| WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1619 | A So-So Contest | Give us jokes that are so [something] that [something]. | H H |
| 1618 | Week 100! | ...which we celebrate with a centennial contest | H H |
| 1614 | The Tile Invitational XI | Make up new words with the letters we give you | H H H |
| 1613 | What's the Worst That Could Happen? | After the election, we mean. And be funny about it. | T |
| 1611 | Ask Backwards XLIII | We give you the 'answers'; you tell us the questions. | H |
| 1609 | Saved! | Tell us funny ways to be thrifty in these parlous times | W |
| 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 2 |
| 1605 | Get Thee to a Punnery | Change a quote slightly and credit it to someone else. | W H H H |
| 1602 | We Got Game | Tell us some funny ways to 'improve' a sport. | H |
| 1601 | Stop, Hey, What's That Sound? | Tell us what these noise-words mean. | M H H |
| 1599 | Picture This | It's our caption contest. | H H H H |
| 1598 | Same Difference | We give you a random list of things, and you tell us how any two are alike or different. | T H H |
| 1596 | History for the tl;dr Crowd | Sum up an event for the 21st-century reader in a rhyming couplet. | 3 |
| 1594 | So Good! So Bad! So Ugly! | We bring back a classic contest | T |
| 1592 | It's Parody Time | Write a funny song about ... anything you like! | T |
| 1588 | Colt Fusion | Because of our munificense and guilt, you get a full hundred foal names to 'breed' for 'grandfoals' | H H H |
| 1587 | The Trite Stuff | Replace some well-worn phrases with better ones. | T |
| 1586 | Pun for the Roses | Our annual crazy-popular horse 'breeding' wordplay contest. | H H H H H 3 |
| 1584 | Seeds of Change | Make an anagram of a name-brand product. | H H |
| 1582 | You're Workin' on a Chain, Gang | A classic connection game. | T H |
| 1581 | SOTU-Speak | Use words from Biden's State of the Union speech to write some lines for another oration. | M |
| 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 | T H |
| 1578 | The Pepys Show | Give us a diary entry from anyone in history. | M |
| 1577 | Why the #$%#$% Not? | The Washington Post is looking for some bold ideas -- Let's show it some! | H |
| 1576 | Praise the Lurid! | Give us clickbait headlines for mundane stories. | H H 4 |
| 1575 | The Ughscars and the Phewlitzers | Give us an idea for a bad book or movie. | M H H |
| 1574 | Oh, Grandpa, Stop! | Turn a 'dad joke' into a less-tame 'grandpa joke' | M 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. | M |
| 1572 | S Is for Smartass | Presenting the Devil's Alphabet Soup | M |
| 1570 | The Invitational, Week 52: Replaying Around -- The 2023 retrospective, Part II | Enter or reenter our Week 26-50. | H |
| 1569 | Look Back in Inker -- Our 2023 retrospective, Part 1 | Enter or reenter our Week 1-25 contests. | H H |
| 1567 | Picture This | A caption contest | H |
| 1565 | Oh, For Namesakes! | Compare two people who share part of a name. | T |
| 1563 | The Perfect(ly Ridiculous) Gift | Offer up some products for people-who-have-everything catalogs. | W H H H |
| 1561 | Let It Be a Lesson to Us | Tell us some things to be learned from Costco, the bathroom, TV shows, etc. | M |
| 1559 | As the Word Turns | 'Discover' new words by snaking through this random grid | H |
| 1557 | Tailgating On the Highway | Pair a Dylan line with your own rhyming one | M |
| 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 |
| 1553 | Doody and Muldoon | Write a Muldoon, a four-line poem that features at least two body parts and a place name, and at least one rhyme. | M |
| 1552 | A Mirthday Party | Link two people who share a birthday | M |
| 1551 | Ask Backwards XLII | We give the answers. You give the questions. | H |
| 1549 | The Tile Invitational X | It's our 10th running of this coin-a-word game. | H H 4 |
| 1548 | Poll-ish Jokes | Come up with a ridiculous reader poll. | H H 3 |
| 1547 | Alphabettering | Write a funny sentence containing all 26 letters. | H |
| 1545 | Their Base Behavior | Tell humorously how some business or organization could alter its product or message to appeal to Trump’s cult. | H |
| 1543 | F Things Up | Neologisms by adding Fs or changing letters to F | T H H H |
| 1542 | Your (B)ad Here | Tweak an ad slogan to use it for another product | L H H H H 3 |
| 1541 | Wrong enough for ya? | Fake facts about the weather | H H |
| 1540 | Picture This | It's caption contest time, with eight motley pictures to choose from. | H H H 3 |
| 1538 | Rhymes Against Humanity | Write a four-line poem about people in the news, using either of two poetic forms | T |
| 1536 | Colt Following | Now that we have the winner and punners-up of our venerable foal-name contest, it's time for 'grandfoals'. | H H H 4 |
| 1534 | Pun for the Roses | Our renowned horse name 'breeding' contest returns! | 2 |
| 1533 | The Very Last 'Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions' | Tell us a stupid question followed by a funny retort. | T |
| 1531 | The Worst New Contest Ever | Describe something that would be worse than a second Trump presidency | H H |
| 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 | T H H |
| 1518 | The final Post edition | Some all-time favorite entries | 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 |
| 1511 | The inside word--our 'air quote' contest | Highlight part of a word, name or short phrase in “air quotes” to give the word a new meaning or description. | H 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 |
| 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. | M |
| 1502 | It's Hi-time for Limerixicon XIX | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any word, name or term beginning with “hi-. | M |
| 1500 | These go to 15 | Make up a word or phrase whose Scrabble letter values add up to exactly 15 (no blanks!) and define it. | M H H |
| 1499 | Picture This, a cartoon caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | H |
| 1498 | V for Verses -- misuse a word in a poem | Write a short (eight lines or fewer), humorous poem that uses one or more words in other than their actual meanings. | M H |
| 1497 | The if-word | Give us a "what if" scenario and its humorous result | L H |
| 1493 | Frankly speaking with feghoots | Tell a feghoot -- a mini-story (a ridiculous one is fine) that ends in a groaner pun on a familiar expression, title, line from a song, etc. | T |
| 1492 | Set us right -- conservative humor | Send us conservative-leaning humor in a Q&A joke format or a knock-knock joke. | H 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 |
| 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. | M H |
| 1486 | No can do: Signs of incompetence | Give us a clue that someone was incompetent in a given field. | T 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. | T H 2 |
| 1484 | Two ways about it | What's something (printable) you could say in two -- or more -- of the provided situations. | T |
| 1483 | Pun for the Roses -- our famous foal-'breeding' contest | Breed" any two of the provided names and name the "foal". As in actual thoroughbred racing, a name may not exceed 18 characters including spaces. | 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 H |
| 1481 | Mess with our heads | Reinterpret some actual headline (or a major part of it), from any publication, print or online. | T H |
| 1480 | Oh, you don't really mean that | Define" inaccurately and humorously any of the provided words. | 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. | T |
| 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. | M H |
| 1473 | Sign right here | Write a funny message for the overhead highway sign. | M |
| 1472 | Phony money -- tell us fake financial trivia | Tell us some fake trivia about money or the financial system. | H |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 1469 | Post Mortems 2021, our obit poems | Write a poem of no longer than eight lines (plus an optional title) about someone who died in 2021. | H |
| 1466 | Be invitationally correct | Give us a funny "correction" that a newspaper or magazine might offer. | H H |
| 1465 | Put your '22 cents in for our annual pre-timeline | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2022. | L |
| 1464 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | M |
| 1463 | Fork over some (new) Spoonerisms | Write and original Q-A joke featuring a spoonerism. | H H |
| 1461 | It's the eponymy, stupid | Create an eponym -- a word based on the name of a well-known person -- define it, and perhaps use it in a humorous sentence. | M H |
| 1460 | These new words are on fleek | From the provided list, write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer. | T |
| 1459 | And we quote: 'It's Parody Time' | Write humorous first-person lyrics for a song "by" some particular person. | T |
| 1458 | Do adjust your set: TV anagrams+ | Use all the letters of any TV show (including streamed ones), past or present, to create new show; or it can be an episode of the original. | M |
| 1457 | What is Ask Backwards XL? | You are on "Jeopardy!"; various answers are provided. You provide the questions. | H |
| 1456 | The hunting of the snark | Ask an insulting rhetorical question in the form (or a variation) of "Is that your _______ or _______? | H H |
| 1455 | Good idea! Or not. | Cite a "good idea' and, with a small change of wording, a "bad idea". | T H |
| 1454 | Punku 3 -- haiku with a pun | Create a haiku containing a pun or similar wordplay. | T M 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. | H |
| 1451 | Could have said it worse ourselves | Give us a humorously bad "first draft" of a famous line from history, literature or entertainment. | T M H |
| 1449 | Let's have a get-together | Begin with a real name; append to it a word, name or expression so that they overlap; and finally define or "quote" the resulting phrase or name. | H |
| 1448 | Hear, hear -- it's Limerixicon XVIII | Supply a humerous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any word, name or term beginning with "he-". | 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 |
| 1444 | It's a whole new all-game | Slightly change the name of a sport, sports event or similar pastime to create a new one, and briefly describe it. | M H H |
| 1443 | The letters of the laws | Propose some law -- it doesn't have to be a serious issue -- and give it a name and an acronym, | H |
| 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 |
| 1441 | \'Rick rolling: songs as limericks | Sum up or otherwise reflect a well-known song as a limerick. | H |
| 1436 | Haven't seen it: Fun with movie titles | Misinterpret a movie title in a supposed plot description. | H |
| 1434 | Go ahead, mate my bay: Grandfoals | Breed" any two of this week's inking foal names and name the "grandfoal. | H |
| 1432 | Turn tale and run with it | Offer a new angle on a folk tale, nursery rhyme, children's song, etc., with a short poem, mini-story (under 100 words) or song parody. | M |
| 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 |
| 1430 | Back to racing speed with the 'foals' | Breed" any two of the provided names of the 100 horses nominated for the 2021 Triple Crown races and name the "foal" to humorously play off both parents' names. | T |
| 1429 | Forsoothsayers | Quote a line or so from any Shakespeare work, and exemplify it with a contemporary quote, real or imagined. | T M |
| 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 H |
| 1427 | Rocky of ages, or Badenov for you? | State any historical event -- right up to 2021 -- in the provided "A, or B" format. | H H H |
| 1426 | Mess with our (or others') heads | Reinterpret an actual headline (or a major part of it) by adding a bank head, or subtitle. | M |
| 1424 | We Bee back -- a neologism contest | From any of the 30 provided Spelling Bee letter sets, coin a new term or phrase and describe it humorously. You must use the first letter in the set (anywhere in the word) plus any or all of the others, as often as you like. | H H |
| 1423 | Muddled heads: Headline anagrams | Choose a headline (or part of a headline) in any print or online publication dated Feb. 11-22 and rearrange all its letters into an anagram. | T |
| 1420 | Singing on the job -- a parody contest | Write a humorous "work song" for any job or profession. Set it to any well-known tune. | T M |
| 1419 | Send us the bill -- 'joint legislation' | Combine two or more names from the provided list of the new members of Congress to “co-sponsor” a bill based on their combined last names, and state its purpose. | M |
| 1416 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1388 through 1412. | H H |
| 1415 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1360 through 1387, except for Weeks 1361-1363. | H H |
| 1414 | Divining comedy: 2021 predictions | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2021. | M |
| 1411 | Back end of a Bulwer | Write a humorously awful final sentence or two to an imaginary novel. | T H H 3 |
| 1410 | Legends of the fall -- more fictoids | Tell us some bogus trivia about autumn, or things that happen (or have happened) in autumn. | H |
| 1409 | Skip a groove: Drop a letter or more from a song title | Drop one or more letters from somewhere in the middle of a song title and describe the new song, and/or quote some lyrics from it. | M |
| 1407 | Your ad space (or space ad) here | Come up with an idea for promoting some commercial product or service (a) in space, (b) in a prison, (c) at a kindergarten, (d) by a football team or (e) in the White House. | 4 |
| 1406 | The news could be verse | Write a poem based on a recent news article, in which the lines' first letters spell out the title or subject of the poem. | M |
| 1405 | Okay, once more around the track | Breed" any two of the provided foal names that got ink in Week 1400 and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names. | H H |
| 1404 | Ask Backwards XXXIX | The answers are provided. You supply the questions. | H H |
| 1402 | The fourteeners--a neologism contest | Make up a word whose Scrabble letter values add up to exactly 14 (no blanks!), and define it. | 3 |
| 1401 | How hai? A joke-haiku contest | Write a joke (roughly) in the "It's so xxx" genre as a haiku. | M H |
| 1400 | Back on track with our classic 'foal' contest | Breed" any two of the provided names of the 100 horses nominated for the 2020 Triple Crown races and name the "foal" to humorously reflect the parents' names. | H |
| 1394 | Two movies, one line | Cite a real or coined line, or give a description, that could work for two different movies, plays or TV shows. | H |
| 1393 | Second chance (acned conches?) for anagrams | Describe any of the provided anagram businesses, or offer its slogan. | H |
| 1391 | No-covid zone -- a neologism contest | Coin a new word or phrase that lacks C, O, V, I and D and describe it. | T H |
| 1390 | 'Same difference' for a new time | Explain how any two of the items in the provided list are similar, different or otherwise linked. | H |
| 1389 | TankaWanka 4: Haiku plus tu | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. | T H |
| 1387 | Movie clips -- drop letters from the middle of a title | Delete one or more letters (they must be consecutive) from the middle of a movie title, and describe the resulting new movie. | H H |
| 1386 | Colt following: It's the grandfoals! | Breed" any two of the 70 foal names that got ink this week and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names. | T |
| 1385 | Don't you want to see new places? | Change any place name slightly and describe the new place. | T H |
| 1384 | Of course there are stupid questions! | Give us stupid questions, especially ones reflecting Our Current Situation. | H H |
| 1383 | Questionable Journalism | Choose any sentence (not a headline) in an article or ad in The Washington Post or another publication dated May 7 through May 18, and write a question it might humorously answer. | 4 |
| 1382 | For us, it's still Post Time | Breed" any two names from the provided list of 100 of the 145 previous Kentucky Derby winners, from 1875 to 2019, and name the foal to humorously reflect the parents' names. | H H |
| 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. | M |
| 1380 | Both sides now | Delete one or more letters (in a row) from a word or brief phrase to find another word, and define it. | H H |
| 1378 | It's (emergency) Parody Time | Write a song about life in the Age of Corona, set to a familiar tune (or even one of your own, if you perform it on video). | T M |
| 1377 | Make your own March Madness | Think of some sport, game, art project or other activity that you can conjure up using various items that you might find around the house. | T H |
| 1376 | Get thee to a funnery | Add a character (or more) to a Shakespeare play and supply some resulting dialogue. | M |
| 1374 | Versus' verses in a rap battle | Write a mini-"rap" between any two characters, real or fictional, as in the provided ERB example. | T |
| 1371 | The Tile Invitational VII | Create a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or phrase) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | 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. | M |
| 1368 | Picture This -- cartoon captions | Supply a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | H |
| 1367 | Pick me up at work, okay? | Give a pickup line from someone in a particular profession, or from a particular person or fictional character. | H |
| 1365 | Dead Letters, our obit poem contest | Write a poem of eight lines or fewer (plus an optional title) about someone who died in 2019. | T |
| 1364 | Clue us in | Supply clever, funny clues for as many as 25 of the words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | W |
| 1363 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1334 through Week 1359. | H |
| 1362 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1307 through 1333, except for Weeks 1309-1311. | H H H |
| 1361 | 2020 vision -- the year in preview | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2020. | T H |
| 1360 | The lyin' in winter: Seasonal fictoids | Give us some untrue trivia about winter or things that occur in winter. | H H H |
| 1359 | Back up in the air (quotes) | Write a sentence or two and highlight an "air quote" that spans two or more words (and two sentences if you like). | H |
| 1358 | What to your wondering eyes will appear? | Write a humorous passage -- a "quote", an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything -- using only words that appear in "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (a.k.a "The Night Before Christmas"). | T |
| 1356 | Ask Backwards 38 | Sixteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. | H |
| 1355 | The inside word | Highlight part of a word, name or short phrase in "air quotes" to give the word a new meaning or description. | H |
| 1353 | What's playing at the retroplex | Change a movie title to its "opposite" by reversing one or more words; then describe the new movie. | H H H |
| 1352 | Hee-rotica -- Steamy prose for unsteamy life | Write a short steamy scene (100 words would be considered long) about a non-steamy event. | L |
| 1350 | Here's inspo for new-word poems | Write a poem of eight lines or fewer featuring one or more of these recent additions to m-w.com. | H |
| 1347 | Reologisms | Write a clever, funny definition for any of the provided Loser-concocted words and phrases, and/or show they'd be used. | H |
| 1346 | AZ if -- balancing acts | Think of a new word or two-word phrase that begins and ends -- either way -- with one of the provided "alphabetically balanced" pairs. | H H |
| 1345 | The confaketionary -- food fictoids | Tell us some comically false "fact" about food, drink or dining. | T |
| 1344 | Well, that's just great -- It’s Limerixicon XVI | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "gr-". | T |
| 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. | T |
| 1340 | Not-ables -- slightly alter a famous name | Slightly alter the name (make sure the original is obvious) of a famous personage -- past or present, real or fictional -- and describe the resulting nonpersonage, or offer a quote from that person, or both. | T H |
| 1338 | Picture This -- cartoon captions | Supply a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | H |
| 1337 | Lidder me this: anagram riddles | Write a Q&A joke (or an A followed by a Q, if you're into "Jeopardy!") in which the punchline contains an anagram or one or more relevant words or names. | H |
| 1336 | Two ways about it | What's something (printable) you could say in two -- or more -- of the provided situations. | H H |
| 1333 | Check your (homo)phones | Invent a homophone--a word that sounds the same as an existing word but is spelled differently--and define it. | H |
| 1330 | Spinoff x Time Is Now = Grandfoals Week! | Breed" any two of the 65 foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names. | H |
| 1326 | Foaling around | Breed" any two names from the provided list of 100 horses and name the foal to reflect both names. | H |
| 1325 | Stand up and jeer | Give us some original standup jokes that would have been good at this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner. | H |
| 1320 | Questionable journalism | Find any sentence (or a substantive part of a sentence) that appears in the Post or another publication, in print or online, dated Feb. 21-March 4, and pair it with a question it might answer. | H H |
| 1319 | The Tile Invitational VI | Create a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or phrase) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | H H |
| 1317 | Punku 2: Haiku with puns | Create a haiku containing a pun or similar wordplay. | T M H |
| 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. | H H |
| 1311 | Nextra! Nextra! The year in preview | Name some humorous event to happen in 2019. | M H |
| 1310 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1282 through Week 1306. | T |
| 1309 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1255 through Week 1281. | H |
| 1308 | Picture this -- or these | This week you have two choices: (1) Write a caption for one or more of these pictures, or (2) explain what is wrong with the picture. You might also combine two pictures into one -- or all four into one. | H |
| 1307 | One-for-one for all | Replace one letter in an existing word, name or multi-word phrase with one different letter (in the same place in the word) and define or describe the result. | H H |
| 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 |
| 1305 | Hits and Googles | Find us either a Googlenope -- a phrase in quotation marks that generates no previous hits -- or a Googleyup, a phrase that surprisingly does have hits. | H |
| 1304 | All the muse that's fit to print | Present a "what if" scenario and explain its effect. | H |
| 1303 | Neologisms to di- for | Replace a digraph in an existing word or phrase with another digraph to make a new term. | M |
| 1302 | Ask Backwards 37 | Fifteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. Do one or more, up to a total of 25 A&Q's. | H |
| 1299 | OK, hivemind! A contest with new Scrabble words | Choose any two of the words in the provided list as the beginning and end of a humorous word chain of 6 to 14 words or phrases. | M H |
| 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 H H H |
| 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. | T |
| 1294 | As the word turns | “Discover” a word or multiword term that consists of adjacent letters — in any direction or several directions — in the provided grid, and provide a humorous definition. | L |
| 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-". | T |
| 1291 | Film flam -- movie anagrams | Rearrange the letters of a title of a movie or play to make a new title, then describe the new work. | T 2 |
| 1290 | Bobbing for Witte words | Come up with both an object/situation and a neologism for it. | H H H H 3 |
| 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. | H H H |
| 1287 | It's parody time: Oldies for newsies | Write some song lyrics about something in the news these days, set to a familiar tune. | M |
| 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. | H H |
| 1284 | Same difference | Explain how any two of the items in the provided list are similar, different or otherwise linked. | H 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. | T H |
| 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. | T H |
| 1278 | Colt following: The 'grandfoals' | Breed" any two of the 68 foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names, in the style of today's inking entries. | H H |
| 1277 | Come into Beeing with neologisms | From any of the 15 provided Spelling Bee letter sets, coin a new term of one or two words and define it humorously. You may also supply an especially clever or funny definition of a real term. | T M 4 |
| 1275 | That is the question | Choose a line from Shakespeare (or a significant part of a line) and pair it with a question that the line could humorously answer. | T |
| 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. | H H |
| 1273 | Restocking the Cabinet | Explain why a particular person -- or thing -- ought to fill a Cabinet post or other U.S. government position. | H |
| 1272 | The hex files: creative curses | Come up with a creative curse. | M H H H |
| 1271 | Yodel Doyle's praises with a D-O-Y-L-E neologism | Coin a new word or phrase that contains the letters D, O, Y, L and E. | H H |
| 1265 | Parody for the course | Write a song relating to a class or course of instruction, or to school in general. | M |
| 1261 | Post mortems -- our annual obit poem contest | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2017. | M |
| 1260 | What lies (are) ahead for 2018 | Jokingly predict some news event to happen in 2018. | H |
| 1258 | The year in redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1230 through Week 1254. | M |
| 1257 | The year in redo, Part 1 | Enter (or re-enter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1203 through Week 1229, except for Weeks 1205 and 1206. | T H |
| 1256 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Provide a funny caption for any of the provided cartoons. | H H H |
| 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. | H |
| 1251 | Thanking outside the box | Tell us something to be thankful for. | T |
| 1250 | Poems of the year(s) | Write a humorous poem incorporating three or more terms from a particular year or era listed on Time Traveler. | H |
| 1249 | Ask Backwards 36 | Choose any of the 15 provided items and follow it with a question that it could humorously answer. | H H |
| 1248 | C'mon, fess up! | Send us a brief "confession" -- there will be categories for true and just-kidding. | T M |
| 1247 | Script tease | Offer a quote from a script whose title you've given a different plot. | H |
| 1239 | MASH 3 | Combine two movie titles and describe the result. | H H H |
| 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 2 |
| 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 H |
| 1230 | What in creation . . . ? | Supply a brief monologue or dialogue about a Creator's specifications or planning for some living being. | H |
| 1229 | Gorey bits from A to Z | Send us one of more edgy rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. | T H H |
| 1228 | That movie is SO about you | Name someone who was the "secret inspiration" for a certain movie. | T |
| 1227 | Celebrate ortho-diversity! | Name and describe a new life form -- and no letter in the term may be used twice. | M H H |
| 1226 | Colt following: The 'grandfoals' | Breed" any two of the 61 foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect both parents names. | H H |
| 1225 | The Ideas of March | Suggest a march for some group or field, along with one or more slogans. (You might also, or instead, comment on the march with some pertinent wordplay.) | M 4 |
| 1224 | We beg you to differ | Explain how any two (or more) items in the provided list are the same or different, or otherwise connected. | T H |
| 1223 | Post again out to mislead public! | Write a humorously sensationalistic, misleading headline on an otherwise mundane article or ad published in The Post or elsewhere from April 13 to April 24. | H |
| 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 H |
| 1221 | Who's kidding whom? | Take two people from history, past or present, and tell what their child would be like | 4 |
| 1220 | O pedantry, O pedantry | Give us some humorous pedantry. | T |
| 1217 | Mergers you wrote: Combine two businesses with puns | Give a clever name for a combination of two or more businesses. | W 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. | H H |
| 1215 | A so-so contest (How so-so is it?) | Write a humorous exaggeration in the form "x is so y that . . . | H |
| 1214 | The alternaugural address | Write a humorous passage — a “quote,” an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything — using only words that appear in Trump’s inaugural address. | T |
| 1213 | Punku | Write a haiku that incorporates a pun. | T |
| 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. | T |
| 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. | M |
| 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. | M H |
| 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. | M H H |
| 1204 | Well, at least . . . | Note some good news for the coming year to comfort -- or "comfort" -- those who are depressed about the change of presidential administration. | H |
| 1203 | You've got the powers | Tell us what you would do if you had one or more of the six magical powers provided. | T |
| 1202 | Don't be afraid of the dark | Write lyrics to a song that, in some way, express hope. | M |
| 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 2 |
| 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 H |
| 1199 | We want some bad choices | Offer one or more funny Questions for Terrible People, as shown. | W T |
| 1198 | Give it to us straight | Take any sentence from an article or ad in any publication dated Oct. 20 to Oct. 31 — or from an online article dated within that period — and translate it into “plain English". | T H |
| 1197 | Picture This -- It's a Bob Staake caption contest | Write a caption for any of the cartoons provided. | H |
| 1194 | Nyetymologies: fake word origins | Provide a humorously untrue explanation for the derivation of a word. | M |
| 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). | H |
| 1188 | Just short words, one more time | Explain some concept or philosophy entirely in words of one syllable. | M |
| 1187 | Just drop it, okay? | Drop the last letter from an existing word, phrase or name and define the result. | T M 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. | T |
| 1183 | C'mon, be honest with us | Write something in roughly the form "If X were more honest, (then) Y. | H |
| 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. | H |
| 1179 | Blasted alphabetical contests . . . | Coin a three-word phrase whose words begin with A, B and C -- in any order -- and describe it. | H |
| 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. | T |
| 1176 | Let 'er RIP: Write an obit line | Write a humorous line or two for someone's obituary -- either for a particular person (dead or not) or for a fictional or generic one. | T |
| 1175 | Good luck with 13 | Make up a word whose Scrabble letter values add up to exactly 13, and define it. | T H |
| 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. | M |
| 1173 | Tinker with the recipe | Slightly change the name of a food or brand of food (or something else in the food industry) and describe it, or write a slogan, jingle, etc. | H H |
| 1170 | Derby or not Derby | Breed" any two of the provided racehorses nominated for this year's Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont; and name the foal to reflect both names. | T H |
| 1169 | Be caustic by acrostic | Review or otherwise describe a movie, book, play or TV show (or Internet equivalent) with words whose first letters spell out the name of the work. | T |
| 1166 | Questionable journalism | Take a sentence (or most of a sentence) that appears in text (not a headline) in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com dated March 10-21 and make up a question that the sentence could answer | H |
| 1165 | B all you can B | Change a word, phrase or name by adding one or more B's, and/or by replacing one or more letters with B's, and define your new term. | T H H |
| 1164 | 'Wait Wait' for us | Compose a multiple-choice question about a Ridiculous but True fact a la the NPR show 'Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me.' | H H |
| 1163 | Put it in reverse | Spell a word, name or phrase backward and define the result in a way that relates to the original. | H H H H H |
| 1161 | Give us four Pinocchios | Tell us some false "facts" about politicians, present or past. | T |
| 1160 | A remeaning task | Redefine an existing word or two-word term beginning with P through Z. | H H |
| 1159 | It's all in the game | Come up with a funny/ridiculous board-type game and describe it. | T H |
| 1158 | What have we here? | Tell us what one or more of these objects really are. | T |
| 1157 | Clue us in -- a backward crossword | Supply clever, funny clues to up to 25 of the words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | M |
| 1155 | Vowel movement | Choose a title of a book, movie, play or TV show; drop all the vowels (including Y when it's used as a vowel); then add your choice of vowels -- as many as you like -- to create a new work; and describe it. | H H |
| 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. | H H |
| 1146 | Stick it to us with a magnet | Suggest a new Style Invitational honorable-mention magnet. | T |
| 1145 | A DICEy situation | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter block D-I-C-E. | H H |
| 1144 | Someone else's business | Name a real brand, along with something else it would be a better name for. | H |
| 1143 | Ask Backwards | Provided are 15 answers, separated by asterisks. You supply the questions. | W H |
| 1142 | Two-faced tweets | Combine two well-known names into a Twitter handle, and write a tweet (no more than 140 characters and spaces) that that portmanteau person might write. | H |
| 1140 | You're giving us a bad name | Cite a REAL brand name, past or present, note its original use, and then say what sort of product, organization, etc., that name would be bad for. | H |
| 1138 | Show us your touché | Offer an elegantly snide (and original) insult of anyone living or dead. | H H H |
| 1136 | Gaah! It's Limerixicon XII | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "ga-". | 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). | H H |
| 1134 | The 'Sty'le Invitational Red'ux' | Put quotation marks around part of a word, name or phrase and define the result. | H |
| 1132 | You and what army? Military fictoids | Give us some comically bogus trivia about the military, past or present, ours or theirs. | T |
| 1131 | One man's trash | Suggest a humorous way to reuse one or more of the items listed above -- or anything else advertised on RepurposedMaterialsinc.com. | T |
| 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. | T H H |
| 1128 | Drone for a loop | Give us some novel uses for a CICADA micro-drone, assuming that anyone can get one, and that it can have a micro-camera, micro-grips, etc. | T |
| 1126 | Picture this | Provide a humorous caption for any of the cartoons provided. | H H |
| 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. | M H |
| 1120 | Celebrating our differences | Each of the provided 17 items appeared in a different Style Invitational compare/contrast contest from 1996 to 2014. Explain how any two of them are alike or different or otherwise linked. | T H |
| 1119 | We want hue so bad | Invent a name for a color and describe it. | T |
| 1118 | Breed 'em and weep | Breed any two of the provided 100 racehorses nominated for this year's Triple Crown events and name the foal the reflect both names. | H |
| 1116 | Punning in place | Create a new term using only the letters in a place name. You don't have to use all the letters, but you can't use a letter more often than it appears in the word. | T |
| 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. | T |
| 1112 | Some SHARP words | Coin a word or short term that includes all the letters S, H, A, R, and P. | 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. | 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. | T H |
| 1106 | Show your resolve | Suggest a New Year's resolution that someone might make 100 or more years in the future. | H |
| 1102 | Let's get Sirius | Suggest a new radio channel and describe it. | T |
| 1100 | Pun and ink -- the feghoot | Contrive an elaborate scenario that ends in a novel groaner pun on a familiar expression, title, etc. | T |
| 1099 | Questionable journalism | Take a sentence (or most of a sentence) that appears in an article in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com dated Nov. 20 through Dec. 1 (in print, any article from those days' papers), and make up a question that the sentence could answer. | M |
| 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". | T H H |
| 1096 | Picture this | Write a humorous caption for any of the provided Bob Staake cartoons. | T 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 H H |
| 1092 | Are we having funds yet? | Suggest a humorous fundraising "challenge" for any organization. | H |
| 1091 | Good idea! or not. | Come up with a good idea and, through a small change in wording, a bad idea. | H |
| 1090 | Talk undirty to us | Write a humorous poem in any form (no more than eight lines) that includes one or more of the provided words; the word must make sense in the poem in its TRUE meaning. | H |
| 1089 | It's E-Z Find-a-Word -- your own! | 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 M |
| 1088 | Ask backwards with our answers, your questions | Supply the questions to as many of the 16 supplied answers as you like. | T H |
| 1087 | The core ridiculum | Come up with a comical class (any type of school) and provide a course catalog description. | T H |
| 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-". | M H |
| 1083 | Everybody get appy | Offer up an idea for either a humorously useful app or a humorously counterproductive one. | T T |
| 1082 | Band on the pun | Alter the name of a music group or performer slightly -- not necessarily by just one letter, but enough so it's obvious what the original is -- and describe it in some way. | 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 |
| 1079 | Little piddle riddle | Ask a question and answer it with a rhyme. | M |
| 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. | H H |
| 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"). | H H |
| 1076 | Dactyly fractyly | Send us some double dactyls that conform to Gene Weingarten's rules. | T |
| 1075 | Falsity is Job One | Send us some fictoids about cars and trucks and driving and stuff. | H |
| 1074 | Let's go parody-hopping | Describe a stage or movie musical in a parody of a song from a different musical. | T |
| 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. | T |
| 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. | P 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. | T |
| 1068 | An iffy proposition | Suggest some humorous action that you would take if you were in someone's position, more or less in the form "If I were _____ my first act would be _____. | T L |
| 1067 | A(t)tribute to your wit | Alter a well-known quote slightly and attribute it to someone else. | H |
| 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. | H |
| 1064 | HistoRebuffs | Alter some moment in history and tell us -- in no more than about 50 words -- the likely outcome. | P H |
| 1063 | Same difference | Take any two items from the provided list and explain how they're similar or different. | H H |
| 1062 | Scanning the headlines | Write a rhyming poem about something currently in the news. | M |
| 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 |
| 1060 | Picture this | Write a caption, or captions, for one or more of the provided cartoons. | M H |
| 1059 | With parens like these . . . | Add some words in parentheses to a well-known song title to make it funnier in some way. | M H |
| 1057 | Sportin' lie | Give us some fake sports trivia. | I H H |
| 1056 | Weather or nuts | Coin a term relating to the weather, climate, etc. -- either literal or figurative -- and define it. | 4 |
| 1054 | Dead letters | Write a short, humorous poem commemorating someone (or maybe even something) who died in 2013. | T H |
| 1051 | Love the tiny tail stain! | Create an anagram -- a text with the letters rearranged -- of any text (except merely someone's name), of any length, referring to something or someone in the news. | H |
| 1050 | Just redo it | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 1000 through Week 1046. | H |
| 1049 | Be rating | Come up with a new movie rating and describe it. | T |
| 1048 | Ask Backwards | You supply the questions to as many of the provided answers as you like. | M H H |
| 1045 | Songs for the asking | Take a sentence, phrase or title from a song and provide a funny question it might answer. | T |
| 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 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. |
T |
| 1037 | Outrage us | Find something offensive about an inoffensive name of a product, organization, place, etc. | 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]. | M H |
| 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 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. | M |
| 1027 | Built for two | Give humorous related names for any pair of features in a given building, organization, etc. | H |
| 1026 | 'Might' makes ink | Give us a joke using any of the using any of the provided "you might be" templates. | 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. | M 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. | T |
| 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. | T |
| 1022 | What's the diff? | Explain how any two of the provided items are alike or different. | T H |
| 1021 | 'Gram theft | Come up with a term by scrambling any of the letters sets in the provided list, and define it. | M H |
| 1020 | Colt following | Breed any two of this week's winning foals and name the grandfoal. | T H 4 |
| 1019 | What a turnoff | Tell us some creative things that children and families could do during Screen-Free Week. | M H |
| 1018 | Reologisms | Write a clever, funny definition for any of the Loser-concocted neologisms from Week 1014 as well as from Week 1000 that deserve better definitions than their creators offered at the time. | H |
| 1016 | Foaling around | Breed any two of the horses nominated for this year's Triple Crown races and give the foal a name humorously reflecting the names of the parents. | H |
| 1015 | Faux re mi | Give us some humorously false trivia about music or musicians. | 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. | H |
| 1013 | Har monikers | Write a riddle that uses a pun of a person's name in the answer. | M |
| 1012 | The news at 5 | Write a limerick about a recent news event. | M |
| 1011 | Top these! | Try your hand at any of the contests mentioned in this look back. | T H H H H H H H H H |
| 1010 | Picture this | Write a caption for any of the five provided cartoons. | M H |
| 1006 | It's a ... a ... | Create a new superhero (or duo) and describe the superpower, or not-very-superpower. | M |
| 1004 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem about anyone who died in 2012. | H |
| 1003 | Just do it | Use a well-known advertising slogan for a different company, organization or product to humorous effect. | T |
| 1002 | Wring out the OED | Make up a false definition for any of the listed OED words. | M |
| 1001 | Make us ROFL | Give us a funny, original acronym. | T H H |
| 1000 | We now have 4 digits; you now have 7 letters | Choose any word, name or two-word term beginning anywhere from T through Z; then add one letter, drop one letter, substitute one letter for another, or transpose two adjacent letters, and define the result. | H H H 2 |
| 999 | Drectrospective | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 946 through Week 995, except for Week 948. | H H |
| 997 | Unworthy causes | Name a dubious charity and describe its mission. | M H |
| 996 | A Life-Time opportunity | Combine two magazines or journals and describe the result, supply a marketing pitch, or suggest a story or two that it might publish. | M |
| 995 | Ask backwards | We give you the "answers" and you supply jokes in the form of a question. | T H |
| 994 | Stick it to us | Suggest a slogan for one of our two new honorable-mention Loser Magnets for 2012-2013. | P |
| 993 | Versus, verses | Write a short "rap battle" between any two characters, real or fictional. | T T |
| 992 | Mittsterpiece Theatre | Suppose public-TV shows, past or present, were turned out onto the open market to make a living on commercial TV. Tell us what would happen. | T P |
| 991 | Tour de Fours IX | Create a new word or two-word term containing the letter block V, O, T, and E and define it. | H |
| 989 | On the double | Come up with a double or multiple profession, and explain how each job complements the other(s). | H H |
| 988 | A faster break | Suggest ways to make sports and other leisure activities more time-efficient or exciting. | T |
| 984 | Another brilliant contest | Write something whose words begin with consecutive letters of the alphabet. | T 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. | M |
| 981 | Feeling testy | Write a question that "ought to" be on a qualifying test for a particular job. | H 4 |
| 980 | Def jam | Supply a humorous definition for any of the provided Loser-penned neologisms. | T 2 |
| 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. | M |
| 976 | Join now! | Combine the beginning and end of any two words or names in this week's Style Invitational or Style Conversational columns to make a new term, and define it. | H |
| 975 | Gone mything | Debunk a "Sixth Myth" about one of more of the recent "5 Myths" topics provided. | W T M |
| 972 | Trends and neighbors | Choose any two items on the provided list and explain how they are alike or different. | T |
| 971 | Double booking | Come up with a double book with a humorous connection; the first title must be an actual book, while the other may be your own fictitious title or a second real book. | H |
| 969 | Colt following | Breed any two "foals" in today's results, and name the grandfoal. | T |
| 967 | Overlap dance II | Create a phrase that overlaps two terms, each of two words or more, and describe the result. | P |
| 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. | H 3 |
| 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. | T M |
| 958 | All's Weller | Write a "wellerism," a sentence that starts with a quote, often a short proverb, and goes on to include some sort of wordplay on something in the quote. | H |
| 956 | Give us some bad ideas | Finish any of the provided "You know" phrases. | M H H |
| 954 | Bring on the 'fight' jokes | Tell us an original joke ending with “And then the fight started.” | T P |
| 952 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2011. | T |
| 951 | Say that again | Double a word, or use a word and its homophone, to make a phrase, and define it. | M |
| 950 | Of all the nerve! | Give us a humorous example of hypothetical chutzpah. | T |
| 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 H |
| 946 | Another round of Bierce | Write a clever definition of a word, name or multi-word term. | H H H |
| 944 | Uh, yeah, it's just you | Give us one or more "Is it just me" questions. | M H |
| 939 | MASH 2: The Retread | Combine two movie titles and describe the result. | 3 |
| 936 | Hoho contendere | Slightly alter a well-known foreign-language term and define it. | 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 |
| 934 | Same difference | Explain how any two items in the provided list are similar or different. | H |
| 933 | Stories that count (to 56) | Write a humorous story in exactly 56 words. | M |
| 932 | We'll call them your-mama jokes | Tell us an original "your mama" joke. | H |
| 928 | Play feature | Use the title of a movie as the answer to a riddle or other question. | W H |
| 927 | Drive-By Shoutings | Write a very short four-line “poem” promoting a product or company, or offering advice to drivers; the poem must rhyme, in ABAB or ABCB rhyme scheme. A fifth, non-rhyming line may state the product name or a conclusion. | T H |
| 926 | Outrageous fortunes | Come up with a fortune cookie line that you'd like to see. | M |
| 925 | A remeaning task | Redefine a word in the dictionary beginning with I through O. | H H |
| 924 | Doomed to repeat it | Create "Unreal Facts" about history. | T H |
| 919 | Good Luck With 13 | Alter a 13-letter word, phrase or name by one letter (add a letter, drop a letter, switch two letters somewhere in the word, or substitute one letter for another) and describe the result. | L H H 4 |
| 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 |
| 917 | Wryku | Write a haiku--a sentiment that can be broken into three lines with exactly five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third--on any subject that's been in the news in the last couple of weeks. | H |
| 915 | Picture this | Write a caption for any of the cartoons pictured here. | H 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. | T H |
| 913 | Bring up the rear | Move the last letter of an existing word or name to the front of the word, and define the new term. | 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. | M H H |
| 911 | Help! | Create a short humorous dialogue -- or a monologue featuring one party -- of a phone call to 911, or a call for help to someone else. | P |
| 910 | Your ad here | Slightly alter an advertising slogan so that someone else could use it. | L |
| 908 | Recast away | Fire an actor or actress from a movie or TV show, past or present, and offer a replacement for the role. | M |
| 906 | Your mug here | Give us a new design for the Loser Mug. | T H 4 |
| 905 | Anticdotes | Give us an untrue anecdote responding to one of these past Editor's Query topics. | M 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. | H H H H H H 4 |
| 903 | Bill us now | Combine the names of two or more members of Congress as co-sponsors of a bill. | 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). | T |
| 894 | Look Back in Inker | Enter any Style Invitational from Week 841 through Week 890 (except for Week 844). | T |
| 893 | Give us a hint | Write a humorously witty story in 25 words or fewer. | T |
| 892 | Get a move on | Change the location of something for humorous effect. Provide an explanation if you wish. | T H |
| 889 | Tour de Fours VII | Coin and define a humorous word that includes -- with no other letters between them, but in any order -- the letters P, O, L and E. | T M H H |
| 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 |
| 887 | Plus-Fours | Write a limerick whose third or fourth line is one of those listed above. | M |
| 886 | Look both ways | Give us a new term that's a palindrome and define it. | H H |
| 885 | Mess with our heads | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from Sept. 10 through Sept. 20 and reinterpret it by adding a "bank head. | T |
| 884 | Rekindling the spork | Combine two devices or other products to make a new one. | H |
| 883 | Same difference | Choose any two items from the list above and explain why they are alike or are different from each other. | M |
| 881 | What's in a name? | Take the name of a person or institution. Find within it a hidden message. | T |
| 880 | Our greatest hit | Start with a real word or multi-word term or name that begins with Q, R or S; add one letter, subtract one letter, replace one letter with another, or transpose two adjacent letters; and define the new word. | M H H H H |
| 879 | Say Venn | Express some sentiment in the form of a Venn diagram. | T |
| 877 | Quipped from the headlines | Write a rhyming couplet about some matter in the news. | P |
| 876 | Oilies but goodies | Write lyrics somehow related to the oil spill, set to an existing tune. | T |
| 875 | Fail Us | Give us a funny Learn From My Fail-type lesson, 30 words or fewer, true or not, in your own words or attributed to a famous personage. | 4 |
| 872 | Har Monikers | Combine the first parts of each word in a famous person's or character's name -- in order -- and define it or use it in a sentence that somehow refers to its source. | T H H H |
| 871 | Remarquees | Change a movie title by one letter (or number, if the title includes a number) and describe the new film. | H H |
| 870 | Let's play Nopardy | Describe any of the above phrases in the form of a question. | M |
| 868 | Count the ways | Give us some musings of a technical wonk. | T |
| 866 | Natalie Portmanteau | Begin with a real name; append to it a word, name or expression so that they overlap; and finally define (humorously, of course) the resulting phrase. | T M |
| 865 | No Googlenopes left | Come up with a humorous Googlenope. | M |
| 864 | Oonerspisms | Spoonerize a single word or a name by transposing different part of the word (more than two adjacent letters), and define the resultant new term. | H H |
| 863 | It's Post time | Breed any two of 100 of the almost 400 horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown races, and name the foal. | H |
| 861 | It's incumbent upon us | Combine the names of two or more freshman members of Congress to create "joint legislation." This week's pool of legislators includes only those who were elected to their seats before 1994, the first year we ran the freshman contest. | T |
| 860 | Ten, Anyone? | Humorously define or describe something or someone in exactly 10 words. | T |
| 859 | Can't goods | Cast a joke in one of the forms listed above. | H |
| 857 | All FED Up | Create a brand-new word or phrase that contains a block of three successive letters in the alphabet -- but the series must go backward through the alphabet. | W H H H |
| 856 | Titled Puerility | Here are some untitled book covers. For any of them, tell us a title and synopsis of a book that will never be published. | H |
| 853 | It's easy as DEF | Create a brand-new word or phrase that contains a block of three successive letters in the alphabet; the series must go forward in the alphabet, not backward. | T H H H |
| 851 | Going to the shrink | Downsize the title of a book, movie or play to make it smaller or less momentous and describe it. | H |
| 850 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2009. | T M |
| 849 | Homonymphomania | Create a new homonym (or homophone) for any existing word and define it. | H H H H H |
| 848 | Up and addin' | Compose a humorous rhopalic sentence (or multiple sentences) in which each word is one letter longer than the previous word. | T |
| 846 | Season's gratings | Write a brief (50 words or fewer) holiday letter from a personage from past or present, or from fiction. | T T |
| 845 | Reologisms | Write a description for any of 50 genuine Loser-created neologisms. | 4 |
| 844 | Healthy choice | Enter any Style Invitational from Week 790 through Week 840, except for Week 793 and Week 798. | H H |
| 843 | Prefrains | Provide a sentence or two of lead-in to the first line of a well-known book, poem, or song. | H |
| 842 | Ask backwards | Here are your 12 possible answers. Tell us your joke in the form of a question, please. | H H H |
| 841 | Food for naught | Alter the name of a food or dish slightly and describe the result. | H |
| 839 | Overlap Dance | Overlap two words that share two or more consecutive letters -- anywhere in the word, not just at the beginning or end -- into a single longer word, and define it. AND your portmanteau word must begin with a letter from A through D. | M H H |
| 836 | Other People's Business | Describe what might happen if any of the above institutions (a) were run by an institution of your choice or (b) ran an institution of your choice. | T H |
| 835 | Tour de Fours VI | Coin and define a humorous word that includes -- with no other letters between them, but in any order -- the letters T, H, R, and E. | W H H H |
| 834 | Fractured Compounds | Combine two full words within any single article appearing in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com into a hyphenated compound word, and define or otherwise describe the result. | T H H |
| 833 | Our Greatest Hit | Start with a real word or multi-word term or name that begins with M, N, O, or P; add one letter, subtract one letter, replace one letter or transpose two adjacent letters; and define the new word. | H H H |
| 832 | Clue Us In | You supply one or more clues for the words in a filled-in grid. | H |
| 829 | Limerixicon 6 | Supply a humorous limerick prominently featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters di-. | T |
| 827 | Caller Idiot | Name a real product or company and supply a stupid question or complaint for the consumer hotline person. | T |
| 826 | The Inside Word | Take any word -- this may include the name of a person or place -- put a portion of it in quotation marks, and redefine the word. | T H H H 3 |
| 824 | Jestinations | Give us a slogan for any city or town. | H |
| 818 | Name the Day | Cite an actual holiday or one of those silly commemorative days, weeks or months for which you can find previous evidence, and supply a snarky description or slogan. | M |
| 817 | Flopflip | Reverse the first half and second half of a word or name and define the result. | H 2 |
| 815 | Wittecisms | Create an original word containing -- in any order -- at least a W, an I, two T's and an E. | W T H H H H H |
| 814 | There Will Be Bloodline | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in this week's results, and name their foal. | H |
| 810 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Breed any two of the more than 400 horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown races and provide an appropriate name for their foal. | H H |
| 808 | Take Us At Our Words | Create a humorous poem or other writing using only the words contained in this week's Style Invitational column or results. | P M |
| 807 | Pretty Graphic Expressions | Express some insight as an equation or other mathematical expression. | H |
| 805 | Brand Eccchs | Give us an original name in any of the above categories (not an actual badly named product). | H H H H |
| 804 | Our Type o' Joke | Change a headline by one letter, or switch two letters, in a headline (or most of a headline) appearing on an article or ad in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com between Feb. 14 and 23, and elaborate on it in a "bank" headline (subhead) or a brief first sentence of an article that would run under it. | T |
| 803 | The Pepys Show | Write a humorous diary or journal entry for someone, famous or not, for any point in history. | H |
| 802 | Dreck TV | Suggest a new cable TV channel, with a description or example of its programming. | H |
| 801 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. You supply one or more of the questions. | H 4 |
| 800 | Compairison | Briefly define or sum up an existing word or short phrase, then change it very slightly and do the same with the result. | H H H 2 |
| 798 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem commemorating someone who died in 2008. | T M H |
| 796 | Sincerest Flattery | Make up a pun on a familiar name of a real of fictional person and provide a fitting description or quote. | H |
| 794 | Ripped Off From the Headlines | Send us some Onion-type headlines. | T |
| 793 | Take The Fifth | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 725 through Week 789. Each entry must include the word "five" of "fifth" or something fiveish, or -- depending on your favorite anniversary tradition -- something involving (a) wood or (b) silverware. | H H |
| 792 | Clue Us In | Compile a set of funny alternative clues to a crossword penned by Ace Constructor Paula Gamache. | H H |
| 789 | Doctrine in The House? | State a humorous, original "doctrine" for a person or other entity. | H |
| 788 | The Back End of a Bulwer | Give us a comically terrible ending of a novel. | T |
| 787 | Tour de Fours V | Coin and define a humorous word that includes -- with no other letters between them, but in any order -- the letters M, I, N and E. | W H H H |
| 786 | Top of the Staake | So get your thoughts provoked for No. Umpteen of our cartoon caption contest. | H |
| 784 | Words to The Wiseacres | Give us some proverbs for 21st-century life. | T |
| 783 | The Shill Game | Name a celebrity or fictional character to endorse a real product or company. | T H |
| 782 | That's the Ticket! | Explain why any of the items on the list below is qualified to be President of the United States. | M H |
| 781 | Our Greatest Hit | Start with a word or multi-word term that begins with I, J, K or L; either add one letter, subtract one letter, replace one letter or transpose two adjacent letters; and define the new word. | L H H H |
| 780 | Location, Location, Location | Say how you know you're in a particular place. | H 4 |
| 778 | Tied Games | Combine any two sports or nonathletic activities into a single sport or game. | T |
| 776 | An Act of Sunny Side | Note the silver lining in some otherwise disappointing turn of events. | L |
| 775 | Ad-dition | Combine the beginning and end of any two words appearing in any single advertisement in The Post or on washingtonpost.com, from today through Aug. 4, and then define the new word. | H H H |
| 773 | Always Looking for Sects | Coin a religion or belief system and tell us its basic tenet or distinguishing characteristic. | H |
| 771 | Groaner's Manuals | Come up with a humorous name for a guide or manual for, or a book about, a particular enterprise or organization. | H H H H 2 |
| 770 | A Knack for Anachronism | Take a famous historical moment, literary passage, or movie scene and place it in an entirely different age. | T 4 |
| 766 | Think to Shudder | Come up with scenarios that are even more awkward (and more imaginative) than the wincers mentioned above. | M 3 |
| 765 | It's Doo-Dah Day | Write humorous lyrics commemorating any of the 50 states of the District, set to any of these Stephen Foster songs. | T |
| 764 | Can You Up Chuck? | Come up with entirely new and funny Chuck Norris Facts. | T |
| 763 | Another Time Around the Track | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in this week's results, and name THEIR foal. | T |
| 761 | Strip Mining | Supply the text for any or all three of these Bob Staake comic strips. | T |
| 759 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Breed any two of the 100 horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown and provide an appropriate name for their foal. | M H H |
| 758 | Wrong Address | Using any of the words of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in whatever order you like, create your own passage. | T M |
| 757 | Gorey Thoughts From A to Z | Send us some rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. | 4 |
| 753 | Hot Off The Riddle | Supply a simple riddle and both the wholesome answer and the (printable) Invitational answer. | H |
| 751 | Strike Gold | Slightly change the name of an existing or former TV show to create a program that can scab the writers' strike. | H |
| 749 | Opus 266, No. 3 | Take any common word or two-word term beginning with any letter from A through H and give it a new definition. | H H H H H H H H |
| 747 | Boeing Us Silly | Suggest some comical ways to improve air travel, either in general or for yourself. | H |
| 744 | You OED Us One | Make up a humorous and false definition for any of the words listed below. | H H |
| 742 | Clue Us In | Give us a whole new set of clues to a crossword puzzle penned by Ace Constructor Paula Gamache. | H |
| 741 | Well, What Do You Know? | Tell us what Major Life Lessons can be derived from any of these venues or situations. | H H |
| 739 | Lies, All Lies | Give us some humorous fictional revelation about a current or past political figure. | T |
| 738 | So What's To Liken? | Take any two items from the utterly random list above and explain how they are different or how they are similar. | H H |
| 736 | So, Should I Drive Like Your Brother? | Ask a car-related question that would make the Car Guys crack up. If you're not into cars, you can also post a question for advice columnist Ask Amy or etiquette columnist Miss Manners. | M |
| 735 | Look Back in Inker | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 680 through Week 731. | H 4 |
| 734 | Turnaround Time | Write a rhyming couplet containing two words that are anagrams of each other. | M |
| 733 | Just Drop It, Okay? | Drop the first letter from an actual word or term to make a new word or term, and define it. | T H H 2 |
| 732 | The Chain Gang | Supply a chain of 25 names -- they may be names of people, places, organizations, products, etc., but they must be names -- beginning and ending with "George W. Bush. | M |
| 731 | Doo Process | Describe for us a wildly inefficient and ridiculous way to produce or prepare an ordinary dish or beverage. | T M H H |
| 730 | Time-Wastes For Everyman | Describe activities that make entering The Style Invitational seem like a constructive use of one's time. | T |
| 728 | Tour de Fours IV | Coin and define a humorous word that includes -- with no other letters between them, but in any order you like -- the letters S, A, T and R. | W H H H |
| 722 | Let's Play Nopardy! | We supply 12 phrases and you get to provide questions they might answer. The phrases were entries in our Week 717 contest, which asked for Googlenopes -- phrases that showed no previous hits from the Google search engine. | T |
| 721 | Know Your Market | For any of the provided photos, supply two captions: one that would appeal to The Style Invitational and one that would appeal to the Harrisburg Patriot-News. | H |
| 720 | The Course of Humor Events | Sum up a historical event in a two-line rhyme or other clever and pithy epigram. | H |
| 716 | The Hard Spell | Write a humorous poem featuring one of the 75 words we've selected from this year's National Spelling Bee. | T |
| 715 | Your Mug Here | Send us an idea for a slogan for the back of the new Loser T-shirt. | H H H H H |
| 713 | Painings | Name and interpret any of the provided paintings by Fred Dawson. | T |
| 711 | Join Now! | Hyphenate the beginning and end of any two multi-syllabic words appearing anywhere in the April 29 or May 6 Style or Sunday Arts section, and then define the compound. | T M H H |
| 708 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Breed any two from a list of 100 of the horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown races and provide an appropriate name for their foal. | H H |
| 707 | What Would YOU Do? | Use only the words appearing in "The Cat in the Hat" to create your own work of "literature" of no more than 75 words. | H |
| 706 | Questionable Journalism | Take any sentence that appears in The Post or in an article on washingtonpost.com from March 24 through April 2 and come up with a question it could answer. | T |
| 704 | Another Game of Tag | Create vanity plates for well-known people, real or fictional. | M |
| 699 | Our Greatest Hit | Take a word, term or name that begins with E, F, G or H; either add one letter, subtract one letter, replace one letter, or transpose two letters; and define the new word. | T H H H H H 3 |
| 698 | Let's Get Personnel | Send us some humorously creative questions that a job interviewer would ask an applicant, or some questions it might be fun to ask the interviewer. | H |
| 697 | We Beg You To Differ | Take any two items from the truly random provided list and explain why they are different or why they are similar. | H |
| 696 | Send Us the Bill | Come up legislation the newly-elected members of Congress might sponsor together. | T |
| 695 | Dead Letters | Write a poem about someone who died in 2006. | H |
| 693 | Everything Being Sequel | Give a brief scenario for the sequel to a well-known movie. | H |
| 692 | Reinkernation | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 640 through Week 688. Every entry must include the word "three" or "third" or a creative variation. | H |
| 691 | Haven't Got a Clue | Make all the clues in the provided crossword ooh-clever or at least ah-that's-funny, even the little words. | H |
| 689 | Busted Play | Come up with a more objectionable or stupid toy than a working fart-powered toy rocket. | H 2 |
| 688 | Making Short Work | Write a humorous six-word story. | T H 2 |
| 687 | Whatever Were They Thinking? | Tell us (A) What someone might say in some situation, and (B) what that person was actually thinking when he said A. | H H |
| 686 | It's Baaaaack! | Explain why you, or anyone else in particular, ought to have this fine oil-on-panel by Fred Dawson of Beltsville, or what it might be used for. | T |
| 685 | Thank it Over | Tell us some things to be thankful for. | H |
| 684 | Backtricking | Spell a word backward and define the result, somehow relating the definition to the original word. | W H H H H H H H H H H |
| 683 | What a Piece of Work | String together words in a single scene, or two consecutive scenes, of "Hamlet" to produce one or more funny sentences, preferably unrelated to the original content. The words must appear in the order in which they appear in the play. | T |
| 682 | Punkin'd! | Send us a funny, clever, entirely original photo featuring one or more pumpkins and/or other vegetables. | T M |
| 681 | Ticket to Write | Write a jingle for a business (or its product), organization or government agency, set to a Beatles song. | M |
| 680 | Rendered Speechless | Provide dialogue to fill the balloons in any of these cartoons. | M H |
| 679 | Ask Backwards | Here are the answers. You supply the questions to as many as you dare. | H H |
| 677 | The News Gets Verse | Sum up wittily in verse -- but not a limerick -- any article appearing in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from Aug. 28 through Sept. 4. | M |
| 676 | Tour de Fours III | Coin and define a word containing -- with no other letters between them, but in any order you like -- the letters L, E, A and F. | H H |
| 675 | Cut Us Some Slack | Come up with humorous ways to be lazy. | H |
| 673 | Mess With Our Heads | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Washington Post or on Washingtonpost.com from July 30 through Aug. 7 and reinterpret it by adding either a "bank headline," or subtitle, or the first sentence of an article that might appear under it. | T |
| 671 | Join Now! | Hyphenate the beginning and end of any two multi-syllabic words appearing anywhere in the July 16 Style or Sunday Arts section, and then define the compound. | H H H H |
| 670 | A Test of Character | Change a word or phrase by only one letter -- substitute one letter for another, add a letter or transpose two letters -- and explain how they are different or similar. | H H H |
| 669 | Huddled Messes | Suggest some bad advice for new arrivals to this country (legal or illegal). | T |
| 668 | Cut From the Chase | Write an original John-Bunnell-style wrap-up to a crime story -- or one for a more minor transgression. | M H |
| 667 | Questionable Journalism | Take any sentence that appears in The Post or in an article on washingtonpost.com anytime from now through June 26 and supply a question it could answer. | T H |
| 665 | Your One-in-a-Million | Coin the millionth word in the English language and define it. The word must end in -ion. | H H H 2 |
| 664 | A Thousand Times?! No! | Come up with a new signature line for Russell Beland's -- or anyone else's -- e-mails. | M |
| 663 | Worth at Least a Dozen Words | Interpret any of the provided cartoons as you see fit in a caption. | H |
| 661 | Name Any Good Movies Lately? | Give us a funny new title for an existing movie. | W H H H |
| 660 | Foaling Down: The Next Generation | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in this week's results, and name THEIR foal. | H H H H |
| 656 | It's Post Time | Breed any two from a list of 100 of the more than 400 3-year-old racehorses nominated for this year's Triple Crown races, and name their hypothetical foal. The foal's name cannot exceed 18 characters and spaces combined. | H H H |
| 654 | It Plays to Recycle | Come up with funny ways to recycle things, people, writing (except for your old Invitational entries) or ideas. | H |
| 653 | 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 | T H H |
| 652 | Ask Backward | You are on "Jeopardy!" Above are the answers. You supply the questions. | T H |
| 649 | Across the Wide What? | Give us some Virginia-appropriate lyrics for "Shenandoah. | T |
| 648 | Caller IDiot | Name a product or company and supply a stupid question to ask the consumer hotline person. | T |
| 647 | Paste Imperfect | Change a headline or sentence that appears in the Post or on washingtonpost.com through Feb. 6 either by deleting up to 40 consecutive characters from it or by adding 40 consecutive characters from the same article or ad. | T |
| 645 | A Hearty Har Har | Write up a Valentine's sentiment to any personage, or to someone in some generic category. | H |
| 642 | It's Open Season | Come up with a brand-new word and its definition. The words must begin with O, P, Q, R or S. | H H H H H H 4 |
| 641 | Dreck of All Trades | Come up with a business that combines two or more disparate products or services, and tell us its name and/or something else funny about it. | T H |
| 640 | Whassa Motto Wid You? | Give us a slogan or motto for any of the states, the District or the U.S. Territories. | T |
| 638 | The Little Bummer Boy | Come up with an idea (and title, if you like) for an original Christmas movie or TV special that provides an antidote to all the sap, and give us a brief synopsis. | H |
| 637 | Full Steam Ahead | Write a steamy passage of a novel that's ostensibly by some well-known person who isn't a novelist. | T |
| 635 | I've Told You a Hundred Times | Enter any Style Invitational from Week 536 to Week 631. Your entry must be substantially different from the original winners. | H H H H |
| 633 | Your Secret Here! | Send us some original secrets (they don't have to be true). | T H |
| 632 | Live On, Sweet, Earnest Reader (Inc.) | Give us an original backronym for a company or product. A backronym is a fake etymology that often gets in a little dig at the subject. | H |
| 631 | Picture This | What's going on in any of these cartoons? | H |
| 630 | Hyphen the Terrible | Combine the beginning and end of any two multisyllabic words in this week's Invitational, and then define the compound. | W T H H H H H |
| 629 | Odd Couplings | Marry or otherwise combine famous names and supply the result. | T H H |
| 628 | You Gotta Have Connections | Choose any two or more items from the provided truly random list and describe how they are alike or different. | H |
| 626 | Course Light | Come up with a comical college class, along with a description for the course catalog. | H H |
| 625 | Haven't Seen It | Make up a new plot for an existing movie title. | H H H |
| 624 | Limerixicon 2 | Supply a limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with bd- through bl-. | H |
| 623 | Try to Remember | Give us an original mnemonic for any list that someone might want to remember. | L |
| 621 | Questionable Journalism | Take any sentence that appears in The Post or in an article in washingtonpost.com anytime through Aug. 8 and supply a question it could answer. | T |
| 617 | Best the Best | Write something about any famous personage that uses only the letters in his or her name. | T |
| 615 | Airy Persiflage | Write some jokes you'd like to hear in an airport announcement. | H H H |
| 614 | In-Stock Characters | Pitch us an idea for a summer movie featuring two or more of the provided characters. | H |
| 613 | Tour de Fours II | Create and define a word that includes, consecutively, E, R, A and N. in any order. | T H H |
| 612 | Oh, and One More Thing | What was the thing that didn't make the cut on any list? | W |
| 611 | Ask Backwards, Erudite Edition | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the sophisticated answers. You supply the questions. | H H |
| 610 | MASH | Find two well-known movies, plays, or TV shows whose title have a significant word in common, combine their titles, and describe the hybrid. | T H |
| 609 | A2D2 | Give us some funny "corrections" to brighten up Page A2. | H H |
| 608 | Comeback Next Week | Come up with original snide retorts to various rude questions or comments. | H H |
| 604 | Fun for the Roses | Breed any two of the horses on a list of those qualifying for this year's Triple Crown races, and tell us a good name for their foal. The name of the foal must be no more than 18 characters, including spaces. | H |
| 602 | Take a Letter -- Again | Take a word, term or name that begins with A, B, C or D; either add one letter, subtract one letter, replace one letter, or transpose two letters; and define the new word. | H H H H H 6 |
| 601 | Anticdotes | Give us an untrue anecdote in response to one of the provided Editor's Query topics. | T 2 |
| 600 | Top of the Inking | Tell us some ways the District of Columbia will change now that we have the Nationals. | T |
| 599 | So What's the News? | Tell us what the illustrated events are. | H |
| 598 | Site Gags | Come up with an appropriate name for a cafeteria--or meeting room, or an employee lounge, or some other workplace spot--for a particular institution. | H H H |
| 597 | Eccchsibits | Come up with some alternative museums and exhibits for the nation's capital. | T H H |
| 596 | Take Her Words for It | Use the words of this week's Ask Amy advice column, as a pool from which to compose your own useful (or useless) thoughts. You may ignore or change capitalization or punctuation. | H |
| 594 | History Loves Company | Name an appropriate corporate sponsor for some historical event or for someone's life story. | H |
| 593 | Take This, Job, and . . . | Come up with some entertainingly awful things that a Job's comforter might offer. A Job's comforter is someone who seems to be offering sympathy but instead just makes the person feel worse, either intentionally or unintentionally. | T H |
| 592 | We Got Gamy | Offer us a concise idea for a Super Bowl commercial, or some innovative halftime entertainment, or some inappropriate sponsors, or some ideas for improving the game itself. | T H |
| 591 | Dead Letters | Write rhyming poems about notable personages who have died in the past year. | H |
| 590 | Send Us the Bill | Come up with a bill sponsored by any combination of the newly elected members of Congress and explain the purpose of the bill. | T |
| 589 | Hyphen the Terrible (New Edition!) | Combine the beginning of any multi-syllabic word in this week's Invitational with the end of any other multi-syllabic word in this column (or in this week's Web supplement) to coin a new word, and then define it. | H H H H H H |
| 587 | The B-List | Come up with an In-Out list for 2005, or other pairings. | T H H H H |
| 586 | God's Will (and Won't) | Complete either of the following: "If God hadn't wanted us to ----, God wouldn’t have ----"; "If God had wanted us to ----, God would have ----. | H H |
| 580 | United Nations | Combine the names of any two countries in the world and describe the new hybrid country. | T H |
| 579 | Another Brilliant Contest! Do Enter! | Write us a sentence or phrase consisting of words beginning with consecutive letters, in the A-to-Z direction. | T |
| 578 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" Above are the answers. Send us the questions. | H 4 |
| 577 | Teledubbies | Slightly change the title of a TV show, past or present, and describe it. | T 4 |
| 576 | Well, Excuuuuse Us! | Come up with new excuses for any common human shortcoming or imperfection. | H |
| 575 | T Hee Hee | Come up with new ideas for both front and back of the Loser T-shirts. | T H 3 |
| 574 | Boor Us Silly | Come up with some unwise attempts at humor--one either likely to backfire or to create other unpleasant consequences. | W H |
| 573 | Thine Ad Goest Here | Propose biblical and other literary passages, poems, etc., that could benefit from product placement. | T H |
| 572 | The Limerixicon | Supply a limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with ai- through ar-. | T |
| 571 | A Tour de Fours | Create and define a word that includes T, H, E, and S in any order. The letters must appear consecutively. | T H H |
| 570 | Timeline Rhyme Lines | Produce colorful chronological couplets about some historical event. They must rhyme and be in good meter. | H |
| 569 | Murphy's Lore | Give Eric Murphy advice he deserves on the provided questions. | T H |
| 568 | Tome Deftness | Make a pun or similar wordplay on a book title. | H |
| 567 | A Running Gag | Explain how any of the provided bizarre cartoons by Bob Staake relates to the current presidential campaign. | H |
| 564 | Redefine Print | Redefine any word from the dictionary. | H H H H H H H H H H H H H |
| 563 | Take Two | Take any two of the provided items and explain how they resemble or differ from each other. | H H |
| 560 | The 97.5-Meter Dash | Suggest some time- and cost-saving measures so the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens will open on time. | T |
| 559 | Your Slogan Here | Come up with a clever slogan or sign for a business. | H H |
| 558 | Set Us Right | Send us conservative-leaning humor in any of the provided genres. | H H |
| 557 | Oh, for Namesakes! | Take two people, real or fictional, who share some element of their names and explain the difference between them. | H |
| 556 | So Zoo Us | Combine any two kinds of animals, give its name and describe it. | T H |
| 555 | A Tsk, A Task | Come up with a super-wholesome passage of 25 words or fewer that would likely be banned by the admirable, ever-vigilant Neopets.com site. | H |
| 553 | Picture This | Tell us what's going on in one or more of the provided cartoons. | T H |
| 552 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Breed any two of the horses on a list of those qualifying for this year's Triple Crown races, and tell us a good name for their foal. Maximum 18 characters, including spaces. | T H H H H |
| 551 | Lost in Translation | Find us some comical translations-and-back using Google translator. Feed some passage of English text into the tool--25 words max--and ask it to translate it into one of the five languages offered; then copy the result back into the tool and ask it to translate that back to English. | T H |
| 550 | Spring Cleaning | Suggest creative uses for things you've already used, or never will use, or other disposable household thingies, singly or in combination. | T |
| 548 | Inklings | Tell us about certain people's childhood experiences and behaviors that hint at their destinies. | H H 2 |
| 547 | Give Us a Bad Name | Take an existing product or business name and pair it with an incompatible one. | H H |
| 546 | A Nice Pair of Cities | Choose any two or more real U.S. towns and come up with a joint endeavor they would undertake. | H |
| 545 | Put It in Reverse | Spell a word backward and define it, with the definition relating in some way to the original word. | W H H H H H H H H H |
| 544 | You Gotta Have Heart | Write us some valentine sentiments from one particular person (real or fictional) to another. | T |
| 543 | Read Our Leaps | Fill any readers of The Washington Post on Sunday, Feb. 29, 2032, on: (a) the day's lead news story; (b) the highest-flying company and its business; (c) the best-selling self-help book; and/or (d) the day's winning Style Invitational entry. | H H |
| 542 | Discombobulate Us | Come up with both an object/situation and a neologism for it, something that Bob Levey would never have stooped to print in his column. | H H H H H 5 |
| 541 | Celled Up the River | Give us a delicious scenario, in which a cellphone yakker's yakking could be taken profitably out of context. | T |
| 540 | Revisionist History, or Badenov for You? | State any news event (or old event) in the style of the Rocky-and-Bullwinkle teasers about the next show. | H H H |
| 539 | Dead Letters | Pay tribute in verse to someone who died in 2003. | T |
| 538 | Try, Try Again | Enter any previous Invitational. Your entry must be substantially different from the original winners. | H |
| 537 | The New York Post | Liven up any article appearing in The Washington Post or its Web site over the next eight days by giving it an irresponsibly sensationalistic headline. | H |
| 536 | And the Horse He Rodin On | Come up with some words we can stick in the back of The Inker. | H |
| 534 | The Feminine Touch | Propose how any male-dominated occupation or institution would change if it suddenly became female-dominated. | H |
| 533 | Breed Apart | Mate the clones of any two famous real people, living or dead--a male and a female, please--and hypothesize what traits or skills their offspring might have. | W H H H |
| 532 | Short Pans | Come up with a terse review (four words or fewer) of any work of art. | T H H |
| 531 | Your Cynic Duties | Come up with a saying that sounds as if it's going to be inspirational, but winds up being cynical, misanthropic or sad. | H |
| 530 | Tri Harder | Take any word, alter it in three ways--by adding a letter, by subtracting a letter and by changing a letter--and redefine all three new words. | H H H 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. | H H H 3 |
| 525 | It Won't Belong Now | Tell us which of three cartoons provided does not belong, and why. | H |
| 524 | Around Things Moving | Take the title of any book or movie, rearrange the words, and explain what the new book or movie is about. | H H H H H |
| 521 | Hyphen the Terrible | Take the first half of any hyphenated word in today's Washington Post (or Tuesday's USA Today) and combine it with the second half of any other hyphenated word in the same story, and define the new word it produces. | H H H H H H H 5 |
| 520 | I, Object | These items were ordered by well-known people. Who ordered them, and why? | T H |
| 514 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are your answers. What are the questions? | H H H |
| 513 | It's Delete We Can Do | Come up with very bad subject lines for spam e-mail--lines that will guarantee instant deletion, sight unseen. | H H H H 3 |
| 511 | It All Impends | Tell us what is something unusual about to happen in the provided cartoons. | H 2 |
| 510 | Universal Embarrassment | What would you like to see Miss Universe Pageant contestants asked live, on national TV? | H |
| 508 | Letter Rip | Take a word from the dictionary, add, change, or delete a single letter, and redefine the word. | T H H H |
| 506 | The Battle of All Mottoes | Provide a slogan for any federal department agency, department, office, etc. | H H |
| 505 | The Rule of Dumb | You are given $1 million. Conditions: (1) You must spend it all. (2) You must use it in a way that neither directly nor indirectly works to your financial benefit. (3) You may not use it to alleviate the suffering of anyone on Earth, or for any public-spirited project other than the joy of stupidity. | T |
| 504 | Life Is Snort | Write a schmaltzy last line of a "Life Is Short. | H |
| 502 | Picture This | Who are these people? What are they doing? | H 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 H |
| 496 | The Style Invitational: The First Dreckade | Submit new entries to any of the old contests listed, and try to beat The Very Best of the Past 10 Years. | H H H |
| 492 | Cheap Tricks | Come up with extreme cost-conserving measures for these difficult economic times. | H |
| 490 | Eyes on Reprise | Submit any good entries you might have thought of, for any previous contest, after the deadline passed. | H H |
| 489 | Combo, First Blood | Combine two people whose names contain a common element, as in the examples above. Then describe the person, or provide a quote he or she might have uttered. | H H H H H |
| 486 | A Word From Our Co-Sponsors | Come up with bills the new members of Congress might sponsor. Each bill must have at least two sponsors. | T |
| 484 | Manufracturing | Take any product and explain how it would be different if it were designed by a different existing company. | T H |
| 483 | Obitter Fate | Give us an obit headline for some famous person, currently living or dead. | H H H |
| 481 | Homonymphomania | Create a new homonym of any existing word, and define. The new word must be spelled in such a way that is obviously pronounced identically to the original word. | T H H H H H H H H 3 |
| 480 | In No Uncertain Terminations | Come up with a way to stop any unwanted overture in its tracks. | H |
| 478 | Do You Mindset? | Anticipate items for the Mindset List for the freshman class of the year 2020. | H |
| 476 | Portmanteautapping | Make a new word by squishing together two existing words. The constituent words must share at least two letters. | H H H H H H 3 |
| 475 | Bad Connection | Take any two seemingly unrelated stories from anywhere in today's Washington Post and explain how their subjects are linked in some unholy conspiracy or other suspicious way. | T |
| 472 | Water Stupid Idea | Propose bad ideas for saving water in the continuing drought. | H |
| 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 |
| 470 | Czar Har | Take the name of someone famous, rhyme it with a product, and describe the unholy union. | T |
| 468 | Ism This Stupid? | Take any common prefix and attach it to any well-known "ism" and define the new term. | T H H H H |
| 467 | Get Your But in Here | Produce a line that fits this structure: (Real thing based upon current events) is (word or phrase suggesting some quality) but (other word or phrase suggesting a dissimilar or incompatible quality), like (funny analogy). | H |
| 466 | Spit the Difference | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | T H H H H |
| 465 | Hyphen the Terrible | Take the first half of any word or word combination in today's Post that is broken by a hyphen at the end of a line, and combine it with the second half of any other hyphenated word from the same story, and define the new word that is formed. | T H |
| 464 | Cursive Writing | Come up with a new curse for this millennium. | L H H |
| 458 | It's a Setup | Come up with joke setups for any of the provided punch lines. | T 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. | T |
| 455 | Comixing | Create new comic characters by crossing two existing characters, then describe the character. | T |
| 454 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H H |
| 452 | Russellmania! | (1) Design one or more steps for a 12-step program for the recovering Invitationalaholic; (2) Propose a devious method by which we might lure Russell Beland back. | T |
| 451 | Make Your Pix | Which two of the provided cartoons are related, and how? | T |
| 450 | Blues It or Lose It | Write the first verse of a blues song expressing some Washington area woe. | T H |
| 448 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Mate any two of the horses qualifying for the Triple Crown races this year and propose a name for their foal. No name may exceed 18 characters, including spaces. | H H H |
| 445 | Another Round of Bierce | Add a few entries to Ambrose Bierce's famous "Devil's Dictionary. | H |
| 444 | Advice Squad | Take any letter from today's advice columns and answer it in the voice of someone famous, living or dead. | T |
| 443 | Sick Humor | Come up with modern diseases of Washington life. | H |
| 442 | Titletales | Take any real book or movie, change one word slightly, and describe the resulting new product. | H H |
| 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. | T R H H |
| 440 | Picture This | What is going on in these cartoons? | H H H |
| 439 | No Can Do | Write signs of incompetence. | T H |
| 437 | The Telegraph Poll | Tell us the beginning of a joke that badly telegraphs the punch line. | T |
| 432 | Sleeps With the Fishes. | No contests until mid-January. Czar ran biographies of Chris Doyle, Sue Lin Chong, Paul Styrene, and Brian Broadus, each containing one lie. | T |
| 430 | OMB Directive No. 2 | Revisit any contest The Style Invitational has ever run, and rewrite our tawdry past by proposing a new first-prize winner serious and/or decorous enough to please the Ombudsman. | 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. | 5 |
| 427 | Skinned | Come up with events that have a smaller chance of happening than the Redskins winning the Super Bowl. | T |
| 425 | Hyphen the Terrible | Take the first half of any hyphenated word from any story in today's newspaper and combine it with the second half of any other hyphenated word in the same story, and propose a definition of the new word you've created. | T H H H H H H H H H H 4 |
| 424 | Osama Chanted Evening | Write poems about Osama bin Laden. | T H |
| 419 | Don't Spare the Rodney | Come up with indications that one might not be getting no respect. | T |
| 418 | Xtreme Invitational | Come up with signs you are overdoing it any in any of the provided categories. | H |
| 417 | Initially Mistaken | Take any name of a person or thing, and construct an appropriate message using its letters, in order, as the first letters of the words of your message. | H 4 |
| 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 H 5 |
| 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 H H 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 H |
| 406 | Bum Steerage | Offer some spectacularly bad advice to any of the provided people. | H |
| 405 | The "Sty"le Invitational | Take any word--this may include people or places--put a portion of it in "air quotes" and redefine it. You may not alter the spelling. | H H H |
| 403 | Cry, Uncle! | Write the beginnings of an obituary that will provide the details of what happened to the Style Invitational Uncle. | W |
| 402 | Spitting the Difference | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | H H |
| 401 | A Matter of Degree | Describe a sign of some modest change in a situation and pair it with a sign of an extreme change in that same situation. | H H |
| 398 | Animal Magnetism | Make great literature and/or a significant expression of the human condition out of the provided randomly-selected words. Use whatever punctuation you choose and any of the words, but only those words, and use them only once. | T |
| 396 | April Foals | Mate any two of the horses qualifying for the Triple Crown races and come up with appropriate names for their foals. Maximum 18 letters and spaces. | H H H H |
| 395 | Devilishly Clever | Describe someone's special little corner of Hell. | 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 |
| 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. | U H H |
| 389 | Operation Overkill | Present a solution to a problem that goes just a little too far. | H |
| 387 | By Jingo | Come up with a joke that could be written and understood only by a Washingtonian. | H |
| 386 | The Game of Clue | What are some clues that someone might be any of the provided characterizations? | H H H 4 |
| 383 | A Kinder, Gender Nation | Take an noun and give us a reason or two why it should be either masculine or feminine. | U |
| 381 | Idiom Savant | Take any well-known idiom, or expression, and invent an interesting derivation for it. | 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 H H |
| 377 | Week MMDCXLIV | Provide a headline (and, if necessary, the first line of the text) for any article that will appear in The Washington Post on this day in the year 2050. | W H H H H |
| 375 | Show Us Up | Combine the names of two existing TV shows (past or present) to make an entirely new show. Then, describe the show. | H 3 |
| 373 | An Extra Large Challenge | What should we put on the back of the new Style Invitational T-shirt? | H H H H |
| 370 | No End in Sight | Write the beginnings of sentences you don't want to hear the end of. | 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 H H H H H H |
| 367 | Future Schlock | Come up with a line that will surely not appear in an upcoming work. | H 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 |
| 365 | Terse Verse | Ask a question and then answer it with a rhyme. Your answer can be as many words as you wish, but all must have the same rhyme. | H H 2 |
| 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 H |
| 359 | It's No Party | Come up with a new political party and its main political tenet. | 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 |
| 356 | Med Icks | Invent a clever name for a new medical product, and specify the condition it would treat. | H H |
| 355 | Seeing Stars | Tell us ways we can attract celebrity participation to this contest. | H |
| 352 | A Laff Riot | Take the name of a company and/or its commercial product and provide it a new definition. | H |
| 351 | Dubya Fun | Take any well-known statement, expression, slogan, etc., and rewrite it the way Dubya might have said it. | H 3 |
| 349 | Orienting Oneself | Produce a haiku using only words found in today's Washington Post. Your entry must have three lines, the first containing exactly five syllables, the second containing exactly seven syllables, the third containing exactly five. | H |
| 348 | When We're LXIV | Fashion an entry by selecting one from each of the provided menu groups: a short poem, analogy or metaphor, slogan or aphorism, or "Did you ever wonder why" sentence with various limitations. | U H |
| 346 | Greasy Kids Tough | Take any news event from history, recent or ancient, large or small, and rewrite it in 100 words or fewer as it might have appeared in KidsPost. | 2 |
| 345 | Picture This | What is going on in these cartoons? | U H |
| 343 | Eastwood Ho. | Create a Good-Bad-Ugly progression. | H |
| 342 | Plainly Ridiculous | Take any direct quotation from any article in today's Washington Post and translate it into "plain English. | H |
| 340 | ASK BACKWARDS 12 | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions? | H |
| 339 | Campaignful Developments | Come up with signs that a presidential campaign might be in trouble. | H H |
| 338 | WHO WANTS TO WIN A TOILET? | Propose even greater depths of shameless, tasteless sleaze to which Fox TV is likely to sink after the noisome debacle of "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? | H H H |
| 337 | DEGREES OF DIFFICULTY | Take a quality you wish to quantify and devise the perfect icon to measure it. Then give us an example of the extremes. | 6 |
| 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. | W H H H H H H H H H H 4 3 |
| 335 | A LOVER'S SPAT | Come up with some inept "sweet nothings"--graceless terms of endearment. | H 2 |
| 328 | NICE CAPADES | Send in some pleasant observation, in which you take a really cheerful or heartwarming view of something that less charitable people might conceivably see differently. | H |
| 327 | ASK BACKWARDS | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H 2 |
| 325 | THE BURMA ROAD | Propose welcoming doggerel for states or cities patterned after Burma Shave signs. | H 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 |
| 323 | THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD INVITATIONAL | Come up with not-quite-ready inventions, past or present. | H |
| 321 | INTERPRET THIS | Take any of the provided cartoons and come up with a matched pair of interpretations for what is happening. | H 4 |
| 320 | WHAT KIND OF FOAL AM I? | Mate any two of the horses qualifying for the Triple Crown races and come up with appropriate names for their foals. Maximum 18 letters and spaces. | H H |
| 319 | REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY | Create an original chiasmus, an ancient literary form in which meaning is derived by pairing two words or phrases, and then reversing their order. | H H H 3 |
| 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. | H H H H 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 |
| 313 | THE STYLE INVITATIONAL SOUVENIR SHOP | Come up with bad names for a new store at a mall. | 4 |
| 312 | BOOKS AND BOOKS | Combine any two works of literature--no movies or TV--into one, give its title and describe it in a brief, appealing blurb that might appear in Publishers' Weekly. | 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 |
| 310 | IT'S LIKE THIS | Come up with really lame analogies. | H H |
| 308 | GIVE US NO MO | Write an updated version of those old children's selecting rhymes. Your rhyme must (1) rhyme and (2) conform, at least loosely, to a point-and-shoot cadence that permits the elimination of one item from a group. | 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. | L H H H H |
| 306 | YOUNGIAN THERAPY | Suggest ways in which the Style Invitational or any other Washington area institution can become more relevant to younger people. | 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 |
| 303 | BOOM TIMES | Come up with old and new concerns for the baby boom generation. | H |
| 302 | UNSTATED TRUTHS | Come up with lines that you'll never hear the provided people say. | H H H |
| 301 | PICTURE THIS | What is happening in these cartoons? | H 3 |
| 300 | A BRAND NEW CONTEST | Come up with celebrity-brand products. | H H |
| 299 | ANOTHER LEFTIST RAG | Write the day's tabloid headlines with your left hand only. (This means you can use no keys to the right of 6, T, G and B.) | 2 |
| 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 |
| 297 | FREE FOR OIL | Take any article in today's paper, and write an outraged letter to the editor about it that totally misses the point, either by misreading a word or misunderstanding the topic. | 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. | H |
| 295 | PANEL DISCUSSION | Supply the contents of the missing panel in the provided cartoon strips. | H |
| 294 | PRODUCT LIARBILITY | Take the name of any commercial product and redefine it. | H 4 |
| 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 H H 4 |
| 289 | PLAY IT AGAIN, SHAM | Submit entries to any previous contest, ideas you might have thought of after the contest deadline had passed. | H H H |
| 287 | BEFORE AND AFTERMATH | Begin with a real name, append to it a word, name or expression that completes the bridge, and finally define the resulting phrase. | H H H H H H |
| 285 | ELEVENIS, ANYTWO? | Take a common phrase containing a specific number, add or subtract one, and explain the revised phrase. | H 3 |
| 284 | ASK BACKWARDS MCLXVII | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H H H |
| 283 | UH-OH | Come up with "uh-oh" lines, statements that occur in the middle of a seemingly benign speech or conversation, suddenly alerting the listener that he is about to hear some bad news. | 2 |
| 282 | TAKING SNIDES | Take any story anywhere in today's Post and append to it a single snide observation, concerning either the headline or the text of the story. | H 2 |
| 280 | EXPRESSING IT NICELY | Come up with colorful expressions for any of the six provided activities, to make them sound a little less tawdry. | H H 6 |
| 278 | THE STALE INVITATIONAL | Begin with a word. Add, subtract or change a single letter only, and then provide a new definition. | W H H H H |
| 276 | SPIT THE DIFFERENCE | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | H H |
| 274 | THE DROLL OF A LIFETIME | Be the New Yorker comics editor, and explain to readers of The Washington Post why the provided jokes are charmingly witty. | 2 |
| 273 | UNSEENS WE'D LIKE TO SEE | Provide examples of any of the provided categories of things that will never happen. | H H H |
| 269 | SIGNS, AND THE TIMES | Come up with new, helpful signage for downtown streets. You must state the problem, and propose the sign to rectify it. | H |
| 266 | DEFINITELY WEIRD | Take any word from the dictionary and redefine it. | H H H H 8 |
| 263 | THE GAME OF THE NAME | Propose a bad name for the provided categories. | H |
| 262 | CAMPAIGN FOR ONE | Design a line for Niels Hoven to deliver in his campaign for a student government office that will wake up a snoozing audience. | H |
| 260 | IT'S A SNAP | Come up with replacements for the two hackneyed answers: "Is the Pope Catholic?" and "When Hell freezes over. | 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 H |
| 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 H |
| 257 | LET US PLAY | Create a game, or a prank, that can be played using any two or more of the provided objects. | W H H |
| 256 | THE PYLE INVITATIONAL | Come up with hip, contemporary riddles and answers. The punch line must contain a painful pun. | H |
| 255 | SCANDAL IN THE WIND | Each of the provided items is somehow related to the current presidential scandal. Tell us how. | H H H H H |
| 254 | DOUBLE JEOPARDY! | Take any sentence appearing anywhere in today's Washington Post, and make up a question to which it could be a plausible answer. | H |
| 253 | IT'S A PITY | Enter any of the provided contests. Winners will be judged entirely on the basis of how pitiful an attempt at humor the entry is. | H E |
| 252 | MAKE YOUR MOVIE | Propose people who were the secret inspiration for famous movies. | H H |
| 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 H H E |
| 250 | OH, GREAT | Complete the sentence "Wouldn't it be great if . . . | H |
| 249 | BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS | Supply a silver lining for any scourge or social ill facing America or the world. | W H 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 |
| 245 | LIKE FUN | Complete any of the provided "A is like B because" sentences. | H 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 7 |
| 243 | VERSE THAN EVER | Write a rhyming poem of two to eight lines as a tribute to someone famous who died in 1997, the more awful the better. We will particularly value rhymes that thud, and extremes of emotion and sentiment. | H 4 |
| 242 | SACRED COW PIES | Take cheap shots at sacred institutions only, places and things that are so noble and wholesome they are beyond reproach, from among the items provided. | H 6 |
| 241 | CAN YOU BEAT THIS? | Come up with headlines describing the defeat of one pro team by another. | H H 4 |
| 240 | ADDING INSULT | Come up with elegant insults directed at any famous person, living or dead, such as the real encomiums above. | H |
| 239 | NAME THAT TOON | Send us the captions for cartoons not provided. | H |
| 237 | ASK BACKWARD | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H H 2 |
| 236 | CALLING THE TOON. | What is happening here? | 5 |
| 234 | THE JOKE'S ON YOU | Complete any of the provided jokes as it would be told by someone famous, living or dead. | H H |
| 230 | TALES FROM THE CRYPTOGRAM | Take any proper noun--a person, a book, a movie, whatever--and create for it an appropriate cryptogram. | H H H |
| 229 | WE CAN'T HEAR YOU | Supply an example for any of the five "Things you don't want to hear" categories provided. | H E 4 |
| 228 | MAKE MY DAY | Supply advice to today's spoiled kids about how bad things were when we were growing up. | H H |
| 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 4 |
| 225 | WE RESPECTfully decline to publish any dumb entries by YOU. | Come up with signs for a T-shirt or a bumper sticker that hide the real message in tiny type. | W 6 |
| 223 | ATTEMPTING REENTRY | Submit entries to any past contest, so long as you never submitted them before. | 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 H H |
| 220 | RSVP | Provide an answer to any of the dumb questions from Week 217. | H |
| 219 | VERBOSITY | Come up with new, obnoxious, self-conscious faux verbs and use them in sentences. | H H |
| 218 | CALLING THE TOON | Who are these people? What are they doing? | H |
| 217 | NO QUESTION ABOUT IT | Come up with truly stupid questions. | 4 |
| 215 | SON OF A PITCH | Write lavish blurbs in 50 words or fewer so some sucker will want to pay a lot of money for the provided items. | H H 4 |
| 214 | ASK BACKWARDS IX | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are your answers. What are the questions? | 4 |
| 212 | DUMB AS THE POST | Come up with even stupider crimes than those committed by Montgomery County's "gentleman burglars. | L H H H |
| 209 | WE NEED SOME SEASONING | Come up with the first signs of spring in Washington. | H H H |
| 207 | TIED TO BE FIT | Each of the eight provided items is related, in some fashion, to one or more of the provided individuals. You make the connections. | E |
| 206 | HYPHEN THE TERRIBLE II | Create a new word by combining the first half of any hyphenated word in today's newspaper with the second half of any other hyphenated word elsewhere in the same story, and supply a definition. | W H H H |
| 204 | DOUBLE EXPRESSO | Take any well-known colorful expression, and modernize it. | H H 3 |
| 200 | CAPTION CRUNCH IV | Supply a new caption to any photograph appearing anywhere in today's Post, to make it funnier. | H |
| 199 | WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | H H H |
| 198 | YOU MUST BE MAD II | Come up with proposals designed to infuriate special interest groups. | L |
| 197 | DAVE'S WORLD | Make David Twenhafel laugh. Any sort of delightful drollery or amusing witticism will do, so long as it is not the sort of lowbrow fare we usually favor. | H |
| 196 | YOU MUST BE MAD | Come up with a contemporary Scene We'd Like to See. | H H H 4 |
| 195 | THE MARTHIAN CHRONICLES | Come up with items for Martha Stewart's December-January calendar of projects. | H H H 5 |
| 193 | ASK BACKWARDS VIII | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions? | H 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 H H H 2 |
| 190 | OFFICE YOU CAN'T REFUSE | Come up with a Principle for the Workplace. | H H |
| 189 | YOU CAN PRANK ON IT | Come up with a hoax or prank that begins with any of the provided scenarios. | H |
| 188 | BLANKETY BLANKS | Complete any of the above sentences, substituting your own phrases for the well-known omitted words. | H |
| 186 | CALLING THE TOON | Who are these people? What are they doing? | H |
| 182 | CAN YOU STOP THIS? | Come up with a conversation stopper, a line likely to end all further discourse, perhaps even empty a room. | H H H |
| 181 | YOU CAN TAKE IT TO DEBUNK | Take a common slogan or saying and prove it wrong with at least one example. | H |
| 180 | WHEN IN DOUBT, PUN | Take any headline in today's Post and improve it by somehow turning it into a pun. | H |
| 178 | DEEP THROATS | Come up with Deep Thoughts, in the style of Jack Handey of "Saturday Night Live." A Deep Thought is a short, simple, seemingly inspirational observation that winds up being cynical, ironic, or just plain weird. | H |
| 177 | SOUNDS LIKE TROUBLE | Tell us what any of the provided sounds are. | H H |
| 175 | FOSSIL FOOLS | What would aliens mistakenly conclude about us from any of the provided items? | H H |
| 174 | THE EDGE OF MIGHT | Complete any of the four provided "you might" phrases. | H |
| 173 | DEAD RECKONING | Propose a question that might be asked by a living celebrity to a famous dead person. You must name the living person, name the dead person, and tell us the question. | H H |
| 171 | ON SECOND THOUGHT | Ideas that never got off the drawing board, for good reason. | H H |
| 169 | DIFF'RENT JOKES | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | H |
| 168 | LICENSE TO CARRY A PUN | Come up with original jokes like those provided. | H H H |
| 164 | MEAN MEANINGS | Translate things politicians say into what they really mean. | W H |
| 163 | WHAT KIND OF FOAL AM I? | Take the list of all 1996 Triple Crown nominees, couple up any two of them, and propose an appropriate name for their hypothetical foal. The foal's name must fit in no more than 18 characters, including spaces. | H |
| 161 | CAPITOL MISTAKES | Come up with very, very bad advice for first-time visitors to Washington. | H |
| 160 | SEEKING WISE GUYS | Come up with cool new bad-guy terms. | H H H H |
| 159 | ODDBALLS | Which item in each series does not belong? Explain your answer. | H |
| 158 | SO SUE US | Come up with frivolous lawsuits. | H E |
| 157 | WARNING SIGNS | Complete any of these "you might be about to" warning sentences. | H H |
| 156 | HYPHEN THE TERRIBLE | Create new word by combining the first half of a hyphenated word with the second half of a hyphenated word. Both words must appear in the same story anywhere in today's Washington Post. Each entry must provide a definition for the newly created word. | H H H H H |
| 155 | COMPARISON SHOPPING | Explain the difference between any two of the above items. | H |
| 153 | STUMP US | Complete this sentence, "I should be elected President of the United States because. . ." and launch your campaign. | H 2 |
| 152 | WE ARE CURIOUS (YELLOW) | Take any headline in today's Washington Post and rewrite it in tabloid fashion so the story seems a lot more scandalous and/or lurid than it is. | H |
| 151 | STRIP MINING | Come up with a concept for a new, controversial strip to replace an existing one in The Post. | H H |
| 150 | TRIAL BALLOONS | What are the people saying? | H |
| 147 | JUST FOR LIFFS | Come up with original liffs, which identify a familiar, tantalizing concept without a word to define it, and pairs it with a perfectly good but underutilized word that just loafs around on maps and street signs. | H |
| 145 | LOOIE, LOOIE | Come up with paired, themed ladies' room and men's room signs for various types of public places. | H |
| 142 | EXHIBITING BAD TENDENCIES | Come up with the winner of next year's Turner Prize, which says its aim is to expand ideas of what is art. | H |
| 141 | ASK BACKWARD VII | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | 2 |
| 140 | WHAT IF YOU GIVE IT A TRY? | Come up with "What-If" scenarios and logical outcomes. | L |
| 139 | EMPLOYMENT LINES | Come up with jobs that make even your crummy job seem good. | H H |
| 138 | LIST BUT NOT LEAST | Come up with Top-10-style lists for any of the above four subjects. | H H |
| 136 | NEW END IN SIGHT | Come up with new endings to make literary classics more suitable for Hollywood in the 1990s. | L H |
| 135 | JERRY-BUILT SOLUTIONS | Come up with Seinfeld-isms: whiny, quirky musings on little questions of life. | H |
| 134 | A SIMPLE CLERIHEW ERROR | Revive clerihews. A clerihew is a biographical poem in four lines divided into two rhyming couplets. The rhyme scheme is aa bb. The first line of the clerihew must contain the name of the subject of the poem. The lines must be of disparate meter, the clunkier the better. | L |
| 133 | LIKE, WOW. | Come up with funny analogies. | H H E |
| 129 | REMAKE US HAPPY | Come up with alternative story lines to movie titles, new or old. | W H |
| 128 | LIKE, DUH | Come up with snappy answers to stupid questions. | H H 5 |
| 127 | GADGET IF YOU CAN | Choose one or more of these devices and describe their use. | H H H |
| 124 | SPOON-FEED US. | Come up with spoonerisms, expressions based on the transposition of the initial sounds of two paired words. | H H H |
| 123 | WHY IS POOP FUNNY? | Come up with creative answers to any of the five questions above that might be asked by a 5-year-old. | H |
| 121 | IT'S NO USE | Come up with useless products. | H |
| 120 | SIMILE OUTRAGEOUS | Come up with inept analogies, rotten comparisons as a literary device. | H |
| 117 | GIVE 'EM HELOISE | Come up with a tribute to Heloise, that queen of inanely creative recycling. | H 3 |
| 115 | THE MNEMONIC PLAGUE | Come up with new mnemonic devices to remember complicated lists. | H H |
| 113 | WHAT KIND OF FOAL AM I? | Take a list of horses nominated to the Triple Crown races this year, choose any two, and propose a name for their offspring. | W |
| 111 | ASK BACKWARDS V | Here are the answers. What are the questions? | W |
| 110 | DO NOT INHALE THIS PAGE | Come up with absurd warning labels that might be found on common products. | 4 |
| 106 | DRAWING CONCLUSIONS | Who are these people, and what are they doing? | H H |
| 104 | HERE, DOGGEREL | Create poems so bad they thud. The first line must be a name. The second line can be as long or as short as you wish. The third line must sound the same as the first line, using the name as a verb or some other part of speech. | H |
| 98 | YOUR CHEATIN' ART | Come up with titles for country music songs featuring any one or more of the following themes: cheatin', thievin', drinkin', truckin', lovin' or dogs. | 5 |
| 96 | STICK IT IN YOUR ERA | Come up with a catch phrase for the 1990s. | H H 3 |
| 95 | HOW'S THAT AGAIN? | Take any headline appearing anywhere in The Post this week and completely rewrite the first lines of the story to put a different, unintended spin on it. | H |
| 94 | WEEKS 1-93 | Come up with a great answer to any previous Style Invitational contest, an answer you may have thought of after the contest was over. | H H |
| 93 | I WANT THE MONGOOSE | Tell us, in 50 words or fewer, why you must have this elegant piece of taxidermy featuring a snake being killed by a mongoose. | H H |
| 89 | CHILD'S PLAY | Come up with bad ideas for new toys for the Christmas season. | H H |
| 87 | WEST EASY, ANN | Come up with good things about West Virginia, in 50 words or fewer. | H H |
| 86 | EXCUSES, EXCUSES | Come up with funny excuses for various malfeasances. | H H H |
| 83 | BEDROOM FARCE | What questions were left out of the Great American Sex Survey? | H |
| 81 | HEADS, YOU LOSE | Take any two or more headlines anywhere in today's Washington Post, and combine them to make a funnier headline. | H H |
| 74 | SHIRT HAPPENS | In 10 words or fewer, what should the back of the "Year 2" T-shirt say? | H |
| 73 | LUNACY | Tell us what Neil Armstrong should have said upon stepping onto the moon's surface, instead of what he did, the greatest gaffe in the history of Historic Sayings. | H |
| 62 | BAD NEWS BEARERS | Come up with statements one would not want to hear from friends, relatives, service personnel, etc. | H 3 |
| 58 | PLAY IT AGAIN, DENZEL | Bring Casablanca into the 1990s. Write the opening of a plot outline, in 120 words or fewer. | H |
| 56 | DO THE HOOKY POKEY | Come up with inventive ways to call in sick or otherwise persuade your employer you must miss a day. | H H H |
| 55 | ESCAPE CLAUSES | Send us self-serving moral loopholes through which the enterprising 1990s transgressor can crawl. | 2 |
| 46 | WE WANT STUPID ENTRIES ONLY | Make up a sentence that, were it not for this contest, would never be uttered. | H |
| 42 | HEY, IT COULD BE WORSE | There are worse things in life than the Washington Redskins. Just tell us what they are. | H 4 |
| 38 | ASK BACKWARDS II | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions? | 6 |
| 35 | LIGHT AT THE END? | Tell the federal government what it should do with the 14-mile-long, 15-foot-diameter sausage-shaped tunnel it dug near Waxahachie, Tex., for the Superconducting Super Collider project that was scrapped by Congress last week. | H H |
| 32 | FATAL ART ATTACK | In 50 words or fewer, describe a performance art concept that might get public funding. Winners will be audacious enough to seem like art, but pretentious enough to seem to have a social "message. | 3 |
| 31 | INVITATION TO A DUAL | Divide the world into two types of people. | H H 3 |
| 11 | YOU GIVE US THE BACKS OFF OUR SHIRTS | The back of the shirt needs a slogan, something that captures the spirit of The Style Invitational. What is that spirit? You tell us. | 7 |
| 7 | BEAT THE BANDS | Come up with a name for rock bands. | L |