The Invitational Week 154: Do Wit Again
Part 1 of the year's second-chance contest. Plus some winning similes.
Pat Myers and Gene Weingarten
Dec 11, 2025




“Mount Flushmore: Orange You Glad I Made It?” An honorable mention in last April’s food-art contest, one of 24 you can enter or reenter this week.
Hello.

Humans are, if nothing else, synaptically challenged. Our brains are not always steel traps — sometimes, they’re more like those wooden boxes propped up on a stick with a string.


The point is, many of us aren’t always sharp and spontaneous. Sometimes great ideas come to us a little … late. And so it’s time once again for our two-part second-chance contest for the Invitationals of the past year, starting with the first six months.

These twenty-five humor contests — see them all here — check off just about all the boxes for Invitational classics: Obit poems! Neologisms! “Joint legislation”! Foal names! Song parodies! Photo captions! “Air quotes”! Ask Backwards! Even that contest for making dioramas and such with food, like the one in the photo at the top, by Kevin Dopart and Deborah Hensley. There are also many wild one-offs, such as the existential meaning of a rectangle of white space, and what Donald Trump might say if he delivered his own Gettysburg Address.

For Invitational Week 154: Enter (or reenter) any of the 25 contests from the first half of 2025, Week 105 through Week 129, up to 25 entries in all.

How to do it: The Google doc linked to above (that’s tinyurl.com/inv-list-154) lists and links to each of the contests, and gives extra info on how to enter. If you’re entering, you must look at those directions and FAQs.

Entry deadline is Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Friday, Dec. 26, a day late for obvious reasons. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form. (But note the special directions on the Google doc.)

Click here for this week’s entry form or go to tinyURL.com/inv-form-154.

This week’s winner receives this nifty set of sportswear. Yes, they’re press-on fingernail covers. Enough for both hands and some replacements.

Type faster, jump higher! This week’s prize.
‘As’ Cracks: The similes of Week 152
In Invitational Week 152 we brought back one of our most renowned contests, and asked you to provide funny similes. This got you all fired up, like Glocks on New Year’s Eve in Miami. We received more than six hundred entries, the best of which are below. Most are funny in their intentional badness; others are simply funny.

Third runner-up:
Being fired by the man she had once recruited to the company was a cruel irony, Brenda thought, like passing a “Speed Limit 65” in bumper-to-bumper traffic at 4 mph. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

Second runner-up:
Our tour bus was so big you could throw a dozen admirals and generals under it and still have room for a defense secretary.
(Michael Stein, Arlington, Va.)

First runner-up:
After his son showed him the picture he’d drawn in preschool that morning, the father patted the boy’s head, just the way Taylor pats Travis’s head when he shows her his paycheck from the Chiefs. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

And the winner of the trompe-l’oeil-face T-shirt:
His attitude was irritatingly patronizing, like a text saying “don’t share this code” — as if otherwise you’d run around telling everyone, “I just got a temporary account verification code, and it’s 917246!”
(Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)

Wits Not to Like: Honorable mentions
Edwin wasn’t acting at all like a person who’d be murdered in the next chapter. (Frank Osen)

The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled like a girl who stood on a burning deck whence all but she had fled. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park, Md.)

The conversation they had on their first date was as awkward as the sex they had on their second date. (Judy Freed, Philadelphia)

As he morosely punched his PIN number into the ATM machine after his day’s shift, Joe realized his job was as redundant as an acronym whose last initial is spelled out. (Frank Osen)

After the implant surgery Beth was as overdeveloped as the Jersey Shore. (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.)

A tie that you win in a shootout is like kissing your stepsister. (Malcolm Fleschner, Palo Alto, Calif.)

Fitting the couch through the door was like giving birth to a giant upholstered baby. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

His complexion was like the diaper pail of a baby raised on an all-sweet-potato diet. (Tim Stanonik, Falls Church, Va., a First Offender)

Hearing her two colleagues argue, the supervisor felt unsure about her level of responsibility in the situation, like when a stranger in a coffee shop asks you to watch their laptop while they go to the bathroom but then a long time elapses and they still haven’t come back. (Malcolm Fleschner)

Her cheeks were soft as the skin on instant pudding. (Frank Osen)

Her eyes were like two capital X’s, probably because she was dead. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.)

Her head emerged from the lake’s icy waters, desperately gasping for survival, like trying to level up on Candy Crush with only 1 percent left on your phone. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.)

He was as popular as a three-legged man in a three-legged race. (Stephen Dudzik)

He was sharp as a tack that had consummated an illicit affair with a grindstone. (Michael Stein)

His braying laugh revealed a smile with several discolored teeth and others missing completely, like a half-solved Wordle. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.)

His excuse fell to pieces like it had just pissed off MBS. (Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)

His manhood stood at attention like a tiny puppy dog with a giant nose, eager to be let in. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)

His speech was a word salad, one of the sad kinds that you find wrapped in plastic at a 24-hour convenience store, but with words. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.)

It turns out Marjorie Taylor Greene was crazy like a fox—a fox who follows a raccoon into a liquor store, zooms around with him breaking bottles and drinking out of them, sees the raccoon pass out, then resigns and runs back to the woods. (Terri Berg Smith, Rockville, Md.)

It was entirely unexpected — like a bolt from the chartreuse. (Kevin Dopart)

Janet’s farewell note was soul-crushing, like when the IRS instructs you to prepare Form 1065 to complete Schedules K-2 and K-3 in order to recognize Section 1250 gains on assets under Section 897(g). (Duncan Stevens)

She spoke with a voice velvety and smooth as a bowel movement after you’ve taken just the right amount of stool softener. (Sam Mertens)

The latest U.S. attorney appointment was as unkosher as a corned beef and crab sandwich with cheddar cheese and a Communion wafer on the side. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

The living space was so minimalist, it was like standing in the Trump Presidential Library reading room. (Leif Picoult)

The pain was like two bricks banging against my head, only not really that bad. (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)

The seat belt finally clicked, like the moment he worked out why Uncle Norm didn’t coach girls’ gymnastics anymore. (Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)

He kissed like a 3-year-old taking a drink from a water fountain. (Art Grinath)

Trying to discuss something with a MAGA cultist is like waiting for a Slinky to hop back upstairs. (Judy Freed)

The bride practically glowed, like the bioluminescent fungi that grow in decaying wood. (Pam Shermeyer)

Meg had issues like the periodical department of the Library of Congress has issues. (Barbara Turner)

His stare was vacant as the bread shelf in a D.C. supermarket when they’ve called for two inches of snow. (Rob Cohen)

After Ozempic she was as full of curves as a Cybertruck. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

He felt something in his pocket and pulled out a twenty, an unexpected surprise like reaching second base and finding a supernumerary nipple. (Sam Mertens)

A feeling of equal parts annoyance and dread came over him, like when you’re riding the subway and someone stands up and shouts, “Can I have everyone’s attention, please?” (Malcolm Fleschner)

The headline “‘As’ Cracks” is by Tom Witte; Kevin Dopart wrote the honorable-mentions subhead. The top headline, “Do Wit Again,” is by Chris Doyle and ran in a 2015 retrospective.

Still running — deadline Saturday, Dec. 13, at 9 p.m. ET: Our contest to contribute to a timeline of events that “happened” next year. See the link below.

InvisibleInk!
Idea: ()
Examples: ()
Judging: ()
Title: (Tom Witte; Chris Doyle)
Subhead: (Kevin Dopart)
Prize: ()
Add:H:1588: ()
VisibleInk!