| WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1031 | The 'Sty'le Invitational | Choose any word, name, or short term; emphasize a key, suddenly pertinent part of it with quotation marks; then redefine the word. | H |
| 548 | Inklings | Tell us about certain people's childhood experiences and behaviors that hint at their destinies. | H |
| 547 | Give Us a Bad Name | Take an existing product or business name and pair it with an incompatible one. | H |
| 532 | Short Pans | Come up with a terse review (four words or fewer) of any work of art. | H |
| 528 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H |
| 527 | Rite of First Defusal | Come up with witty or bizarre things to say to defuse the tension in awkward moments. | T |
| 514 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are your answers. What are the questions? | H H H H |
| 506 | The Battle of All Mottoes | Provide a slogan for any federal department agency, department, office, etc. | H |
| 500 | Ergo-Nomics | Create a sillygism--a syllogism that doesn't quite work. | H |
| 491 | Hirschfeld Follies | Try to figure out which celebrities Bob Staake is trying to draw in imitation of Al Hirschfeld. | H H H |
| 490 | Eyes on Reprise | Submit any good entries you might have thought of, for any previous contest, after the deadline passed. | H H |
| 485 | Asterisky Business | Write a joke with a punch line depending on knowledge so esoteric that it requires an asterisked explanation. | H |
| 483 | Obitter Fate | Give us an obit headline for some famous person, currently living or dead. | H |
| 476 | Portmanteautapping | Make a new word by squishing together two existing words. The constituent words must share at least two letters. | H 1 |
| 471 | Excuses, Excuses | Come up with creative new excuses for not turning in homework, not filing your taxes on time, missing church or forgetting your spouse's birthday. | H |
| 468 | Ism This Stupid? | Take any common prefix and attach it to any well-known "ism" and define the new term. | H H |
| 463 | Retell Sales | Give us the beginning of any well-known story as retold by any famous person, living or dead, except for Ronald Reagan. | H H 1 |
| 461 | Punch Us Again | Take any comic from the daily Washington Post during the next week and make it better by changing the contents of the final word balloon. | T |
| 458 | It's a Setup | Come up with joke setups for any of the provided punch lines. | H H H 2 |
| 457 | Letter Rip | Give us the beginning of a letter to the editor that is certain never to see print. | H H |
| 456 | A Bad-Ask Contest | You are still on Jeopardy!, and you still have to supply questions to the provided answers, but the winners will be the least funny answers. | H |
| 453 | Haiku 2 U2 | Write a haiku summarizing the career of any American politician, living or dead. A haiku is generally defined as a nonrhyming poem, of three lines. The first and last lines are five syllables; the middle line is seven. | H |
| 447 | Acronimble | Take any of the provided witty statements and use the first letters in each of the words to create a brand-new, unrelated funny statement. | H |
| 445 | Another Round of Bierce | Add a few entries to Ambrose Bierce's famous "Devil's Dictionary. | W H H |
| 444 | Advice Squad | Take any letter from today's advice columns and answer it in the voice of someone famous, living or dead. | W |
| 441 | Spit the Difference | Take any two nouns that appear on the front page of today's Washington Post and explain how the nouns differ from each other. | H |
| 440 | Picture This | What is going on in these cartoons? | H |
| 438 | What's the Pun Line? | Ask a question and answer it, somewhere incorporating the name of a least one famous person. | H H H |
| 429 | Shark Instruments | Tell us what would be a sign that any current institution--TV show, newspaper feature, magazine, business, etc.--has jumped the shark. | H |
| 422 | Taught Language | Come up with lessons learned from (1) the movies, (2) popular songs, (3) romance novels or (4) the comics page. | H H |
| 418 | Xtreme Invitational | Come up with signs you are overdoing it any in any of the provided categories. | H H |
| 416 | Diff'rent Jokes | Describe how things might have been different if a famous person, living or dead, had had one of the provided conditions. | H |
| 413 | Bland Ambition | Come up with one or more items from an underachiever's list of midlife resolutions. | H |
| 412 | Painful Climaxes | Come up with statements that start really dramatically, but leave you sorta flat at the end. | H |
| 411 | X's and Oaths | Take any oath, pledge, declaration or slogan and update it. | H H 2 |
| 409 | Nice Job, if You Get It | Take anything that might need its image enhanced and rename it in a way the keeps its essential identity, but makes it seem nicer. | H |
| 407 | Adverbiage | Come up with a witticism or a joke by making a pun out of an adverb. Unlike Tom Swiftlys, your adverb must modify not a verb but an adjective. | H H |
| 406 | Bum Steerage | Offer some spectacularly bad advice to any of the provided people. | H |
| 399 | IT PAYS TO BE GENDEROUS | Write a short film description that could persuade a woman that the guy movie he wants to see is really close to being a gal movie, or vice versa. | H |
| 394 | Life in the Blurbs | Come up with a blurb used to sell a real or imagined book or movie that would be likely to have the opposite of the intended effect. | H H |
| 392 | Everyone's a Comic | Choose any panel of any comic strip in today's Washington Post and improve it by replacing the original speech and thought balloons with your own, | H |
| 391 | Spinning Out of Control | Take a headline in today's Washington Post and create a subhead that spins the story in an opposite or unexpected direction. | H |
| 390 | Canine Fashion | Write: 1. A caption for the provided image explaining what is happening; 2. An explanation of why the image is not photography but art; 3. A description of what additional items might be needed to make the image complete. Sex and potty jokes will be disqualified. | H |
| 389 | Operation Overkill | Present a solution to a problem that goes just a little too far. | H H |
| 388 | Pitches in the Dirt | Come up with a sales pitch to get any surplus product off the shelves. | W H H |
| 387 | By Jingo | Come up with a joke that could be written and understood only by a Washingtonian. | H 1 |
| 383 | A Kinder, Gender Nation | Take an noun and give us a reason or two why it should be either masculine or feminine. | H |
| 380 | The New-Name Offense | Propose changes for the names of places and things that need it, either because there is something wrong with their name, or because another name would be so much more descriptive. | H |
| 378 | Bill Us Now | Come up with a bill sponsored by any of the newly elected U.S. senators and representatives, and explain the purpose of the bill. | 1 |
| 376 | Apply Yourself | Supply bad openings to college application biographies. | H H |
| 369 | Punch Us | Complete any of the provided jokes. | H |
| 368 | Hyphen the Terrible | Combine the first half of any hyphenated word in a story in today's paper with the second part of a different hyphenated word from the same story, and provide a new definition. | H |
| 366 | Just Fulghum | Come up with a list of at least three Major Life Lessons one can learn from any of the venues provided. | H |
| 364 | Low Marks | Come up with a new punctuation mark. Tell us what it looks like, and what it is used for, and use it in a sentence. | H |
| 363 | It's Your Movie | Take the title of any movie and make it the answer to a riddle. | H |
| 362 | Something Missing | Tell us what is missing in each of the provided cartoons. | H |
| 361 | Bad Libs | Select one subject, one verb, and one object from the provided lists, and then answer the riddle you create. | H H |
| 357 | Coming to a Bad End | Take some immortal line from literature or film and ruin it by adding a short phrase or sentence. | H 2 |
| 355 | Seeing Stars | Tell us ways we can attract celebrity participation to this contest. | H |
| 351 | Dubya Fun | Take any well-known statement, expression, slogan, etc., and rewrite it the way Dubya might have said it. | H |
| 350 | Employing Irony | Propose bad career choices. | H |
| 342 | Plainly Ridiculous | Take any direct quotation from any article in today's Washington Post and translate it into "plain English. | H H H H |
| 340 | ASK BACKWARDS 12 | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions? | H H |
| 336 | THE "STY"LE INVITATIONAL | Choose any word and emphasize a single part of it, as though you were saying the word out loud with "air quotes" around the key part. Then redefine the word. You cannot alter the spelling of the word. | H 4 |
| 335 | A LOVER'S SPAT | Come up with some inept "sweet nothings"--graceless terms of endearment. | H H H |
| 324 | A PREQUEL OPPORTUNITY OFFERING | Come up with a "prequel" to some classic film or work of literature. You must produce a title and a brief plot summary, which of course must take place prior to the main action of the original work. | H H |
| 316 | CALLING THE TOON | What are these things? | H |
| 307 | IF YOU BOYCOTT THIS TASK / YOU WON'T WIN THE FLASK | Come up with rhyming couplets to warn us about the perils of modern life. | H H |
| 305 | ASK BACKWARDS CMXVI2 | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H |
| 304 | TIME OF THE SIGNS | Come up with appropriate signage to appear outside any business or retail establishment in the Washington area, including government offices. | H H H |
| 301 | PICTURE THIS | What is happening in these cartoons? | H H |
| 300 | A BRAND NEW CONTEST | Come up with celebrity-brand products. | H |
| 298 | THE RIGHT STUFF | Write a sentence, or phrase, or entire passage, using only your right hand on the keyboard. This means you may use no keys to the left of N, H, Y and 7. | H |
| 296 | BILL US LATER | Choose among the names of any of the newly elected U.S. senators or representatives and propose a bill they might sponsor. | W |
| 294 | PRODUCT LIARBILITY | Take the name of any commercial product and redefine it. | H H |
| 290 | THE WORLD THEORIES | Codify some of life's more populist theories. | H |
| 289 | PLAY IT AGAIN, SHAM | Submit entries to any previous contest, ideas you might have thought of after the contest deadline had passed. | H 1 |
| 281 | CALCULATE THE ODDS | Tell us which of the two provided items does not belong with the other two, and why. | H |
| 271 | YOGI BEARER | Come up with new Yogi-isms, which seem to make sense, but collapse like a soufflé when you poke it a little | H |
| 267 | THE CONCEPT CONCEPT | Come up with a situation for a "People Unclear on the Concept" cartoon. Describe the situation and supply any necessary dialogue. | H H |
| 266 | DEFINITELY WEIRD | Take any word from the dictionary and redefine it. | H |
| 264 | ASK BACKWARDS | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions? | 5 |
| 258 | IT'S A BIRD. IT'S A PAIN. | Choose one or more of the provided super powers and tell us what you would do with it. | H 4 |
| 255 | SCANDAL IN THE WIND | Each of the provided items is somehow related to the current presidential scandal. Tell us how. | H H 1 |
| 251 | QUOTH THE MAVEN | Take any famous line, change it by one letter only (add, subtract or change a single letter), and reattribute it. | H |
| 248 | STICKER SCHLOCK | Come up with a message for our new, mildly sought-after Style Invitational bumper sticker, something that summarizes the grandeur and dignity of this stupid contest. | H |
| 246 | OUR OWN DEVICES | What do these contraptions do? Tell us in 50 words or fewer. | H |
| 244 | HYPHEN THE TERRIBLE | Coin new words, and provide a definition, by combining the first half of a hyphenated word for any story in today's Post with the second half of another hyphenated word in the same story. | H H |
| 241 | CAN YOU BEAT THIS? | Come up with headlines describing the defeat of one pro team by another. | H |
| 239 | NAME THAT TOON | Send us the captions for cartoons not provided. | H |
| 236 | CALLING THE TOON. | What is happening here? | 2 |
| 227 | WILD PITCHES | Come up worthy successors to Joe Camel. Name the product, and describe the totally inappropriate cartoon character that would be created to represent it. | H |
| 222 | TRIP DEUCES | 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 |
| 219 | VERBOSITY | Come up with new, obnoxious, self-conscious faux verbs and use them in sentences. | 3 |