| WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| 532 | Short Pans | Come up with a terse review (four words or fewer) of any work of art. | H |
| 499 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Mate any two of the horses qualifying for this year's Triple Crown and tell us the name of their foal. Maximum 18 characters, including spaces. | H |
| 400 | Life Is Snort | Write a "Life is Short" entry in under 100 words, in the voice of a celebrity, living or dead. | 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 |
| 344 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Envision the mating of any two of the 387 horses qualifying for this year's Triple Crown, and propose a name for their foal. The foal's name must be contained in 18 or fewer letters and spaces. | W |
| 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 H H |
| 326 | COMIC RELIEF | Look at today's comics pages, select one panel and one panel only from any comic strip, and rewrite the dialogue. | R |
| 323 | THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD INVITATIONAL | Come up with not-quite-ready inventions, past or present. | H |
| 318 | 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. | 5 |
| 314 | IT'S THE LIST YOU CAN DO | Start with the name of a famous person, living or dead, real or fictional, either a full name or partial name. Progress through a series of other names or phrases. Each name or phrase must be related to the prior item either by being a homophone or a definition. Eventually, arrive at a name or a phrase that is an appropriate pairing with the original name. | H H |
| 311 | A JERRY-BUILT CONTEST | Find cleverly disguised threats to public morality or hallowed American values that may be secretly lurking out there in our culture. | H 2 |
| 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 2 |
| 294 | PRODUCT LIARBILITY | Take the name of any commercial product and redefine it. | H |
| 291 | HYPHEN THE TERRIBLE | Take any story in today's paper, find a word that breaks with a hyphen at the end of a line, and combine it with the second half of different hyphenated word in the same story. Then supply a definition for the new hybrid word. | 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 |
| 280 | EXPRESSING IT NICELY | Come up with colorful expressions for any of the six provided activities, to make them sound a little less tawdry. | 3 |
| 277 | LIFE IN THE BLURBS | Come up a simple plot summary to help attract the modern audience to any classic work of fiction. It must be literally true and defensible. | H |
| 272 | PICTURE THIS | What is happening in these cartoons? | H H |
| 270 | PALINODE--HAVE PUN, WILL TRAVEL | Write a "palinode", retracting something said in an earlier poem. Your poem must be four lines long and contain at least one rhyme. | H |
| 268 | WHAT KIND OF FOAL AM I? | Take the names of this year's Triple Crown nominees, mate any two of them, a propose a name for the foal. The foal's name must be contained in 18 characters, including spaces. | H |
| 266 | DEFINITELY WEIRD | Take any word from the dictionary and redefine it. | H H |
| 265 | A SPORK OF GENIUS | Come up with new products like the spork: combinations of two existing products that work together in some special way. Name the device and explain its function. | W H |
| 261 | WHAT IF YOU GIVE IT A TRY II | Alter some crucial moment in history, and then tell us the likely outcome. | H |
| 259 | SPARE EXCHANGE, BUDDY? | Take any phone number of any business or government office in the Washington area, translate the first two digits into their constituent letters and propose any appropriate one-word exchange. | H 1 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 191 | GOING THROUGH A PHRASE | Come up with phrase for an American English phrasebook that would provide no practical help whatsoever to a foreigner trying to get along in the United States. | H |