L |
1590 | All You Need Is Ink | Take a line from a Beatles song and rhyme it with your own. | H H |
1589 | Wait Wait Right Here! | Write some 'Not My Job' questions a la the NPR quiz show. | H H 3 |
1588 | Colt Fusion | Because of our munificense and guilt, you get a full hundred foal names to 'breed' for 'grandfoals' | H |
1587 | The Trite Stuff | Replace some well-worn phrases with better ones. | H H 4 |
1586 | Pun for the Roses | Our annual crazy-popular horse 'breeding' wordplay contest. | H H |
1585 | Bring Up the Rear | Move the last letter of a word to the front. | H |
1584 | Seeds of Change | Make an anagram of a name-brand product. | H |
1582 | You're Workin' on a Chain, Gang | A classic connection game. | H |
1581 | SOTU-Speak | Use words from Biden's State of the Union speech to write some lines for another oration. | H H |
1580 | Hi, Anxiety! | Tell us some funny ways to stress yourself out. | L H |
1579 | Captions Courageous | Write a description for any of six photos | H |
1578 | The Pepys Show | Give us a diary entry from anyone in history. | H H H |
1576 | Praise the Lurid! | Give us clickbait headlines for mundane stories. | H H H 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' | H H H |
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. | W H |
1572 | S Is for Smartass | Presenting the Devil's Alphabet Soup | H |
1571 | Dead Letters, our annual obit contest | Write a funny verse about someone who died in 2023. | H |
1570 | The Invitational, Week 52: Replaying Around -- The 2023 retrospective, Part II | Enter or reenter our Week 26-50. | H H 2 |
1569 | Look Back in Inker -- Our 2023 retrospective, Part 1 | Enter or reenter our Week 1-25 contests. | H H H |
1568 | Nextra! Nextra! | Tell us the funny news events from 2024 | H H H H H |
1567 | Picture This | A caption contest | H H |
1566 | Well, the Good News Is ... | Put a positive spin on a bad-news headline | H H H |
1565 | Oh, For Namesakes! | Compare two people who share part of a name. | H H H |
1563 | The Perfect(ly Ridiculous) Gift | Offer up some products for people-who-have-everything catalogs. | H H H H 4 |
1561 | Let It Be a Lesson to Us | Tell us some things to be learned from Costco, the bathroom, TV shows, etc. | H H |
1560 | The 'Hole Story | Write us a funny 'Am I The Asshole' question | H H H |
1559 | As the Word Turns | 'Discover' new words by snaking through this random grid | H H |
1558 | It's Parody Time | Send up the news with those songs and videos you do so well | H |
1556 | Cross Us Up | Mirror a phrase, more or less | H |
1554 | 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 | A Mirthday Party | Link two people who share a birthday | H H H |
1550 | Holy Moly, It's Limerixicon XX | Write a limerick featuring a word beginning "ho-". | H H |
1548 | Poll-ish Jokes | Come up with a ridiculous reader poll. | H H H H H H |
1547 | Alphabettering | Write a funny sentence containing all 26 letters. | H H |
1544 | Same Difference | Tell us humorously how items on the list are alike, different, or otherwise linked. | H |
1543 | F Things Up | Neologisms by adding Fs or changing letters to F | H |
1542 | Your (B)ad Here | Tweak an ad slogan to use it for another product | H |
1541 | Wrong enough for ya? | Fake facts about the weather | H |
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 |
1537 | A Crooning Achievement | Write a lyric for a politician to sing. | H |
1533 | The Very Last 'Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions' | Tell us a stupid question followed by a funny retort. | H H |
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 3 |
1530 | Mess With Our Heads | Reinterpret any headline by adding a 'bank head'. | 4 |
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 |
1526 | Poke Us Till We Giggle | Write a "poke", or a joke recast as a rhyming poem | 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 2 |
1521 | Send Us the Bill | Our "Joint Legislation" contest | H 2 |
1520 | 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 |