| WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1602 | We Got Game | Tell us some funny ways to 'improve' a sport. | P |
| 1551 | Ask Backwards XLII | We give the answers. You give the questions. | T |
| 1526 | Poke Us Till We Giggle | Write a "poke", or a joke recast as a rhyming poem | H |
| 1520 | Nextra! Nextra! | Read All About it. Predict the big news events of 2023 | H 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 H |
| 1518 | The final Post edition | Some all-time favorite entries | H H |
| 1389 | TankaWanka 4: Haiku plus tu | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. | P |
| 1385 | Don't you want to see new places? | Change any place name slightly and describe the new place. | H |
| 1384 | Of course there are stupid questions! | Give us stupid questions, especially ones reflecting Our Current Situation. | M |
| 1381 | Let's be equinoxious with fictoids about spring | Tell us some untrue trivia about springtime or things that happen or happened in the spring. | H |
| 1376 | Get thee to a funnery | Add a character (or more) to a Shakespeare play and supply some resulting dialogue. | H |
| 1374 | Versus' verses in a rap battle | Write a mini-"rap" between any two characters, real or fictional, as in the provided ERB example. | P |
| 1372 | Trash talking, 1880-style | Write a quatrain or -- heck -- two of Balliol rhyme about some person. | W H H |
| 1370 | What's in a name? | Write something about a well-known person, real or fictional, using only the letters in that person's name. | H H |
| 1357 | It's parody time! | Write a satirical song about anything in the news right now, set to a familiar tune. | H 3 |
| 1347 | Reologisms | Write a clever, funny definition for any of the provided Loser-concocted words and phrases, and/or show they'd be used. | P |
| 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. | P |
| 1335 | Put it in bee-verse! Or . . . | Write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer that includes at least one of the provided words, used in Round 9 or later of this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee; OR: write a joke in Q&A form that uses at least one of the words. | 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. | P |
| 1312 | Neologisms in TOUR de Fours XV | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter block T-O-U-R and describe it. The letters may be in any order. | P |
| 1306 | PolitiCaroling: A song parody contest | Write a song about something in the news lately -- political or otherwise -- using a Christmas, Hanukkah or New Year's tune. | H |
| 1301 | Tell us a Fib(onacci) | Write a humorous poem of 20 syllables divided among six lines like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. And a least two -- any two -- of the lines must rhyme. | H H 2 |
| 1297 | A different type o' headline contest | Change a letter in an article or ad in the Post or another publication dated Sept. 13-24 by adding or subtracting one letter; substituting a letter; transposing two letters; or changing spacing or punctuation; and then add a "bank head. | T |
| 1296 | A, we're Adorbs: New-word poems | Use one or more of these words new to M-W.com in a humorous poem of eight lines max. | H 2 |
| 1293 | Constitutional unconvention | Humorously translate or explain some part of the U.S. Constitution. | H 2 |
| 1292 | Golly gosh, it's Limerixicon XV | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term, beginning with "gl-" through "go-". | H H |
| 1290 | Bobbing for Witte words | Come up with both an object/situation and a neologism for it. | M H |
| 1289 | Fake gnus: bogus animal trivia | Tell us a fictoid -- a humorously false "fact" -- about the nonhuman animal kingdom. | H |
| 1288 | Your results may vary | Write a funny disclaimer or warning for some product or service. | P |
| 1287 | It's parody time: Oldies for newsies | Write some song lyrics about something in the news these days, set to a familiar tune. | W H H H |
| 1286 | Mind your P's and B's (and more) | Replace one or more P's in a word, name, or multi-word term with a B or with another letter and define or describe the results. | H |
| 1285 | That is so wrong! | Supply a trivia question along with both the correct answer and a cleverly "wrong" guess. | P H |
| 1283 | Put it in Bee-verse | Write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer that includes one of the provided words, all from the 2018 National Spelling Bee. | H 2 |
| 1280 | A la'ugh' a minute with 'air quotes' | Highlight part of a word, name or short phrase in "air quotes" to give it a new meaning or description. | P |
| 1274 | Heading for a foal -- our horse name 'breeding' contest | Your job is to "breed" any two names of the 360 horses nominated for this year's Triple Crown races and name the "foal" to reflect both names. | P |
| 1272 | The hex files: creative curses | Come up with a creative curse. | H H |
| 1270 | The Style Invitational turns 5 x 5 | Write a witty poem, on any subject, in any of these forms: A. Five lines of five syllables each B. Five lines of five words each C. Five lines of iambic pentameter |
H H 4 |
| 1267 | Jingle bungle | Suggest an ill-advised spokesman (dead or alive, or fictional), along with a humorously noooo slogan or jingle. | H H |
| 1265 | Parody for the course | Write a song relating to a class or course of instruction, or to school in general. | W H |
| 1258 | The year in redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1230 through Week 1254. | P |
| 1252 | It's a med, med, med, med world | Invent a clever name for a new medical product, and specify the condition it would treat. | P |
| 1251 | Thanking outside the box | Tell us something to be thankful for. | P |
| 1243 | We bid you: No T-R-U-M-P | Coin a new term, or choose an existing one, whose letters do not include a T, R, U, M, or P, and write a humorous definition. | H |
| 1242 | Generation Yux | Give us a "then/now" joke. | M |
| 1241 | Less taste, more fill-in | Give us a novel clue for any word or phrase in which the remaining letters in the provided crossword puzzle fit, across or down. | H |
| 1240 | We GIVE you Limerixicon XIV | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "gh-" or "gi-". | H 3 |
| 1238 | D-E-F Comedy Jam (or E-D-F, etc.) | Coin a threeword phrase (you may add an insignificant word or two) whose words begin with D, E and F — in any order — and describe it. | H H |
| 1237 | Our alliteracy campaign | Rewrite an existing headline from any publication, print or online — about something in the news from July 20 to 31, by using alliteration. | T H H H |
| 1236 | Portmanteaux faux | Explain--inaccurately but amusingly--how a real word is a combination of two or more words, with an illustrative sentence, as in the provided examples, or some other funny way. | M |
| 1235 | The Sound of Science | Write humorous lyrics on the subject of science or technology, set to a well-known tune. | H 3 |
| 1234 | It's incontestable | Four weeks from now, the Empress will have just placed her dainty imperial toe back on our glittering shores. Which means that for the first time since January 2002, almost 800 contests ago—back during the late reign of her predecessor, theCzar—the Invitational will skip two contests in a row. | H H |
| 1233 | Not | The Loser Community gets a week off (actually two) from writing contest entries and will have to find something else to do during staff meetings, sermons, romantic breakups, etc. | H |
| 1231 | TankaWanka 3: Haiku Plus Tu | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. The poem must consist of five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables in that order. And at least two of the lines must rhyme. | W P H H H H H |
| 1229 | Gorey bits from A to Z | Send us one of more edgy rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. | H H H H 3 |
| 1222 | Foaling around | Breed" any two of the provided racehorses nominated for this year's Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont; and name the foal to reflect both of them. | M |
| 1220 | O pedantry, O pedantry | Give us some humorous pedantry. | H |
| 1219 | Cast your Bred upon us | Write a Lik the Bred verse about someone in the news lately. | P H H |
| 1218 | Mess with our -- or anyone else's -- heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in the Post (print or online or another publication dated March 9-20) by writing a bankhead, or subtitle. | H |
| 1216 | As the word turns | Create a word or multi-word term that consists of adjacent letters -- in any direction or several directions -- in the provided grid, and provide a humorous definition. | P |
| 1213 | Punku | Write a haiku that incorporates a pun. | H |
| 1211 | The best tweets in history | Write a stupidly disparaging tweet (140 characters or fewer, including spaces) about some laudable figure of past or present, true or fictional. | P |
| 1210 | Send us the bill: Our 'joint legislation' game | Combine two or more names from the provided list of members of Congress to “co-sponsor” a bill based on their combined last names, and state its purpose. | H |
| 1208 | A RIP-roaring year: Obit poems | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2016. | T M H H H H 2 |
| 1206 | Do-over the do-over -- enter any of the year's contests | Enter (or re-enter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1149 to 1202, except for Week 1152, last year's do-over. | W |
| 1205 | Could we just have a do-over? Yes, we could. | Enter (or re-enter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1149 to 1201, except for Week 1152, last year's do-over. | H H H |
| 1202 | Don't be afraid of the dark | Write lyrics to a song that, in some way, express hope. | W |
| 1201 | Tour de Fours XIII: What's there to NOVE? | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter block N-O-V-E. | H |
| 1200 | The definitive dozen | Supply a word, name or multi-word term along with a wry definition or description; together, the term and description must total exactly 12 words. | H |
| 1194 | Nyetymologies: fake word origins | Provide a humorously untrue explanation for the derivation of a word. | H 2 |
| 1193 | Poedtry | Write a Poed, which consists of four lines: The first line contains six one-syllable words. The second line contains three two-syllable words. The third line contains two three-syllable words. The fourth line contains one six-syllable word (or a name totaling six syllables. And at least two of the lines must rhyme. | M H H 3 |
| 1192 | Ask Backwards | The 15 provided phrases above are the answers. You provide the questions to as many as you’d like (up to 25 entries total). | T H |
| 1191 | Mess with our heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in The Post (print or online) and dated Sept. 1-12 by writing a bank head, or subtitle | H |
| 1189 | Gee, it's Limerixicon XIII! | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "ge". | H H |
| 1188 | Just short words, one more time | Explain some concept or philosophy entirely in words of one syllable. | P 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 H |
| 1183 | C'mon, be honest with us | Write something in roughly the form "If X were more honest, (then) Y. | T |
| 1181 | Put it in Bee-verse | Write a short, humorous poem using one of the 36 provided words, all from the 2016 National Spelling Bee. | T H 2 |
| 1178 | A ______ of collective nouns | Propose one or more funny new names for groups of things. | H |
| 1177 | The ballad box | Write a song related to this year's elections, set to a familiar tune. | P 2 |
| 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 |
| 1171 | What's my (next) line? | Take a line from any song and pair it with your own second line to make a humorous rhyming couplet; the second line should match the rhythm of the first, rather than the second line of the song itself. | H H H |
| 1158 | What have we here? | Tell us what one or more of these objects really are. | M H |
| 1156 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2015. | H H 4 |
| 1154 | Tabby Road -- songs for cats | Write a song for -- or about -- cats or other animals, set to a familiar tune. | H 4 |
| 1152 | Oops? You do it again. | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 1098 through Week 1148, except for Week 1101, last year's do-over. | H H 5 |
| 1151 | To [a glass], snarkly | Write a short, snarky (but witty) note to one of the provided glassbowls. | P |
| 1150 | A deviant character | Change the name of person or animal -- real or fictional -- by adding or subtracting one letter; substituting one letter for another; or switching the positions of two nearby letters, and describing the results. | M H |
| 1149 | Gestures of depreciation | Suggest ways to celebrate National Love Your Lawyer Day -- or a made-up "holiday" celebrating some other profession. | H |
| 1148 | It's TankaWanka II | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. The poem must consist of five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables in that order. And it must include at least one rhyme. | W H H H H |
| 1146 | Stick it to us with a magnet | Suggest a new Style Invitational honorable-mention magnet. | H H H H |
| 1143 | Ask Backwards | Provided are 15 answers, separated by asterisks. You supply the questions. | P |
| 1139 | A little sixty-four play | Fashion an entry by selecting one element from each of the provided menu groups. Make sure you indicate the combination you chose (e.g., 2-C-iii). | T M H 3 |
| 1138 | Show us your touché | Offer an elegantly snide (and original) insult of anyone living or dead. | P H H |
| 1137 | Be a published author! | Give us a spicy title for a boring book, real or imagined. | H |
| 1136 | Gaah! It's Limerixicon XII | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "ga-". | W P L H |
| 1135 | The meter's running | Suggest actions in daily life that should require a time limit -- maximum or minimum -- and come with an appropriate penalty for running over (or under). | P |
| 1133 | Are 'hew ready? A contest for clerihews | A clerihew is a humorous four-line rhyming poem about a person whose name is mentioned in the first line; in fact, the name must be at the end of that line (or constitute the whole line) so that it has to rhyme with something. The rhyme structure (and we don't want "lazy" rhymes) is AABB: the first line rhymes with the second, the third with the fourth. | H H 3 |
| 1132 | You and what army? Military fictoids | Give us some comically bogus trivia about the military, past or present, ours or theirs. | 2 |
| 1130 | Yux Redux: Play on a foreign phrase | Make a word play on a foreign phrase or term (or English phrase using foreign words) and describe it. | 3 |
| 1129 | Right in the pampootie | Write a humorous short poem (eight lines or fewer) incorporating one of the 50 provided words. | M H 3 |
| 1127 | From the creators of . . . | Think up a spinoff of a real TV series, past or present, and furnish a description or bit of dialogue. | P |
| 1125 | The song remains the sa | Supply a real song title that has the end or beginning -- or, what the heck, both -- chopped off and describe it. | P |
| 1124 | Heed! Indeed: Advice verse | Write one of the provided reminders as a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer. | H H H 3 |
| 1123 | The Tile Invitational III | Give us a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or two words) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided seven-letter sets. | P |
| 1122 | Colt Following: 'Grandfoals' | Breed" any two of the 65 foal names that got ink this week and name the offspring to reflect the parents' names. | H H |
| 1117 | You got another sing coming | Write a song about a topic or person lately in the news, set to a familiar tune. | H H 2 |
| 1114 | Awww together now | Write us a humorous headline -- from the past, present, or future -- that puts an optimistic perspective on some otherwise not-so-promising news. | H |
| 1113 | Our occasional parodies | Write a song celebrating someone's birthday or other personal occasion (rather than, say, a holiday), set to a familiar tune. | W H |
| 1111 | When you riff upon a store | Use a wordplay on a song title as a name or slogan for a real or imagined business. | P H H |
| 1109 | Fictoids of Columbia | Tell us some humorously untrue “facts” about Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area. | H |
| 1108 | Hearts of dorkness | Write a humorous Valentine's Day sentiment to someone (or to some organization), either real or fictional -- either from you or from someone else you name. Plus an all-new option: We'll also be willing to run at least one really funny, clever, well-executed graphic. | H 3 |
| 1107 | Send us the bill | Combine two or more names from the list of members of Congress on this page to "cosponsor" a bill based on their combined last names, and state its purpose. | H |
| 1106 | Show your resolve | Suggest a New Year's resolution that someone might make 100 or more years in the future. | H H H |
| 1105 | A lit obit of fun | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2014. | H H H H |
| 1102 | Let's get Sirius | Suggest a new radio channel and describe it. | H |
| 1101 | The year in redo | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 1047 through Week 1097, except for Week 1050. | H H H 2 |
| 1100 | Pun and ink -- the feghoot | Contrive an elaborate scenario that ends in a novel groaner pun on a familiar expression, title, etc. | P H 4 |
| 1097 | Futz your sign | Select a line from one of the horoscopes appearing anytime from Nov. 6 through Nov. 17 in the Washington Post's daily Style or on washingtonpost.com and "clarify" it with a translation or extra "information". | H H |
| 1096 | Picture this | Write a humorous caption for any of the provided Bob Staake cartoons. | T |
| 1095 | TankaWanka! | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. The poem must consist of five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables in that order. And it must include at least one rhyme. | W H H H |
| 1094 | TAXI's the fare for Tour de Fours XI | Coin a word or hyphenated term that contains the letter block T-A-X-I; the letters may be in any order, but there may be no other letters between them. | H |
| 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 |
| 1091 | Good idea! or not. | Come up with a good idea and, through a small change in wording, a bad idea. | H |
| 1086 | Playing the dozens | 1. Start with any 12-letter word, name or multi-word phrase. 2. Add one letter OR drop one letter OR substitute another letter OR switch the position of two letters to create a new term, as in the examples given. 3. Define or describe the result humorously. |
H 2 |
| 1085 | Eww-venirs: Ideas for gift shops | Suggest a humorous--but NOT horribly tasteless--tchotchke, T-shirt, etc., from a real or imagined gift shop at a particular tourist site. | H |
| 1084 | Limerixicon XI: Fi-, fo-, go! | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "Fl-" through "fo-". | H |
| 1080 | McGonagall with the windiness | Memorialize a modern "tragedy" in a poem burdened with hilariously overwrought verse; lame, forced rhymes; and painfully uneven meter. Get the badness across in one verse of no more than eight lines. | T |
| 1078 | Hyphen the Terrible | Combine one side of any hyphenated word or compound term with one side of another word to make a new hyphenated term, and define it humorously. Both halves must appear in the same issue of The Post or another print newspaper, or in writing published the same day on washingtonpost.com or another online publication. | P |
| 1077 | Time marches Swiftly | Give us a novel Tom Swifty, playing on either an adverb or a verb (e.g., "We care about the little people, the BP chairman gushed"). | P |
| 1076 | Dactyly fractyly | Send us some double dactyls that conform to Gene Weingarten's rules. | T T H |
| 1074 | Let's go parody-hopping | Describe a stage or movie musical in a parody of a song from a different musical. | W H H |
| 1073 | Bank shots: Mess with (y)our heads | Quote a headline appearing in the Washington Post, washington.com or another publication, print or headline, dated May 22 to June 1, and supply a "bank" headline that either misinterprets it, as in the examples above, or comments wryly on it. | H |
| 1072 | The Tile Invitational | Come up with a 5-, 6-, or 7-letter term by scrambling any of the provided seven-letter ScrabbleGram sets, and define it. | H |
| 1071 | A pair of threes | Choose two or three entities represented by a single three-letter combination at bit.ly/3letterabs and say how they are alike or different. | P H |
| 1070 | Colt following -- our grandfoals contest | Breed" any two of the foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect the parents' names. | H |
| 1069 | It's a small, small world | Write a humorous poem of no more than eight lines -- it doesn't have to rhyme -- using only the top 1,000 words on Wiktionary.org's list of the most common among 20 million words found in movie and TV scripts. | 2 |
| 1067 | A(t)tribute to your wit | Alter a well-known quote slightly and attribute it to someone else. | W H H H 4 |
| 1066 | It's mating season | Breed" any two from the provided list of 100 of the 3-year-old racehorses nominated for this year's Triple Crown and name the foal to reflect both names. | H H |
| 1065 | The ands have it | Slightly alter ANY well-known phrase in the form "A-and-B" -- it doesn't have to be Latinate/Anglo-Saxon -- and define it. | S H H H |
| 1062 | Scanning the headlines | Write a rhyming poem about something currently in the news. | H H |
| 1061 | Less taste, more fill-in | Give us a novel clue for any word or phrase in which the remaining letters in the provided crossword puzzle fit, across or down. | H H |
| 1060 | Picture this | Write a caption, or captions, for one or more of the provided cartoons. | H |
| 1058 | Eastwood Ho | Create a good-bad-ugly progression. | H |
| 1057 | Sportin' lie | Give us some fake sports trivia. | P |
| 1056 | Weather or nuts | Coin a term relating to the weather, climate, etc. -- either literal or figurative -- and define it. | H |
| 1055 | Oh, K! | This week, to commemorate both Kevin Dopart and his 1K ink blots: Change a word, phrase or name by adding one or more K's, and define your new term. | H H |
| 1054 | Dead letters | Write a short, humorous poem commemorating someone (or maybe even something) who died in 2013. | H H H 4 |
| 1053 | Questionable journalism | Quote an actual sentence, from The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com, or another print or online publication dated between Dec. 26 and Jan. 6, and follow it with a question that the sentence might answer. | P |
| 1052 | Clue us in | Come up with up to 25 creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms that appear in the provided grid. | H |
| 1050 | Just redo it | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 1000 through Week 1046. | H H 4 |
| 1047 | Bank shots | Quote a headline appearing in The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com or another publication, print or online, dated Nov. 14 to Nov. 25, and supply a humorous "bank" headline that either misinterprets it or comments wryly on it. | H |
| 1046 | Derive us crazy | Offer a bogus but funny explanation of how a particular expression originated. | M H |
| 1045 | Songs for the asking | Take a sentence, phrase or title from a song and provide a funny question it might answer. | H |
| 1044 | Play it safe | Come up with a comically safety-conscious rule for the workplace or elsewhere. | P |
| 1043 | Rechanneling celebrity | Describe a TV reality show featuring a celebrity pursuing some unlikely endeavor. | P |
| 1042 | Tour de Fours X: Go SANE | Create a new word or two-word term containing the letter block S-A-N-E -- in any order, but consecutively, and define it. | H |
| 1041 | What have you got to lose? | Answer a question, real or rhetorical, that appears in a song. | H H |
| 1040 | IRS my case | Schedule A: Suggest a novel way for the government to determine taxes. Schedule B: Suggest a deduction that you'd like to take, or that some real or fictional person past or present might like to take. Schedule C: Suggest a cause you'd rather check off $3 for. |
P |
| 1039 | Shookespeare | Combine any of the words in Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, in any order, to create a humorous sentence or longer passage. | M |
| 1036 | Just for liffs | Use a real place name, from anywhere in the world, as a new term. | H H |
| 1034 | What's to like? | Supply an original joke of the form "I like my [your choice] the way I like my [something else of your choice]: [some clever, funny parallel]. | H |
| 1033 | LimeriXicon | Supply a humorous limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "fa-". | H H |
| 1032 | Hid stuff | Explain the symbolism "obviously" evident in any well-known site, artwork, etc., in 75 words or fewer. | H |
| 1030 | The cinquain feeling | Write a clever cinquain. The five-line form is straightforward: first line, two syllables; second line, four syllables; third line, six; fourth line, eight; fifth line, two. | W P H |
| 1029 | Ditty Harry | Write a descriptive theme song for a well-known movie, set to a well-known tune. | H |
| 1028 | Joint Legislation | Combine the names of two or more of the First Congress senators and/or representatives to create "joint legislation". | 2 |
| 1027 | Built for two | Give humorous related names for any pair of features in a given building, organization, etc. | P H H |
| 1025 | In so many words | Create an original backronym for a name or other term, especially one that's been in the news lately. | H H |
| 1024 | Gorey thoughts | Send us some edgy rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. The pairs are AB, CD, EF, GH, IJ, KL, MN, OP, QR, ST, UV, WX, and YZ. | P H H |
| 1023 | Hai there, Martians! | Write one or more humorous haiku that will greet the Martians or share a little nugget of what life is like on Earth. | P M H H |
| 1022 | What's the diff? | Explain how any two of the provided items are alike or different. | P H |
| 1021 | 'Gram theft | Come up with a term by scrambling any of the letters sets in the provided list, and define it. | H H H |
| 1020 | Colt following | Breed any two of this week's winning foals and name the grandfoal. | H H H 2 |
| 1017 | Vowel play | Write a "univocalic" newspaper headline -- one that uses only one vowel throughout. | W P H |
| 1014 | Join now | Combine the beginning and end, or the beginnings and ends, of any two words in single Washington Post story or ad published March 21 to April 1 into a new word or two-word phrase, and define the result. | P |
| 1012 | The news at 5 | Write a limerick about a recent news event. | H H |
| 1010 | Picture this | Write a caption for any of the five provided cartoons. | H |
| 1007 | Clue us in | Come up with creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | H |
| 1005 | Send us the bill | Name a piece of legislation "cosponsored" by two or more of the 98 new House and Senate members provided. | P |
| 1004 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem about anyone who died in 2012. | W H H 2 |
| 1001 | Make us ROFL | Give us a funny, original acronym. | H |
| 999 | Drectrospective | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 946 through Week 995, except for Week 948. | L H 2 |
| 995 | Ask backwards | We give you the "answers" and you supply jokes in the form of a question. | H H 2 |
| 993 | Versus, verses | Write a short "rap battle" between any two characters, real or fictional. | H |
| 990 | Indecent relations | Pair two people, real or fictional, who have the same last name; say how they're alike or different, or something they might do (even in fantasy), as a pair. | P P |
| 984 | Another brilliant contest | Write something whose words begin with consecutive letters of the alphabet. | P |
| 983 | Limerixicon IX | Supply a humorous limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters "eq-" through "ez-". | T P L H |
| 982 | The parody line | Set your own, humorous words to the tune of a well-known song--except that you must preserve one of the original lines. | W H H H |
| 978 | A reason to rhyme the news | Write a short verse about something that's been in the news recently. | W H H |
| 977 | Lost in Translation 2.0 | Translate a line of text from English into another language using Google Translate; then copy that result and translate it back into English. You may also make intermediate steps into one or more other languages. | P |
| 974 | Eat our dust! | Write a limerick humorously describing a book, play, movie, or TV show. | L H |
| 970 | Couple it | Take a line from any well-known poem and pair it with your own second line to make a humorous couplet. | H H 2 |
| 969 | Colt following | Breed any two "foals" in today's results, and name the grandfoal. | H |
| 967 | Overlap dance II | Create a phrase that overlaps two terms, each of two words or more, and describe the result. | H H H |
| 965 | Foaling around | Breed any two of the horses in this year's Triple Crown races and name their foal. | H |
| 964 | The Grossery Bag? | Suggest a design and/or slogan to go on the side of the ardently desired Style Invitational Loser Bag. | 2 |
| 963 | The overlap dance | Send us a Before & After "person" whose name combines two people's names, real or fictional (okay, you can use animals' names, too), and describe the person in a funny way. | H 4 |
| 961 | The end of our rhops | Write a funny passage or headline whose words all have the same number of letters. | L |
| 959 | Out of network | Move a current or former TV program (or type of programming) to a different network and explain what would change. | H |
| 957 | Fearful Symmetry | Write a clever passage whose successive words are one letter longer until the middle of the passage, and then become one letter shorter. | H H 4 |
| 953 | Clue us in | Come up with creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms in the crossword puzzle that's already run in The Post. | H H |
| 952 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2011. | H H |
| 951 | Say that again | Double a word, or use a word and its homophone, to make a phrase, and define it. | P H |
| 950 | Of all the nerve! | Give us a humorous example of hypothetical chutzpah. | W H |
| 949 | Analogies | Give us an analogy using "a is to b as x is to y." | H |
| 948 | Look back in Inker | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 891 through 945 (except for Week 896, which was the same contest for the previous year). | H |
| 947 | Tour de Fours VIII: Neologisms | Come up with a new word or two-word term that includes the letter block N-O-E-L, in any order but with no other letters between them, and define it. | H |
| 941 | They don't say! | Give us a quote that a particular person, present or past, real or fictional, sooo wouldn't have said. | H |
| 938 | Free and Lear | Write a limerick using the first two lines of any of Edward Lear's 115 limericks plus your own remaining three lines. | P H |
| 935 | The 400 blows | Write a humorous poem--choose your form--about the Virginia earthquake, Hurricane Irene or another well-known natural event. | H 2 |
| 933 | Stories that count (to 56) | Write a humorous story in exactly 56 words. | P 3 |
| 930 | We WANT stupid complaints! | Complain comically unreasonably about some innocuous thing appearing in the print Post or on washingtonpost.com over the next week or the previous few days. | H |
| 929 | Now sit right back ... | Write a funny song introducing a TV show, past or present. | W P H |
| 928 | Play feature | Use the title of a movie as the answer to a riddle or other question. | H |
| 922 | A Banner Week | Write entirely new, humorous lyrics to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner”; they can be on any subject. | H |
| 921 | Give Us Willies | Write an original Little Willie poem, perhaps reflecting our current era. This is a venerable four-line genre in which Master W. does some nasty thing and doesn't tend to learn to be a Good Boy by poem's end. | H H |
| 918 | Colt Following | Breed any two "foals" in today's results, or one foal with one of the real horse names used in today's entries--and name the "grandfoal." The name may not exceed 18 characters, including spaces, and your entry shouldn't remotely duplicate any of today's results. | H |
| 914 | Foaling around | Breed any two of 100 of the almost 400 horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown races, and name the foal. | H |
| 912 | Pair-a-phrase | Lift a word that appears inside a longer word; pair it with the original word to create a phrase; and define it. | H |
| 908 | Recast away | Fire an actor or actress from a movie or TV show, past or present, and offer a replacement for the role. | H |
| 904 | We move on back | Move the first letter in a word or name to the end of that word and define the resulting word. | P |
| 903 | Bill us now | Combine the names of two or more members of Congress as co-sponsors of a bill. | M H H |
| 902 | What's the good news? | Take any sentence, or substantive part of a sentence, or a headline from an article or ad in The Washington Post or washingtonpost.com from Jan. 7 to Jan. 18 and make it sound upbeat (or not so bad). | H H |
| 901 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2010. | M H |
| 899 | Clue us in | Send us funny, clever clues for any of the words already in this grid. | H H H |
| 897 | Catch their drift | Take any sentence from an article or ad in The Washington Post or washingtonpost.com from Dec. 3 to Dec. 13 and translate it into "plain English. | H H H H |
| 892 | Get a move on | Change the location of something for humorous effect. Provide an explanation if you wish. | H |
| 891 | Mirror, Mirror | Write a word-palindrome sentence, in which the first and last words are the same; the second and next-to-last, etc. | H |
| 890 | Double-teaming | Combine the names of any two pro sports teams -- even from different sports -- and describe the result. | 2 |
| 888 | It's the eponymy, stupid | Coin a word or expression based on the name of a well-known person, define it, and perhaps use it in a sentence | H H |
| 887 | Plus-Fours | Write a limerick whose third or fourth line is one of those listed above. | L H H H |
| 886 | Look both ways | Give us a new term that's a palindrome and define it. | H H |
| 882 | Limerixicon VII | Supply a humorous limerick prominently featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters dr-. | H H |
| 877 | Quipped from the headlines | Write a rhyming couplet about some matter in the news. | 3 |