| WEEK | DATE | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | THEMES | CONTEST LINKS | WINNER | RESULTS LINKS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1617 / 99 | 11/21/2024 | Mess With Our Heads | Look at a headline and see a funnier meaning. | HEA | Text WebPDF | (none) | |
| 1616 / 98 | 11/14/2024 | (none) | (none) | (none) | Text WebPDF | (none) | |
| 1615 / 97 | 11/07/2024 | (none) | (none) | (none) | Text WebPDF | (none) | 1617: Text WebPDF |
| 1614 / 96 | 10/31/2024 | The Tile Invitational XI | Make up new words with the letters we give you | SCR LET NEO | Text WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1616: Text WebPDF |
| 1613 / 95 | 10/24/2024 | What's the Worst That Could Happen? | After the election, we mean. And be funny about it. | POL JOK | Text WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1615: Text WebPDF |
| 1612 / 94 | 10/17/2024 | Asterisky Business | Put words in Horace's mouth: Tell us a joke that not everyone will get. | JOK COM | Text WebPDF | Jon Gearhart | 1614: Text WebPDF |
| 1611 / 93 | 10/10/2024 | Ask Backwards XLIII | We give you the 'answers'; you tell us the questions. | JEO | Text WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1613: Text WebPDF |
| 1610 / 92 | 10/03/2024 | Wryku | Write a haiku about something in the news. | POE | Text WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1612: Text WebPDF |
| 1609 / 91 | 09/26/2024 | Saved! | Tell us funny ways to be thrifty in these parlous times | CUL ADV | Text WebPDF | Tom Witte | 1611: Text WebPDF |
| 1608 / 90 | 09/19/2024 | Stick It | An election bumper sticker contest | BUM | Text WebPDF | Jon Gearhart | 1610: Text WebPDF |
| 1607 / 89 | 09/12/2024 | Funny, Init? | Compare two people who have the same initials. | DIF LET CUL | Text WebPDF | Michael Stein | 1609: Text WebPDF |
| 1606 / 88 | 09/05/2024 | The Cold New Trend | What would be an even sillier new fad than decorator refrigerator shelves? | CUL | Text WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1608: Text WebPDF |
| 1605 / 87 | 08/29/2024 | Get Thee to a Punnery | Change a quote slightly and credit it to someone else. | WOR | Text WebPDF | Tom Witte | 1607: Text WebPDF |
| 1604 / 86 | 08/22/2024 | Call Your Dog | Give us creative names for various pets | ??? | Text WebPDF | Craig Dykstra | 1606: Text WebPDF |
| 1603 / 85 | 08/15/2024 | Hu-boy, It's Limerixicon XXI | Write a limerick featuring a word beginning 'hu' or 'hy'. | LIM POE | Text WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1605: Text WebPDF |
| 1602 / 84 | 08/08/2024 | We Got Game | Tell us some funny ways to 'improve' a sport. | ADV ATH | Text WebPDF | Daniel Galef | 1604: Text WebPDF |
| 1601 / 83 | 08/01/2024 | Stop, Hey, What's That Sound? | Tell us what these noise-words mean. | ??? | Text WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1603: Text WebPDF |
| 1600 / 82 | 07/25/2024 | Taylorgaters | Take a line from a 'Tortured Poets' lyric and rhyme it with one of your own. | MUS POE | Text WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1602: Text WebPDF |
| 1599 / 81 | 07/18/2024 | Picture This | It's our caption contest. | CAR CAP | Text WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1601: Text WebPDF |
| 1598 / 80 | 07/11/2024 | Same Difference | We give you a random list of things, and you tell us how any two are alike or different. | DIF | Text WebPDF | Jonathan Jensen | 1600: Text WebPDF |
| 1597 / 79 | 07/04/2024 | The Farce of July | Give us new ways to celebrate Independence Day. | HIS JOK | Text WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1599: Text WebPDF |
| 1596 / 78 | 06/27/2024 | History for the tl;dr Crowd | Sum up an event for the 21st-century reader in a rhyming couplet. | HIS POE | Text WebPDF | Jonathan Jensen | 1598: Text WebPDF |
| 1595 / 77 | 06/20/2024 | Ebenezer Screwed | Write us a funny comic strip on a certain sensitive subject | COM JOK | Text WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1597: Text WebPDF |
| 1594 / 76 | 06/13/2024 | So Good! So Bad! So Ugly! | We bring back a classic contest | JOK | Text WebPDF | Judy Freed | 1596: Text WebPDF |
| 1593 / 75 | 06/06/2024 | Qwerty Lashes | Write us something funny from just a few letters of the keyboard. | LET | Text WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1595: Text WebPDF |
| 1592 / 74 | 05/30/2024 | It's Parody Time | Write a funny song about ... anything you like! | MUS POE | Text WebPDF | Dave Scheiber, Duncan Stevens |
1594: Text WebPDF |
| 1591 / 73 | 05/23/2024 | Our Typo Humor | More fun with headlines. | CAL HEA | Text WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1593: Text WebPDF |
| 1590 / 72 | 05/16/2024 | All You Need Is Ink | Take a line from a Beatles song and rhyme it with your own. | MUS POE | Text WebPDF | Terri Berg Smith | 1592: Text WebPDF |
| 1589 / 71 | 05/09/2024 | Wait Wait Right Here! | Write some 'Not My Job' questions a la the NPR quiz show. | QUE TRI | Text WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1591: Text WebPDF |
| 1588 / 70 | 05/02/2024 | Colt Fusion | Because of our munificense and guilt, you get a full hundred foal names to 'breed' for 'grandfoals' | HOR | Text WebPDF | Barbara Turner | 1590: Text WebPDF |
| 1587 / 69 | 04/25/2024 | The Trite Stuff | Replace some well-worn phrases with better ones. | CUL LAN | Text WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1589: Text WebPDF |
| 1586 / 68 | 04/18/2024 | Pun for the Roses | Our annual crazy-popular horse 'breeding' wordplay contest. | HOR | Text WebPDF | Seth Christenfeld | 1588: Text WebPDF |
| 1585 / 67 | 04/11/2024 | Bring Up the Rear | Move the last letter of a word to the front. | LET NEO | Text WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1587: Text WebPDF |
| 1584 / 66 | 04/05/2024 | Seeds of Change | Make an anagram of a name-brand product. | ANA BUS | Text WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1586: Text WebPDF |
| 1583 / 65 | 03/28/2024 | A Thousand Words | Write a funny poem about the artwork of your choice. | ART POE | Text WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1585: Text WebPDF |
| 1582 / 64 | 03/21/2024 | You're Workin' on a Chain, Gang | A classic connection game. | CHN WOR | Text WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1584: Text WebPDF |
| 1581 / 63 | 03/14/2024 | SOTU-Speak | Use words from Biden's State of the Union speech to write some lines for another oration. | BNK WOR POL | Text WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1583: Text WebPDF |
| 1580 / 62 | 03/07/2024 | Hi, Anxiety! | Tell us some funny ways to stress yourself out. | ADV | Text WebPDF | Sam Mertens | 1582: Text WebPDF |
| 1579 / 61 | 02/29/2024 | Captions Courageous | Write a description for any of six photos | CAP CAR | Text WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1581: Text WebPDF |
| 1578 / 60 | 02/22/2024 | The Pepys Show | Give us a diary entry from anyone in history. | HIS CUL POL | Text WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1580: Text WebPDF |
| 1577 / 59 | 02/15/2024 | Why the #$%#$% Not? | The Washington Post is looking for some bold ideas -- Let's show it some! | ADV | Text WebPDF | Steve "Potomac" Smith | 1579: Text WebPDF |
| 1576 / 58 | 02/08/2024 | Praise the Lurid! | Give us clickbait headlines for mundane stories. | HEA | Text WebPDF | Jon Gearhart | 1578: Text WebPDF |
| 1575 / 57 | 02/01/2024 | The Ughscars and the Phewlitzers | Give us an idea for a bad book or movie. | JOK | Text WebPDF | Judy Freed | 1577: Text WebPDF |
| 1574 / 56 | 01/25/2024 | Oh, Grandpa, Stop! | Turn a 'dad joke' into a less-tame 'grandpa joke' | JOK | Text WebPDF | Pam Shermeyer | 1576: Text WebPDF |
| 1573 / 55 | 01/18/2024 | The Invitational Week 55: Tour de Fours — Be STUD-ly | Give us a new word or phrase containing 'DUST' in any order of letters. | TDF NEO | Text WebPDF | Leif Picoult | 1575: Text WebPDF |
| 1572 / 54 | 01/11/2024 | S Is for Smartass | Presenting the Devil's Alphabet Soup | LET POE | Text WebPDF | Judy Freed | 1574: Text WebPDF |
| 1571 / 53 | 01/04/2024 | Dead Letters, our annual obit contest | Write a funny verse about someone who died in 2023. | POE EPI DLT | Text WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1573: Text WebPDF |
| 1570 / 52 | 12/28/2023 | The Invitational, Week 52: Replaying Around -- The 2023 retrospective, Part II | Enter or reenter our Week 26-50. | PRE | Text WebPDF | William C. Kennard | 1572: Text WebPDF |
| 1569 / 51 | 12/21/2023 | Look Back in Inker -- Our 2023 retrospective, Part 1 | Enter or reenter our Week 1-25 contests. | PRE | Text WebPDF | Karen Lambert | 1571: Text WebPDF |
| 1568 / 50 | 12/14/2023 | Nextra! Nextra! | Tell us the funny news events from 2024 | CUL POL | Text WebPDF | Steve "Potomac" Smith | 1570: Text WebPDF |
| 1567 / 49 | 12/07/2023 | Picture This | A caption contest | CAP CAR | Text WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1569: Text WebPDF |
| 1566 / 48 | 11/30/2023 | Well, the Good News Is ... | Put a positive spin on a bad-news headline | HEA | Text WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1568: Text WebPDF |
| 1565 / 47 | 11/23/2023 | Oh, For Namesakes! | Compare two people who share part of a name. | DIF | Text WebPDF | Terri Berg Smith | 1567: Text WebPDF |
| 1564 / 46 | 11/16/2023 | "Air" "Quotes" | A new forefinger contest | WOR INS NEO | Text WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1566: Text WebPDF |
| 1563 / 45 | 11/09/2023 | The Perfect(ly Ridiculous) Gift | Offer up some products for people-who-have-everything catalogs. | BUS CUL | Text WebPDF | Tom Witte | 1565: Text WebPDF |
| 1562 / 44 | 11/02/2023 | Rhyme and Rhyme Again | Write a funny "monorhyme", a poem whose lines all rhyme on the same sound. | POE | Text WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1564: Text WebPDF |
| 1561 / 43 | 10/26/2023 | Let It Be a Lesson to Us | Tell us some things to be learned from Costco, the bathroom, TV shows, etc. | CUL ADV | Text WebPDF | April Musser Brand | 1563: Text WebPDF |
| 1560 / 42 | 10/19/2023 | The 'Hole Story | Write us a funny 'Am I The Asshole' question | CUL INS FIC | Text WebPDF | Sam Mertens | 1562: Text WebPDF |
| 1559 / 41 | 10/12/2023 | As the Word Turns | 'Discover' new words by snaking through this random grid | WOR LET GRD NEO | Text WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1561: Text WebPDF |
| 1558 / 40 | 10/05/2023 | It's Parody Time | Send up the news with those songs and videos you do so well | MUS POE POL | Text WebPDF | Jonathan Jensen, Tom Chalkley |
1560: Text WebPDF |
| 1557 / 39 | 09/28/2023 | Tailgating On the Highway | Pair a Dylan line with your own rhyming one | MUS POE | Text WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1559: Text WebPDF |
| 1556 / 38 | 09/21/2023 | Cross Us Up | Mirror a phrase, more or less | WOR | Text WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1558: Text WebPDF |
| 1555 / 37 | 09/14/2023 | Do You Have to Spell It Out for Us? | Give us "backronyms" | WOR CUL | Text WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1557: Text WebPDF |
| 1554 / 36 | 09/07/2023 | 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 | POL CUL | Text WebPDF | Steve "Potomac" Smith | 1556: Text WebPDF |
| 1553 / 35 | 08/31/2023 | 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. | POE | Text WebPDF | Jonathan Jensen | 1555: Text WebPDF |
| 1552 / 34 | 08/24/2023 | A Mirthday Party | Link two people who share a birthday | DIF | Text WebPDF | Michael Stein | 1554: Text WebPDF |
| 1551 / 33 | 08/17/2023 | Ask Backwards XLII | We give the answers. You give the questions. | JEO | Text WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1553: Text WebPDF |
| 1550 / 32 | 08/10/2023 | Holy Moly, It's Limerixicon XX | Write a limerick featuring a word beginning "ho-". | LIM POE | Text WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1552: Text WebPDF |
| 1549 / 31 | 08/03/2023 | The Tile Invitational X | It's our 10th running of this coin-a-word game. | SCR LET NEO | Text WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1551: Text WebPDF |
| 1548 / 30 | 07/27/2023 | Poll-ish Jokes | Come up with a ridiculous reader poll. | QUE | Text WebPDF | Dan Sachs | 1550: Text WebPDF |
| 1547 / 29 | 07/19/2023 | Alphabettering | Write a funny sentence containing all 26 letters. | WOR LET | Text WebPDF | Roy Ashley | 1549: Text WebPDF |
| 1546 / 28 | 07/13/2023 | Put It in Bee-verse | Write a funny poem using a spelling bee word | BEE POE WOR | Text WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1548: Text WebPDF |
| 1545 / 27 | 07/06/2023 | Their Base Behavior | Tell humorously how some business or organization could alter its product or message to appeal to Trump’s cult. | CUL POL | Text WebPDF | Diana Oertel | 1547: Text WebPDF |
| 1544 / 26 | 06/29/2023 | Same Difference | Tell us humorously how items on the list are alike, different, or otherwise linked. | DIF | Text WebPDF | Jon Carter | 1546: Text WebPDF |
| 1543 / 25 | 06/22/2023 | F Things Up | Neologisms by adding Fs or changing letters to F | CAL NEO | Text WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1545: Text WebPDF |
| 1542 / 24 | 06/15/2023 | Your (B)ad Here | Tweak an ad slogan to use it for another product | SLO BUS | Text WebPDF | Gregory Dunn | 1544: Text WebPDF |
| 1541 / 23 | 06/08/2023 | Wrong enough for ya? | Fake facts about the weather | FIC | Text WebPDF | Sam Mertens | 1543: Text WebPDF |
| 1540 / 22 | 05/29/2023 | Picture This | It's caption contest time, with eight motley pictures to choose from. | CAR CAP | Text WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1542: Text WebPDF |
| 1539 / 21 | 05/25/2023 | Get Real, Reel | Name a scene in a movie, a TV show, or literature, and tell us how it might be revised (perhaps less satisfyingly but far more realistically) | DIF MOV LIT TEL | Text WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1541: Text WebPDF |
| 1538 / 20 | 05/18/2023 | Rhymes Against Humanity | Write a four-line poem about people in the news, using either of two poetic forms | POE | Text WebPDF | Pam Shermeyer | 1540: Text WebPDF |
| 1537 / 19 | 05/11/2023 | A Crooning Achievement | Write a lyric for a politician to sing. | MUS POL | Text WebPDF | Michael Stein | 1539: Text WebPDF |
| 1536 / 18 | 05/04/2023 | Colt Following | Now that we have the winner and punners-up of our venerable foal-name contest, it's time for 'grandfoals'. | HOR | Text WebPDF | Laurie Brink | 1538: Text WebPDF |
| 1535 / 17 | 04/27/2023 | The Poops Diorama | Make some funny art with toilet paper and send us a photo. | PIX | Text WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1537: Text WebPDF |
| 1534 / 16 | 04/20/2023 | Pun for the Roses | Our renowned horse name 'breeding' contest returns! | HOR | Text WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1536: Text WebPDF |
| 1533 / 15 | 04/13/2023 | The Very Last 'Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions' | Tell us a stupid question followed by a funny retort. | JOK | Text WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1535: Text WebPDF |
| 1532 / 14 | 04/06/2023 | We Bee Back With Neologisms | Make up words using letter sets from the NYT Spelling Bee game | NEO WOR LET BEE | Text WebPDF | Jonathan Jensen | 1534: Text WebPDF |
| 1531 / 13 | 03/30/2023 | The Worst New Contest Ever | Describe something that would be worse than a second Trump presidency | POL | Text WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1533: Text WebPDF |
| 1530 / 12 | 03/23/2023 | Mess With Our Heads | Reinterpret any headline by adding a 'bank head'. | HEA | Text WebPDF | Jon Carter | 1532: Text WebPDF |
| 1529 / 11 | 03/16/2023 | Hello, Dall-E! | Our new contest partners you and a machine. | ART | Text WebPDF | Jon Carter | 1531: Text WebPDF |
| 1528 / 10 | 03/09/2023 | It's Our Birthday. Party Like It's 1993. | As the Invite turns 30, enter your choice of contests from our year of infancy | STY | Text WebPDF | Malcolm Fleschner | 1530: Text WebPDF |
| 1527 / 9 | 03/02/2023 | Film Flim-Flam | Use all the letters in a movie title to make a new movie | MOV LET ANA | Text WebPDF | Sam Mertens | 1529: Text WebPDF |
| 1526 / 8 | 02/23/2023 | Poke Us Till We Giggle | Write a "poke", or a joke recast as a rhyming poem | JOK POE | Text WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1528: Text WebPDF |
| 1525 / 7 | 02/16/2023 | Arty Har-har | Give us an idea for a humorously audacious modern art work | ART CUL | Text WebPDF | Jon Carter | 1527: Text WebPDF |
| 1524 / 6 | 02/09/2023 | Picture This | A caption contest | CAR CAP | Text WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1526: Text WebPDF |
| 1523 / 5 | 02/02/2023 | Where in Hell ...? | Name a "circle" for some "evil", plus a suitable punishment | CUL | Text WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1525: Text WebPDF |
| 1522 / 4 | 01/26/2023 | Questionable Journalism | Find a sentence published in the next week and tell us what question it could answer | QUE | Text WebPDF | Michael Gips | 1524: Text WebPDF |
| 1521 / 3 | 01/19/2023 | Send Us the Bill | Our "Joint Legislation" contest | LEG POL | Text WebPDF | Pam Shermeyer | 1523: Text WebPDF |
| 1520 / 2 | 01/12/2023 | Nextra! Nextra! | Read All About it. Predict the big news events of 2023 | CUL POL | Text WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1522: Text WebPDF |
| 1519 / 1 | 01/05/2023 | Dead Letters | The post-Post humor contest barely skips a beat as the Czar and Empress begin with the annual obit poems. | POE EPI DLT | Text WebPDF | Pam Shermeyer | 1521: Text WebPDF |
| 1518 | 12/11/2022 | The final Post edition | Some all-time favorite entries | STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | |
| 1517 | 12/04/2022 | See you next week | Nominate your favorite inking entries — your own or someone else’s — to be included in next week’s final edition. | STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | |
| 1516 | 11/27/2022 | Questionable Journalism | Choose any sentence (or the major part of a sentence) from any publication dated Nov. 23-Dec. 5 and invent a question it could answer. | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Judging Canceled |
|
| 1515 | 11/20/2022 | 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. | LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Judy Freed | 1519: Text WebPDF |
| 1514 | 11/13/2022 | Ask Backwards XLI | Above are the answers; you supply the questions. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Judging Canceled |
|
| 1513 | 11/06/2022 | You're such a card | Come up with a greeting card rhyme for an un-greeting-card occasion. | POE CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Karen Lambert | 1517: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1512 | 10/30/2022 | Alphabetter | Write a 26-word sentence or other passage whose words each start with a different letter — except that the X in the X-word may appear elsewhere in the word, as long as the word has an “ex” syllable. | WOR LAN LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1516: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1511 | 10/23/2022 | 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. | WOR NEO INS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rivka Liss-Levinson | 1515: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1510 | 10/16/2022 | Only U (or A, E, I or O) | Write a humorous univocalic poem — one that uses only one of the vowels A, E, I, O or U | POE WOR LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1514: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1509 | 10/09/2022 | MASH MASH: combine 2 one-word movies | Combine two single-word movie titles to make a new movie and describe it. | MOV WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Terri Berg Smith | 1513: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1508 | 10/02/2022 | 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. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bird Waring | 1512: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1507 | 09/25/2022 | 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. | LOC SLO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1511: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1506 | 09/18/2022 | Let's go magnet-fishing with new words | From the provided list, write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer. | POE WOR DIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1510: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1505 | 09/11/2022 | 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. | LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1509: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1504 | 09/04/2022 | All set — anagram all 100 Scrabble tiles | Write a Scrabblegram — an anagram of all 100 tiles in an English-language Scrabble set (your choice for the two blanks). Any punctuation is fine. | SCR ANA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1508: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1503 | 08/28/2022 | Sing of your supper--parodies about food | Write a humorous song on the subject of food. | POE MUS FOO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1507: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1502 | 08/21/2022 | It's Hi-time for Limerixicon XIX | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any word, name or term beginning with “hi-. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1506: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1501 | 08/14/2022 | Try a little 'kindness' | Tell about an “act of kindness” that you or someone else does that, well, won’t be appreciated. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Coleman Glenn | 1505: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1500 | 08/07/2022 | These go to 15 | Make up a word or phrase whose Scrabble letter values add up to exactly 15 (no blanks!) and define it. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1504: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1499 | 07/31/2022 | Picture This, a cartoon caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Carol Lasky | 1503: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1498 | 07/24/2022 | 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. | WOR POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bob Kruger | 1502: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1497 | 07/17/2022 | The if-word | Give us a "what if" scenario and its humorous result | HIS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1501: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1496 | 07/10/2022 | Same Difference -- compare two items on this list | Tell us humorously how any two (or more) items on the provided list are alike or different, or linked in some other way. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1500: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1495 | 07/03/2022 | We all need a break | [There's no new contest this week -- our first skipped contest since 2019 -- to that the Empress can take a week off four weeks from now.] | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | 1499: Text PrintPDF WebPDF | |
| 1494 | 06/26/2022 | Put it in bee-verse | Write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer that includes at least one of the words used in Round 4 or later of this year's bee; OR: write a joke in Q&A form that uses at least one of the words. | BEE POE WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1498: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1493 | 06/19/2022 | 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. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1497: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1492 | 06/12/2022 | Set us right -- conservative humor | Send us conservative-leaning humor in a Q&A joke format or a knock-knock joke. | POL JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Leif Picoult | 1496: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1491 | 06/05/2022 | 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. | WOR LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bird Waring | 1495: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1490 | 05/29/2022 | It's parody time -- sing the news | Write a satiric song about anything in the news these days. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Stein | 1494: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1489 | 05/22/2022 | Let's movie things around | Rearrange the words of a movie title to create a new movie, then describe it | MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Donald Norum | 1493: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1488 | 05/15/2022 | Let's recycle! | Come up with humorous uses for ANY product or combination of products listed at RepurposeMaterials.com, including but no restricted to the provided list. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jonathan Jensen | 1492: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1487 | 05/08/2022 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Laurie Brink | 1491: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1486 | 05/01/2022 | No can do: Signs of incompetence | Give us a clue that someone was incompetent in a given field. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Cohen | 1490: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1485 | 04/24/2022 | Switchcraft -- transpose two letters in a word | Switch the positions of two letters within a word, name, title or phrase, then describe the result. | LET WOR CAL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1489: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1484 | 04/17/2022 | Two ways about it | What's something (printable) you could say in two -- or more -- of the provided situations. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John Glenn | 1488: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1483 | 04/10/2022 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John O'Byrne | 1487: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1482 | 04/03/2022 | 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. | LET SCR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jamie Martindale | 1486: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1481 | 03/27/2022 | Mess with our heads | Reinterpret some actual headline (or a major part of it), from any publication, print or online. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bill Dorner | 1485: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1480 | 03/20/2022 | Oh, you don't really mean that | Define" inaccurately and humorously any of the provided words. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Mann | 1484: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1479 | 03/13/2022 | It's a WordleVite! Write a prhase of 5-letter words | Write a phrase or sentence consisting of two to six five-letter words or names, then define it or say something funny about it. AND the Wordle part: once a letter is in the right, "green" place -- the same place as it is in the final word (like the P in "pouty" in the example provided) -- your subsequent words must keep those letters in their right places. | WOR LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1483: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1478 | 03/06/2022 | It's a small, small world | Write a humorous poem, eight lines max, using only words from the provided list of 1,000 most common English words. | POE WOR BNK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Pam Shermeyer | 1482: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1477 | 02/27/2022 | Thinking outside the big box | Send us a humorous "review" for any of the provided items listed on walmart.com<\em>. | BUS CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bill Cromwell | 1481: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1476 | 02/20/2022 | 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. | GOO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Richard Lorentz | 1480: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1475 | 02/13/2022 | Hail to the Commanders! | Write a song (set to any familiar tune) or shouted cheer for the Washington Commanders. OR: Write for any other D.C. institution, e.g., the Metro, the Senate, the National Zoo, The Washington Post. | MUS POE WAS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Shirley | 1479: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1474 | 02/06/2022 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Steve "Potomac" Smith | 1478: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1473 | 01/30/2022 | Sign right here | Write a funny message for the overhead highway sign. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 1477: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1472 | 01/23/2022 | Phony money -- tell us fake financial trivia | Tell us some fake trivia about money or the financial system. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Eric Nelkin | 1476: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1471 | 01/16/2022 | 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. | LET WOR TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1475: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1470 | 01/09/2022 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Sarah Walsh | 1474: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1469 | 01/02/2022 | 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. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Rackow | 1473: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1468 | 12/26/2021 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1440 through 1464. | STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1472: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1467 | 12/19/2021 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1413 through 1439, except for Weeks 1414-1416. | STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Rifkin | 1471: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1466 | 12/12/2021 | Be invitationally correct | Give us a funny "correction" that a newspaper or magazine might offer. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Sam Mertens | 1470: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1465 | 12/05/2021 | Put your '22 cents in for our annual pre-timeline | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2022. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dave Airozo | 1469: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1464 | 11/28/2021 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Craig Dykstra | 1468: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1463 | 11/21/2021 | Fork over some (new) Spoonerisms | Write and original Q-A joke featuring a spoonerism. | WOR JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1467: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1462 | 11/14/2021 | Time for a new career? | Tell what would happen if any two people switched professions or other roles. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Coleman Glenn | 1466: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1461 | 11/07/2021 | 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. | WOR CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Donald Norum | 1465: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1460 | 10/31/2021 | These new words are on fleek | From the provided list, write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer. | WOR POE DIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Coleman Glenn | 1464: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1459 | 10/24/2021 | And we quote: 'It's Parody Time' | Write humorous first-person lyrics for a song "by" some particular person. | MUS POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1463: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1458 | 10/17/2021 | 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. | LET TEL ANA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Coleman Glenn | 1462: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1457 | 10/10/2021 | What is Ask Backwards XL? | You are on "Jeopardy!"; various answers are provided. You provide the questions. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Hazle | 1461: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1456 | 10/03/2021 | The hunting of the snark | Ask an insulting rhetorical question in the form (or a variation) of "Is that your _______ or _______? | QUE JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1460: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1455 | 09/26/2021 | Good idea! Or not. | Cite a "good idea' and, with a small change of wording, a "bad idea". | WOR ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ryan Martinez | 1459: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1454 | 09/19/2021 | Punku 3 -- haiku with a pun | Create a haiku containing a pun or similar wordplay. | POE WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Laura M. Clairmont | 1458: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1453 | 09/12/2021 | Haven't read it -- mis-subtitle a book | Choose any book title listed on Amazon and misinterpret it by adding a subtitle. | LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | David Prevar | 1457: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1452 | 09/05/2021 | 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. | WOR LET GRD NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Leif Picoult | 1456: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1451 | 08/29/2021 | Could have said it worse ourselves | Give us a humorously bad "first draft" of a famous line from history, literature or entertainment. | HIS CUL LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Marli Melton | 1455: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1450 | 08/22/2021 | Putting the 'anoid' in humanoid | Humorously describe some aspect of our current society as a space alien and/or future anthropologist might interpret it. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Scott Richards | 1454: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1449 | 08/15/2021 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1453: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1448 | 08/08/2021 | Hear, hear -- it's Limerixicon XVIII | Supply a humerous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any word, name or term beginning with "he-". | LIM POE WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1452: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1447 | 08/01/2021 | 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". | HEA ENG | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Drew Bennett | 1451: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1446 | 07/25/2021 | Clue us in -- and we spill the beans | Write novel clues for as many as 25 answers in the provided grid, across or down, first substituting your own letters for any covered ones. | CRO LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Roy Ashley | 1450: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1445 | 07/18/2021 | Put it in bee-verse -- poems with spelling words | Write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer that includes at least one of the words used in Round 8 or later of this year's bee; OR: write a joke in Q&A form that uses at least one of the words. | POE WOR BEE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1449: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1444 | 07/11/2021 | 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. | ATH NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1448: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1443 | 07/04/2021 | 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, | LET LEG POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1447: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1442 | 06/27/2021 | 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. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich, Jeff Rackow |
1446: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1441 | 06/20/2021 | \'Rick rolling: songs as limericks | Sum up or otherwise reflect a well-known song as a limerick. | MUS LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Emma Daley | 1445: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1440 | 06/13/2021 | It's parody time! | Write a satiric song about anything in the news these days. | POE MUS POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Sophie Crafts, Hildy Zampella |
1444: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1439 | 06/06/2021 | Vowel Movement: The Musical | Choose a song title; remove all the vowels; then add back as many vowels as you like to create a new title, and describe the song. You might also provide a line or two of lyrics. | LET MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1443: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1438 | 05/30/2021 | Nothing but the untruth: Fake trivia about the law | Give us some bogus trivia about the law -- lawyers, courts, judges, police, odd laws, terminology, what have you. | TRI POL FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bruce Carlson | 1442: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1437 | 05/23/2021 | One-offs: A 'typo' neologism contest | You're a fat-fingered typist: Change a word, name or phrase by either adding or substituting one letter that's adjacent (in any direction) to the original one on a regular QWERTY keyboard, or by doubling the correct letter. | LET CAL WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1441: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1436 | 05/16/2021 | Haven't seen it: Fun with movie titles | Misinterpret a movie title in a supposed plot description. | MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ann Martin | 1440: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1435 | 05/09/2021 | Who needs Peeps when we have CICADAS? | Create a witty visual artwork that includes at least one real cicada or cicada casing (the body-shaped shell from which the insect emerges) and send us a photo of it. | PIX | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Deborah Hensley, Kevin Dopart |
1439: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1434 | 05/02/2021 | Go ahead, mate my bay: Grandfoals | Breed" any two of this week's inking foal names and name the "grandfoal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jonathan Paul | 1438: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1433 | 04/25/2021 | Questionable Journalism | Choose any sentence (not a headline!) in an article or ad in The Washington Post or another publication dated April 22 through May 3, and write a question it might humorously answer. | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jon Ketzner | 1437: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1432 | 04/18/2021 | 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. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1436: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1431 | 04/11/2021 | The On-Our-Way-Back Machine | Tell us how (in some funny way) things will be different as we emerge from the pandemic. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ben Aronin | 1435: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1430 | 04/04/2021 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Matt Monitto | 1434: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1429 | 03/28/2021 | Forsoothsayers | Quote a line or so from any Shakespeare work, and exemplify it with a contemporary quote, real or imagined. | LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1433: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1428 | 03/21/2021 | 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. | LET SCR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1432: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1427 | 03/14/2021 | Rocky of ages, or Badenov for you? | State any historical event -- right up to 2021 -- in the provided "A, or B" format. | HIS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1431: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1426 | 03/07/2021 | Mess with our (or others') heads | Reinterpret an actual headline (or a major part of it) by adding a bank head, or subtitle. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1430: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1425 | 02/28/2021 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | David Prevar | 1429: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1424 | 02/21/2021 | 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. | LET WOR BEE NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1428: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1423 | 02/14/2021 | 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. | ANA HEA LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1427: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1422 | 02/07/2021 | The Collaboratory | Think of a book, movie or song title. Then pair its creator, star, singer, etc., with an unrelated "collaborator" to produce a wordplay on the title. | WOR MUS LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Harold Mantle | 1426: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1421 | 01/31/2021 | Alternaugural Address '21 | Write a humorous passage -- a "quote", an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything -- using only words that appear in Biden's inaugural address. | WOR BNK POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | George Thompson | 1425: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1420 | 01/24/2021 | Singing on the job -- a parody contest | Write a humorous "work song" for any job or profession. Set it to any well-known tune. | MUS POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bob Kruger | 1424: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1419 | 01/17/2021 | 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. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Sarah Walsh | 1423: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1418 | 01/10/2021 | Tour de Fours XVII: Just Undo It | Coin a word or multi-word term containing the letters U-N-D-O -- consecutive but in any order -- and describe it. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Terri Berg Smith | 1422: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1417 | 01/03/2021 | Dead Letters, our obit poem contest | Write a poem of no longer than eight lines (plus an optional title) about someone who died in 2020. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1421: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1416 | 12/27/2020 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1388 through 1412. | STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jonathan Jensen | 1420: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1415 | 12/20/2020 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1360 through 1387, except for Weeks 1361-1363. | STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1419: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1414 | 12/13/2020 | Divining comedy: 2021 predictions | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2021. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Steve "Potomac" Smith | 1418: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1413 | 12/06/2020 | We're finna give you some new words | Write a poem of eight lines or fewer featuring one or more of the provided terms. The terms must be used as they're defined in the new m-w.com listing. | POE WOR DIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1417: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1412 | 11/29/2020 | Jumble bells -- anagram a song line | Rearrange all the letters in a song title, or a line (or more if you dare!) from a song. Optional: Offer a parody of the original tune (or a few lines of it) that refers to the new title. | LET MUS POE ANA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Tony Crafter | 1416: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1411 | 11/22/2020 | Back end of a Bulwer | Write a humorously awful final sentence or two to an imaginary novel. | LIT LAN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hannah Seidel | 1415: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1410 | 11/15/2020 | Legends of the fall -- more fictoids | Tell us some bogus trivia about autumn, or things that happen (or have happened) in autumn. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Steve "Potomac" Smith | 1414: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1409 | 11/08/2020 | 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. | LET POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1413: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1408 | 11/01/2020 | Re-Organization | Slightly change the name of a nonprofit organization and describe it. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John McCooey | 1412: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1407 | 10/25/2020 | 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. | BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1411: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1406 | 10/18/2020 | 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. | POE LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1410: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1405 | 10/11/2020 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kathy El-Assal | 1409: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1404 | 10/04/2020 | Ask Backwards XXXIX | The answers are provided. You supply the questions. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1408: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1403 | 09/27/2020 | Who was that masked man? | Current a short listing for a current or past TV show that has a coronavirus story line, or one reflecting some other issue in the news right now. | CUL TEL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 1407: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1402 | 09/20/2020 | The fourteeners--a neologism contest | Make up a word whose Scrabble letter values add up to exactly 14 (no blanks!), and define it. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 1406: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1401 | 09/13/2020 | How hai? A joke-haiku contest | Write a joke (roughly) in the "It's so xxx" genre as a haiku. | POE JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Mann | 1405: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1400 | 09/06/2020 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Steve Langer | 1404: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1399 | 08/30/2020 | The lie-zy days of summer | Tell us some bogus trivia about the summer or things that happen or have happened in the summer. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Rackow | 1403: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1398 | 08/23/2020 | This is the year that is | Describe the year 2020 in a novel, colorful metaphor or simile. You may also offer an original graphic. | LAN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1402: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1397 | 08/16/2020 | Trope springs eternal | Use any of the four provided standard settings -- (a) desert island, (b) bartender at a bar, (c) desert, (d) psychiatrist next to a couch -- and describe a cartoon that includes your choice of characters, along with a caption. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Cohen | 1401: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1396 | 08/09/2020 | Hail Limerixicon XVII: Write a limerick featuring a 'ha-' word | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "ha-". | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1400: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1395 | 08/02/2020 | Add nauseam: A plus-one contest | Add a "plus one" to some familiar numerical grouping, true or fictional | ??? | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Cohen | 1399: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1394 | 07/26/2020 | 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. | MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1398: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1393 | 07/19/2020 | Second chance (acned conches?) for anagrams | Describe any of the provided anagram businesses, or offer its slogan. | ANA BUS SLO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Edmund Conti | 1397: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1392 | 07/12/2020 | Picture this -- caption these cartoons | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided Bob Staake cartoons. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1396: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1391 | 07/05/2020 | No-covid zone -- a neologism contest | Coin a new word or phrase that lacks C, O, V, I and D and describe it. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1395: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1390 | 06/28/2020 | 'Same difference' for a new time | Explain how any two of the items in the provided list are similar, different or otherwise linked. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1394: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1389 | 06/21/2020 | TankaWanka 4: Haiku plus tu | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1393: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1388 | 06/14/2020 | Turning around a business | Create a business, product, organization or similar entity that contains a word, name or phrase and its anagram, and describe it. | BUS ANA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1392: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1387 | 06/07/2020 | 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. | LET MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Sue Lin Chong | 1391: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1386 | 05/31/2020 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Steve Fahey | 1390: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1385 | 05/24/2020 | Don't you want to see new places? | Change any place name slightly and describe the new place. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ben Sack | 1389: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1384 | 05/17/2020 | Of course there are stupid questions! | Give us stupid questions, especially ones reflecting Our Current Situation. | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1388: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1383 | 05/10/2020 | 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. | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ellen Raphaeli | 1387: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1382 | 05/03/2020 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1386: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1381 | 04/26/2020 | Let's be equinoxious with fictoids about spring | Tell us some untrue trivia about springtime or things that happen or happened in the spring. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jonathan Jensen | 1385: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1380 | 04/19/2020 | Both sides now | Delete one or more letters (in a row) from a word or brief phrase to find another word, and define it. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1384: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1379 | 04/12/2020 | Your wish: A pun -- a star | Tell a joke, in your choice of form, whose punchline is a pun on a song title or lyric. | JOK WOR MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1383: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1378 | 04/05/2020 | 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). | MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1382: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1377 | 03/29/2020 | 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. | ATH | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John O'Byrne | 1381: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1376 | 03/22/2020 | Get thee to a funnery | Add a character (or more) to a Shakespeare play and supply some resulting dialogue. | LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Gips | 1380: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1375 | 03/15/2020 | Mess With Our Heads | Reinterpret an actual headline (or a major part of it) by adding a bank head, or subtitle. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michelle Christophorou | 1379: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1374 | 03/08/2020 | Versus' verses in a rap battle | Write a mini-"rap" between any two characters, real or fictional, as in the provided ERB example. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1378: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1373 | 03/01/2020 | Prime time for some Amazon reviews | Send us a humorous "review" for any of the provided Amazon-listed items. | BUS CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | David Prevar | 1377: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1372 | 02/23/2020 | Trash talking, 1880-style | Write a quatrain or -- heck -- two of Balliol rhyme about some person. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1376: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1371 | 02/16/2020 | 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. | LET SCR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1375: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1370 | 02/09/2020 | What's in a name? | Write something about a well-known person, real or fictional, using only the letters in that person's name. | LET CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1374: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1369 | 02/02/2020 | Shoot us some oops | Tell us a concise original joke that revolves around a typo or misheard word. | JOK WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1373: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1368 | 01/26/2020 | Picture This -- cartoon captions | Supply a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Sam Mertens | 1372: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1367 | 01/19/2020 | Pick me up at work, okay? | Give a pickup line from someone in a particular profession, or from a particular person or fictional character. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Alan Duxbury | 1371: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1366 | 01/12/2020 | Tour de Fours XVI -- It's the LIAR club | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter block L-I-A-R and describe it. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bill Dorner | 1370: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1365 | 01/05/2020 | Dead Letters, our obit poem contest | Write a poem of eight lines or fewer (plus an optional title) about someone who died in 2019. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1369: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1364 | 12/29/2019 | Clue us in | Supply clever, funny clues for as many as 25 of the words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | CRO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Tom Witte | 1368: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1363 | 12/22/2019 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1334 through Week 1359. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1367: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1362 | 12/15/2019 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1307 through 1333, except for Weeks 1309-1311. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1366: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1361 | 12/08/2019 | 2020 vision -- the year in preview | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2020. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1365: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1360 | 12/01/2019 | The lyin' in winter: Seasonal fictoids | Give us some untrue trivia about winter or things that occur in winter. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1364: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1359 | 11/24/2019 | 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). | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Matt Monitto | 1363: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1358 | 11/17/2019 | 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"). | WOR BNK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1362: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1357 | 11/10/2019 | It's parody time! | Write a satirical song about anything in the news right now, set to a familiar tune. | MUS POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1361: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1356 | 11/03/2019 | Ask Backwards 38 | Sixteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jonathan Jensen | 1360: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1355 | 10/27/2019 | The inside word | Highlight part of a word, name or short phrase in "air quotes" to give the word a new meaning or description. | WOR INS NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1359: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1354 | 10/20/2019 | As the Word turns 5: Taking our vowels | 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. | WOR LET GRD NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Sam Mertens | 1358: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1353 | 10/13/2019 | What's playing at the retroplex | Change a movie title to its "opposite" by reversing one or more words; then describe the new movie. | MOV WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Rifkin | 1357: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1352 | 10/06/2019 | Hee-rotica -- Steamy prose for unsteamy life | Write a short steamy scene (100 words would be considered long) about a non-steamy event. | LAN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Strong | 1356: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1351 | 09/29/2019 | What concept will you be for Halloween? | Give us a creative, clever idea for a timely Halloween costume (for one or more people) or an idea for a party or other activity. You may even send us a photo of an actual new costume you've created this year. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1355: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1350 | 09/22/2019 | 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. | POE WOR DIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 1354: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1349 | 09/15/2019 | Revise and extend these remarks | Go to congress.gov/congressional-record and click on the PDF for any day's Congressional Record. Choose any sentence (or substantial part of one) and write a question that it could answer. | POL QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Sam Mertens | 1353: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1348 | 09/08/2019 | Same difference | Explain humorously how any two or more of the provided items are alike, different or otherwise connected. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jon Ketzner | 1352: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1347 | 09/01/2019 | Reologisms | Write a clever, funny definition for any of the provided Loser-concocted words and phrases, and/or show they'd be used. | WOR DEF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bob Kruger | 1351: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1346 | 08/25/2019 | 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. | LET WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Steve "Potomac" Smith | 1350: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1345 | 08/18/2019 | The confaketionary -- food fictoids | Tell us some comically false "fact" about food, drink or dining. | TRI FIC FOO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Byron Hoover | 1349: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1344 | 08/11/2019 | 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-". | LIM POE WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1348: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1343 | 08/04/2019 | The Empress pleads no contest | It's been a couple of years, but the Empress gives you a break this week from your sacred obligation to submit Style Invitational entries every seven days ad infinitum. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | ||
| 1342 | 07/28/2019 | 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. | LET SLO BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1346: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1341 | 07/21/2019 | Portmanteautapping from E to R | Coin a portmanteau word beginning with E through R, in which the words overlap by at least two letters, and describe it. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1345: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1340 | 07/14/2019 | 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. | LET CUL HIS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jonathan Jensen | 1344: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1339 | 07/07/2019 | Songs for a modern error | Write humorous lyrics about some modern woe, set to a familiar tune. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens |
1343: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
1347: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1338 | 06/30/2019 | Picture This -- cartoon captions | Supply a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jean Sorensen | 1342: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1337 | 06/23/2019 | 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. | ANA JOK QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1341: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1336 | 06/16/2019 | Two ways about it | What's something (printable) you could say in two -- or more -- of the provided situations. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Cohen | 1340: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1335 | 06/09/2019 | Put it in bee-verse! Or . . . | Write a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer that includes at least one of the provided words, used in Round 9 or later of this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee; OR: write a joke in Q&A form that uses at least one of the words. | WOR POE BEE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1339: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1334 | 06/02/2019 | Mull 'er over: A search for collision | Combine any two words, names, abbreviations, etc., from anywhere in the redacted Mueller report, in a two-word or hyphenated phrase and define it. | WOR POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Steve "Potomac" Smith | 1338: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1333 | 05/26/2019 | Check your (homo)phones | Invent a homophone--a word that sounds the same as an existing word but is spelled differently--and define it. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Richardson | 1337: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1332 | 05/19/2019 | We'll call them Spellimericks | Write a humorous limerick that's an acrostic: a pertinent five-letter word or name spelled out by the first letter of each line. | LIM LET POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1336: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1331 | 05/12/2019 | Paste Imperfect | Choose a headline or sentence from The Post or another publication, print or online, dated May 9-20, 2019. Then change that headline or other text by: A. Deleting up to 40 consecutive characters from it (put brackets around the deleted text); B. Adding up to 40 consecutive characters from the same article or ad (write the additions in capital letters); or C. Both A and B, as long as the added text goes at the end of your headline or sentence. |
HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1335: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1330 | 05/05/2019 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Hazle | 1334: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1329 | 04/28/2019 | Shakespeare + Thee: Tailgaters | Select any line from a work by Shakespeare (poetry or prose) and pair it with your own line to create a humorous rhyming couplet. | LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Marni Penning Coleman | 1333: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1328 | 04/21/2019 | Hooked on 'classic': a do-over | Summarize a book or play by any author, or retell a scene (or even a moment) from one, in the style of some other person. | LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1332: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1327 | 04/14/2019 | Mess with our (or anyone's) heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline (or a big part of a headline) by writing a bank head, or subtitle. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1331: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1326 | 04/07/2019 | Foaling around | Breed" any two names from the provided list of 100 horses and name the foal to reflect both names. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bill Dorner | 1330: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1325 | 03/31/2019 | Stand up and jeer | Give us some original standup jokes that would have been good at this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner. | POL JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1329: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1324 | 03/24/2019 | Chapter and worse | Tell or describe a Bible story, or another classical or folk tale, very briefly (75 words would be lengthy) in the voice of a particular author or other person. | LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1328: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1323 | 03/17/2019 | Selected shortened subjects | Delete one or more letters from the beginning or end (or both) of a movie title and describe the resulting movie. | LET MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | David Peckarsky | 1327: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1322 | 03/10/2019 | Back to the drawing board | Come up with an idea for an invention that still needs a bug ironed out. | SCI BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1326: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1321 | 03/03/2019 | Pumping Prime: Amazon reviews | Send us a humorous "review" (like the provided samples from our earlier contests) for any of the provided items. | BUS CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | David Hammond | 1325: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1320 | 02/24/2019 | 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. | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1324: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1319 | 02/17/2019 | 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. | LET SCR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1323: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1318 | 02/10/2019 | Love the tiny tail stain! | Create an anagram -- a phrase or sentence with the letters rearranged -- of any text (except merely someone's name), of any length. | ANA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | J.J. Gertler | 1322: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1317 | 02/03/2019 | Punku 2: Haiku with puns | Create a haiku containing a pun or similar wordplay. | POE WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1321: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1316 | 01/27/2019 | Lies, damn lies, with statistics | Tell us some bogus trivia using "statistics" or some bogus quantitative meaure. | TRI FIC SCI | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Todd DeLap | 1320: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1315 | 01/20/2019 | Clue us in -- our reverse crossword | Supply clever, funny clues for as many as 25 of the 74 words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | CRO LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Calandra | 1319: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1314 | 01/13/2019 | Bill Us Now -- '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 | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1318: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1313 | 01/06/2019 | Dead Letters -- our obit poem contest | Write a poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2018. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Schechter | 1317: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1312 | 12/30/2018 | 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. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1316: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1311 | 12/23/2018 | Nextra! Nextra! The year in preview | Name some humorous event to happen in 2019. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ira Allen | 1315: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1310 | 12/16/2018 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1282 through Week 1306. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1314: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1309 | 12/09/2018 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1255 through Week 1281. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ellen Ryan | 1313: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1308 | 12/02/2018 | 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. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1312: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1307 | 11/25/2018 | 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. | WOR LET NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1311: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1306 | 11/18/2018 | 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. | MUS POL POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1310: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1305 | 11/11/2018 | 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. | GOO WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Eric Nelkin | 1309: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1304 | 11/04/2018 | All the muse that's fit to print | Present a "what if" scenario and explain its effect. | HIS CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1308: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1303 | 10/28/2018 | Neologisms to di- for | Replace a digraph in an existing word or phrase with another digraph to make a new term. | WOR LET NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Tom Gleason | 1307: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1302 | 10/21/2018 | Ask Backwards 37 | Fifteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. Do one or more, up to a total of 25 A&Q's. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bob Kruger | 1306: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1301 | 10/14/2018 | Tell us a Fib(onacci) | Write a humorous poem of 20 syllables divided among six lines like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. And a least two -- any two -- of the lines must rhyme. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1305: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1300 | 10/07/2018 | Botch office sensations | Add "13" to an existing movie title, and some humorous trouble to the plot. | MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dave Matuskey | 1304: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1299 | 09/30/2018 | 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. | WOR CHN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1303: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1298 | 09/23/2018 | It's IGH time for 3-word phrases | Make up some entity that might take a three-letter abbreviation of GHI, HGI, GGG, GHH, etc., and then humorously describe it. | LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Mettinger | 1302: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1297 | 09/16/2018 | 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. | HEA LET CAL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1301: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1296 | 09/09/2018 | 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. | WOR POE DIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1300: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1295 | 09/02/2018 | Really, now? A matter of degree. | Tell us an indication to some problem, followed by an even more dire sign. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brian Allgar | 1299: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1294 | 08/26/2018 | 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. | WOR GRD NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1298: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1293 | 08/19/2018 | Constitutional unconvention | Humorously translate or explain some part of the U.S. Constitution. | POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jon Gearhart | 1297: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1292 | 08/12/2018 | 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-". | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 1296: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1291 | 08/05/2018 | 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. | MOV LET ANA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chuck Helwig | 1295: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1290 | 07/29/2018 | Bobbing for Witte words | Come up with both an object/situation and a neologism for it. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1294: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1289 | 07/22/2018 | Fake gnus: bogus animal trivia | Tell us a fictoid -- a humorously false "fact" -- about the nonhuman animal kingdom. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | David Schwartz | 1293: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1288 | 07/15/2018 | Your results may vary | Write a funny disclaimer or warning for some product or service. | BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1292: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1287 | 07/08/2018 | It's parody time: Oldies for newsies | Write some song lyrics about something in the news these days, set to a familiar tune. | MUS POE POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1291: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1286 | 07/01/2018 | 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. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Schechter | 1290: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1285 | 06/24/2018 | That is so wrong! | Supply a trivia question along with both the correct answer and a cleverly "wrong" guess. | TRI QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Howard Walderman | 1289: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1284 | 06/17/2018 | Same difference | Explain how any two of the items in the provided list are similar, different or otherwise linked. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jerome Uher | 1288: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1283 | 06/10/2018 | 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. | POE WOR BEE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1287: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1282 | 06/03/2018 | Picture This | Write a caption for one or more of the provided pictures. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rick Haynes | 1286: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1281 | 05/27/2018 | We only have (googly) eyes for you | Send us a photo of something that you have made funny by pasting googly eyes on it; funny titles and captions are optional. | PIX | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1285: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1280 | 05/20/2018 | 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. | WOR INS NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brian Allgar | 1284: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1279 | 05/13/2018 | Just do it -- the 'real' way | List some "accurate" directions for using some product or completing some task. | CUL BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1283: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1278 | 05/06/2018 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | David Young | 1282: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1277 | 04/29/2018 | 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. | WOR LET BEE NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Hazle | 1281: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1276 | 04/22/2018 | What 4? A limerick contest | Use a limerick using one of the provided lines as Line 5. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1280: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1275 | 04/15/2018 | 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. | LIT QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 1279: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1274 | 04/08/2018 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Luke Baker | 1278: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1273 | 04/01/2018 | Restocking the Cabinet | Explain why a particular person -- or thing -- ought to fill a Cabinet post or other U.S. government position. | POL ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1277: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1272 | 03/25/2018 | The hex files: creative curses | Come up with a creative curse. | CUL JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1276: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1271 | 03/18/2018 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brian Collins | 1275: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1270 | 03/11/2018 | The Style Invitational turns 5 x 5 | Write a witty poem, on any subject, in any of these forms: A. Five lines of five syllables each B. Five lines of five words each C. Five lines of iambic pentameter |
POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1274: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1269 | 03/04/2018 | Mess with our (or other) heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in The Post (print or online) or another publication and dated March 1-12 by writing a bank head. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Elden Carnahan | 1273: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1268 | 02/25/2018 | Playing pinocchio | Tell us some humorously bogus trivia about the news media or the publishing or broadcasting industries. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Schechter | 1272: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1267 | 02/18/2018 | Jingle bungle | Suggest an ill-advised spokesman (dead or alive, or fictional), along with a humorously noooo slogan or jingle. | SLO BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John McCooey | 1271: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1266 | 02/11/2018 | The Tile Invitational V | Create a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or phrase) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | LET SCR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1270: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1265 | 02/04/2018 | Parody for the course | Write a song relating to a class or course of instruction, or to school in general. | MUS POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1269: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1264 | 01/28/2018 | A cry for Yelp: 'Review' any place | Write a humorous review, positive or negative, of anyplace (real of fictional) one might visit. | CUL BUS LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1268: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1263 | 01/21/2018 | Playing the short game | Using the three-letter Olympic national abbreviations and/or the abbreviation for any college, tell what would happen if one abbreviated team played another. | LET ATH | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Meg Winters | 1267: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1262 | 01/14/2018 | Clue us in -- a backward crossword | Supply one or more creative clues for the provided filled-in crossword grid -- as many as 25 clues in all. | CRO LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Drew Bennett | 1266: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1261 | 01/07/2018 | Post mortems -- our annual obit poem contest | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2017. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1265: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1260 | 12/31/2017 | What lies (are) ahead for 2018 | Jokingly predict some news event to happen in 2018. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Steve Honley | 1264: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1259 | 12/24/2017 | Beat the banned with euphemisms | Come up with creative euphemisms for the provided words, or for other words that might offend someone or other. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1263: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1258 | 12/17/2017 | The year in redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1230 through Week 1254. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | William C. Kennard | 1262: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1257 | 12/10/2017 | 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. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ivars Kuskevics | 1261: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1256 | 12/03/2017 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Provide a funny caption for any of the provided cartoons. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1260: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1255 | 11/26/2017 | Tour de Fours XIV: SANT is coming | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter-block S-A-N-T; the letters may be in any order, but there may be no other letters between them. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ann Martin | 1259: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1254 | 11/19/2017 | Inkorporation--a change-one-letter contest | Change the name of a present or past business, store or agency (not just a product) by adding one letter, deleting one letter, transposing two letters or substituting one letter for another. | LET BUS CAL WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1258: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1253 | 11/12/2017 | Fashion x fiction: More fake trivia | Tell us some totally bogus trivia about clothing or fashion. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Warren Tanabe | 1257: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1252 | 11/05/2017 | It's a med, med, med, med world | Invent a clever name for a new medical product, and specify the condition it would treat. | SCI | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | William Verkuilen | 1256: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1251 | 10/29/2017 | Thanking outside the box | Tell us something to be thankful for. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John O'Byrne | 1255: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1250 | 10/22/2017 | Poems of the year(s) | Write a humorous poem incorporating three or more terms from a particular year or era listed on Time Traveler. | POE HIS WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1254: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1249 | 10/15/2017 | Ask Backwards 36 | Choose any of the 15 provided items and follow it with a question that it could humorously answer. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Debbie Stewart | 1253: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1248 | 10/08/2017 | C'mon, fess up! | Send us a brief "confession" -- there will be categories for true and just-kidding. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Huffman | 1252: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1247 | 10/01/2017 | Script tease | Offer a quote from a script whose title you've given a different plot. | MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Drew Bennett | 1251: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1246 | 09/24/2017 | 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 Sept. 21-Oct. 2, and pair it with a question it might answer. | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Steve Honley | 1250: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1245 | 09/17/2017 | Call us reprehensible . . . | Complain in a humorously missing-the-point way about something that has appeared in The Washington Post (in print or online) recently, or in another publication. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dave Garratt | 1249: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1244 | 09/10/2017 | Primed for product reviews | Send us a creative "review" for any of the provided items that are listed on Amazon. | CUL BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1248: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1243 | 09/03/2017 | We bid you: No T-R-U-M-P | Coin a new term, or choose an existing one, whose letters do not include a T, R, U, M, or P, and write a humorous definition. | WOR POL NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1247: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1242 | 08/27/2017 | Generation Yux | Give us a "then/now" joke. | CUL JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bruce Carlson | 1246: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1241 | 08/20/2017 | 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. | CRO LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Barry Koch | 1245: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1240 | 08/13/2017 | We GIVE you Limerixicon XIV | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "gh-" or "gi-". | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ann Martin | 1244: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1239 | 08/06/2017 | MASH 3 | Combine two movie titles and describe the result. | MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jon Gearhart | 1243: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1238 | 07/30/2017 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Peter Shawhan | 1242: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1237 | 07/23/2017 | Our alliteracy campaign | Rewrite an existing headline from any publication, print or online — about something in the news from July 20 to 31, by using alliteration. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1240: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1236 | 07/16/2017 | Portmanteaux faux | Explain--inaccurately but amusingly--how a real word is a combination of two or more words, with an illustrative sentence, as in the provided examples, or some other funny way. | WOR FIC TRI | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1241: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1235 | 07/09/2017 | The Sound of Science | Write humorous lyrics on the subject of science or technology, set to a well-known tune. | POE SCI MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1239: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1234 | 07/02/2017 | It's incontestable | Four weeks from now, the Empress will have just placed her dainty imperial toe back on our glittering shores. Which means that for the first time since January 2002, almost 800 contests ago—back during the late reign of her predecessor, theCzar—the Invitational will skip two contests in a row. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | 1238: Text PrintPDF WebPDF | |
| 1233 | 06/25/2017 | 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. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | 1237: Text PrintPDF WebPDF | |
| 1232 | 06/18/2017 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1236: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1231 | 06/11/2017 | TankaWanka 3: Haiku Plus Tu | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. The poem must consist of five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables in that order. And at least two of the lines must rhyme. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1235: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1230 | 06/04/2017 | What in creation . . . ? | Supply a brief monologue or dialogue about a Creator's specifications or planning for some living being. | REL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Drew Bennett | 1234: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1229 | 05/28/2017 | Gorey bits from A to Z | Send us one of more edgy rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Maria Zimmerman, Stephen Gold |
1233: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1228 | 05/21/2017 | That movie is SO about you | Name someone who was the "secret inspiration" for a certain movie. | MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1232: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1227 | 05/14/2017 | Celebrate ortho-diversity! | Name and describe a new life form -- and no letter in the term may be used twice. | LET SCI NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Seth Tucker | 1231: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1226 | 05/07/2017 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 1230: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1225 | 04/30/2017 | 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.) | SLO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1229: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1224 | 04/23/2017 | We beg you to differ | Explain how any two (or more) items in the provided list are the same or different, or otherwise connected. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1228: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1223 | 04/16/2017 | 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. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jon Gearhart | 1227: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1222 | 04/09/2017 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jon Gearhart | 1226: Text PrintPDF |
| 1221 | 04/02/2017 | Who's kidding whom? | Take two people from history, past or present, and tell what their child would be like | HIS CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dave Matuskey | 1225: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1220 | 03/26/2017 | O pedantry, O pedantry | Give us some humorous pedantry. | LAN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1224: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1219 | 03/19/2017 | Cast your Bred upon us | Write a Lik the Bred verse about someone in the news lately. | POE POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | David "Charlestown" Lewis | 1223: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1218 | 03/12/2017 | Mess with our -- or anyone else's -- heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in the Post (print or online or another publication dated March 9-20) by writing a bankhead, or subtitle. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ellen Ryan | 1222: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1217 | 03/05/2017 | Mergers you wrote: Combine two businesses with puns | Give a clever name for a combination of two or more businesses. | BUS WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Tom Witte | 1221: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1216 | 02/26/2017 | 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. | WOR GRD NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1220: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1215 | 02/19/2017 | A so-so contest (How so-so is it?) | Write a humorous exaggeration in the form "x is so y that . . . | WOR JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Shirley | 1219: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1214 | 02/12/2017 | 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. | WOR POL BNK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1218: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1213 | 02/05/2017 | Punku | Write a haiku that incorporates a pun. | POE WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1217: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1212 | 01/29/2017 | The Tile Invitational IV | Give us a five-, six- or seven-letter word (or two words) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | LET SCR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | William C. Kennard | 1216: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1211 | 01/22/2017 | 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. | HIS CUL LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1215: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1210 | 01/15/2017 | 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. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Amy Harris | 1214: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1209 | 01/08/2017 | Invented facts: A fictoid contest | Tell us a humorously untrue account of how a product or invention came to be, or got its name. | HIS TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Huffman | 1213: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1208 | 01/01/2017 | A RIP-roaring year: Obit poems | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2016. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1212: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1207 | 12/25/2016 | Clue us in -- a reverse crossword | Supply clever, funny clues to up to 25 of the 72 words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | CRO WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1211: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1206 | 12/18/2016 | 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. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1210: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1205 | 12/11/2016 | 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. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | William C. Kennard | 1209: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1204 | 12/04/2016 | 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. | POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1208: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1203 | 11/27/2016 | You've got the powers | Tell us what you would do if you had one or more of the six magical powers provided. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Huffman | 1207: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1202 | 11/20/2016 | Don't be afraid of the dark | Write lyrics to a song that, in some way, express hope. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1206: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1201 | 11/13/2016 | 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. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1205: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1200 | 11/06/2016 | 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. | WOR MEN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1204: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1199 | 10/30/2016 | We want some bad choices | Offer one or more funny Questions for Terrible People, as shown. | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Tom Witte | 1203: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1198 | 10/23/2016 | 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". | WOR ENG | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1202: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1197 | 10/16/2016 | Picture This -- It's a Bob Staake caption contest | Write a caption for any of the cartoons provided. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Steven Steele Cawman | 1201: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1196 | 10/09/2016 | Hyphen the Terrible | Combine either half of a hyphenated word or compound term with either half of another such term to create a new hyphenated term, and describe the result humorously. | HYP NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1200: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1195 | 10/02/2016 | Don't change a letter! | Alter a movie title only by changing word spacing, changing capitalization, and adding or deleting punctuation marks, accents, etc., then describe the result. | MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1199: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1194 | 09/25/2016 | Nyetymologies: fake word origins | Provide a humorously untrue explanation for the derivation of a word. | WOR FIC TRI | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1198: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1193 | 09/18/2016 | Poedtry | Write a Poed, which consists of four lines: The first line contains six one-syllable words. The second line contains three two-syllable words. The third line contains two three-syllable words. The fourth line contains one six-syllable word (or a name totaling six syllables. And at least two of the lines must rhyme. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1197: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1192 | 09/11/2016 | 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). | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1196: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1191 | 09/04/2016 | Mess with our heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in The Post (print or online) and dated Sept. 1-12 by writing a bank head, or subtitle | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Roy Ashley | 1195: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1190 | 08/28/2016 | You're workin' on a chain, gang | Create a chain of no more than 15 proper nouns — names of people (real or fictional), products, places, etc. — including one title of a work — in which each name relates somehow to the previous one. | WOR CHN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1194: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1189 | 08/21/2016 | Gee, it's Limerixicon XIII! | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "ge". | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1193: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1188 | 08/14/2016 | Just short words, one more time | Explain some concept or philosophy entirely in words of one syllable. | WOR LAN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1192: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1187 | 08/07/2016 | Just drop it, okay? | Drop the last letter from an existing word, phrase or name and define the result. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1191: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1186 | 07/31/2016 | We're always happy to verse you | Write a humorous poem, of any form, about or “by” the anagram of anyone’s name. | POE ANA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 1190: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1185 | 07/24/2016 | The Rorschach of the crowd | Interpret one of more of the provided genuine inkblots. You may look at them upside down or sideways. | ROR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hildy Zampella | 1189: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1184 | 07/17/2016 | Plan C -- a third candidate? | Explain why some novel person (or thing) should be president; you could also suggest a president-veep ticket. | POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Annette Green | 1188: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1183 | 07/10/2016 | C'mon, be honest with us | Write something in roughly the form "If X were more honest, (then) Y. | CUL JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Annette Green | 1187: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1182 | 07/03/2016 | Where in the wor(l)d? | (1) On What3words.com, find one or more humorously appropriate (or ironic) three-word codes at a particular place; or 2) find a three-word code, tell us where it is, and tell us what ought to be there. | LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1186: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1181 | 06/26/2016 | Put it in Bee-verse | Write a short, humorous poem using one of the 36 provided words, all from the 2016 National Spelling Bee. | POE WOR BEE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1185: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1180 | 06/19/2016 | Strip search! | Find a line of text from any comic strip or panel that appears on the Post's comics pages or on washingtonpost.com/comics, dated anywhere between June 16 and June 27, and either (a) supply a question that the original line could answer, or (b) follow it with your own line of dialogue or reply. | COM QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Lawrence McGuire | 1184: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1179 | 06/12/2016 | Blasted alphabetical contests . . . | Coin a three-word phrase whose words begin with A, B and C -- in any order -- and describe it. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Damm | 1183: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1178 | 06/05/2016 | A ______ of collective nouns | Propose one or more funny new names for groups of things. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dudley Thompson | 1182: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1177 | 05/29/2016 | The ballad box | Write a song related to this year's elections, set to a familiar tune. | MUS POL POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Matt Monitto | 1181: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1176 | 05/22/2016 | 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. | EPI | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Drew Bennett | 1180: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1175 | 05/15/2016 | Good luck with 13 | Make up a word whose Scrabble letter values add up to exactly 13, and define it. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1179: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1174 | 05/08/2016 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Larry Gray | 1178: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1173 | 05/01/2016 | 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. | WOR FOO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jon Gearhart | 1177: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1172 | 04/24/2016 | Pieces of 'Pie' | Write a short passage -- an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything -- using only words that appear in the song "American Pie". | WOR MUS BNK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mary Kappus | 1176: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1171 | 04/17/2016 | What's my (next) line? | Take a line from any song and pair it with your own second line to make a humorous rhyming couplet; the second line should match the rhythm of the first, rather than the second line of the song itself. | MUS POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jesse Etelson | 1175: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1170 | 04/10/2016 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1174: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1169 | 04/03/2016 | 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. | MOV LET LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kurt Stahl | 1173: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1168 | 03/27/2016 | Asterisky business | Tell us an original joke whose punchline can't be understood without knowledge -- not necessarily scientific -- that most of us don't have (which you'll supply with a concise explanation). | JOK SCI | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Duncan Stevens | 1172: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1167 | 03/20/2016 | So what's to liken? | Take any two items from the provided list and explain how they're similar or different, or connect them some other way. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mike Ostapiej | 1171: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1166 | 03/13/2016 | 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 | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John Hutchins | 1170: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1165 | 03/06/2016 | 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. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ivars Kuskevics | 1169: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1164 | 02/28/2016 | '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.' | QUE TRI | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Larry Gray | 1168: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1163 | 02/21/2016 | Put it in reverse | Spell a word, name or phrase backward and define the result in a way that relates to the original. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ellen Ryan | 1167: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1162 | 02/14/2016 | An 8-year Re-Onion | Write a fictional Onion-type headline. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Neal Starkman | 1166: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1161 | 02/07/2016 | Give us four Pinocchios | Tell us some false "facts" about politicians, present or past. | HIS POL TRI | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Shirley | 1165: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1160 | 01/31/2016 | A remeaning task | Redefine an existing word or two-word term beginning with P through Z. | WOR MEN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1164: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1159 | 01/24/2016 | It's all in the game | Come up with a funny/ridiculous board-type game and describe it. | ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dion Black | 1163: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1158 | 01/17/2016 | What have we here? | Tell us what one or more of these objects really are. | CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1162: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1157 | 01/10/2016 | 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. | CRO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1161: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1156 | 01/03/2016 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2015. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kathy Fraeman | 1160: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1155 | 12/27/2015 | 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. | LET MOV LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1159: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1154 | 12/20/2015 | Tabby Road -- songs for cats | Write a song for -- or about -- cats or other animals, set to a familiar tune. | MUS POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Stephen Gold | 1158: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1153 | 12/13/2015 | Be three-paired | Choose two or more entities represented by a single three-letter combination from IAA through LZZ, found at the provided link, and say how they are alike or different or have some connection. | LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1157: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1152 | 12/06/2015 | Oops? You do it again. | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 1098 through Week 1148, except for Week 1101, last year's do-over. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gregory Koch | 1156: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1151 | 11/29/2015 | To [a glass], snarkly | Write a short, snarky (but witty) note to one of the provided glassbowls. | CUL LAN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1155: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1150 | 11/22/2015 | 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. | LET WOR CAL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 1154: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1149 | 11/15/2015 | Gestures of depreciation | Suggest ways to celebrate National Love Your Lawyer Day -- or a made-up "holiday" celebrating some other profession. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1153: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1148 | 11/08/2015 | It's TankaWanka II | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. The poem must consist of five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables in that order. And it must include at least one rhyme. | POE POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1152: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1147 | 11/01/2015 | It's E-Z find-a-word -- yours | 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. | WOR GRD | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Shirley | 1151: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1146 | 10/25/2015 | Stick it to us with a magnet | Suggest a new Style Invitational honorable-mention magnet. | STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Howard Walderman | 1150: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1145 | 10/18/2015 | A DICEy situation | Coin a word or multi-word term that contains the letter block D-I-C-E. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Todd DeLap | 1149: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1144 | 10/11/2015 | Someone else's business | Name a real brand, along with something else it would be a better name for. | BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Mann | 1148: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1143 | 10/04/2015 | Ask Backwards | Provided are 15 answers, separated by asterisks. You supply the questions. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Tom Witte | 1147: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1142 | 09/27/2015 | 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. | WOR CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1146: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1141 | 09/20/2015 | Mess with our heads | Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in the Post (print or online) Sept. 17-28 by writing a bankhead, or subtitle. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1145: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1140 | 09/13/2015 | 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. | BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Drew Bennett | 1144: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1139 | 09/06/2015 | A little sixty-four play | Fashion an entry by selecting one element from each of the provided menu groups. Make sure you indicate the combination you chose (e.g., 2-C-iii). | MUS POE WOR JOK ANA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1143: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1138 | 08/30/2015 | Show us your touché | Offer an elegantly snide (and original) insult of anyone living or dead. | CUL JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mae Scanlan | 1142: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1137 | 08/23/2015 | Be a published author! | Give us a spicy title for a boring book, real or imagined. | LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Amy Harris | 1141: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1136 | 08/16/2015 | Gaah! It's Limerixicon XII | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "ga-". | POE LIM | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1140: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 20150809 | 08/09/2015 | It's August. Give that little brain of yours a rest. Or . . . | There's no new contest this week: you and your fellow Losers get a week off to dust off your cranial synapses, write cranky letters to the editor, think of limericks featuring words beginning with ga-, whatever it is you people do. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | ||
| 1135 | 08/02/2015 | 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). | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Larry Carnahan | 1138: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1134 | 07/26/2015 | The 'Sty'le Invitational Red'ux' | Put quotation marks around part of a word, name or phrase and define the result. | WOR INS NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 1137: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1133 | 07/19/2015 | Are 'hew ready? A contest for clerihews | A clerihew is a humorous four-line rhyming poem about a person whose name is mentioned in the first line; in fact, the name must be at the end of that line (or constitute the whole line) so that it has to rhyme with something. The rhyme structure (and we don't want "lazy" rhymes) is AABB: the first line rhymes with the second, the third with the fourth. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary |
1136: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
1139: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1132 | 07/12/2015 | You and what army? Military fictoids | Give us some comically bogus trivia about the military, past or present, ours or theirs. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 20150809: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1131 | 07/05/2015 | 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. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | David Prevar | 1135: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1130 | 06/28/2015 | 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. | WOR LAN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bird Waring | 1134: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1129 | 06/21/2015 | Right in the pampootie | Write a humorous short poem (eight lines or fewer) incorporating one of the 50 provided words. | BEE POE WOR DIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1133: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1128 | 06/14/2015 | 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. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Lawrence McGuire | 1132: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1127 | 06/07/2015 | From the creators of . . . | Think up a spinoff of a real TV series, past or present, and furnish a description or bit of dialogue. | CUL TEL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1131: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1126 | 05/31/2015 | Picture this | Provide a humorous caption for any of the cartoons provided. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Shirley | 1130: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1125 | 05/24/2015 | The song remains the sa | Supply a real song title that has the end or beginning -- or, what the heck, both -- chopped off and describe it. | MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Tom Panther | 1129: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1124 | 05/17/2015 | Heed! Indeed: Advice verse | Write one of the provided reminders as a humorous poem of eight lines or fewer. | POE ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1128: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1123 | 05/10/2015 | The Tile Invitational III | Give us a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or two words) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided seven-letter sets. | LET SCR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ricardo Rodriguez | 1127: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1122 | 05/03/2015 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jonathan Paul | 1126: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1121 | 04/26/2015 | The an(n)als of civilization | Briefly describe some "bad day in history" -- you may be creative in what you classify as such -- and sum it up with a humorous heading. | HIS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1125: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1120 | 04/19/2015 | 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. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jaclyn Yamada | 1124: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1119 | 04/12/2015 | We want hue so bad | Invent a name for a color and describe it. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John McCooey | 1123: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1118 | 04/05/2015 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brad Alexander | 1122: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1117 | 03/29/2015 | You got another sing coming | Write a song about a topic or person lately in the news, set to a familiar tune. | MUS POE POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Stephen Gold | 1121: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1116 | 03/22/2015 | 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. | LET LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Peter Jenkins | 1120: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1115 | 03/15/2015 | Our type o' headline | Change a headline in an article or ad in the Washington Post and then add a "bank head" or subtitle. | HEA LET CAL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1119: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1114 | 03/08/2015 | 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. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1118: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1113 | 03/01/2015 | Our occasional parodies | Write a song celebrating someone's birthday or other personal occasion (rather than, say, a holiday), set to a familiar tune. | MUS POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1117: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1112 | 02/22/2015 | Some SHARP words | Coin a word or short term that includes all the letters S, H, A, R, and P. | WOR LET NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1116: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1111 | 02/15/2015 | When you riff upon a store | Use a wordplay on a song title as a name or slogan for a real or imagined business. | WOR BUS SLO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John O'Byrne | 1115: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1110 | 02/08/2015 | The mama of all humor | Write a [Someone’s] Mama joke for some well-known figure, past or present, real or fictional. | JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dave Silberstein | 1114: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1109 | 02/01/2015 | Fictoids of Columbia | Tell us some humorously untrue “facts” about Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area. | WAS TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Huffman | 1113: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1108 | 01/25/2015 | 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. | POE ART | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Huffman | 1112: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1107 | 01/18/2015 | Send us the bill | Combine two or more names from the list of members of Congress on this page to "cosponsor" a bill based on their combined last names, and state its purpose. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dawn Kral | 1111: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1106 | 01/11/2015 | Show your resolve | Suggest a New Year's resolution that someone might make 100 or more years in the future. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nancy Schwalb | 1110: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1105 | 01/04/2015 | A lit obit of fun | Write a humorous poem of no longer than eight lines about someone who died in 2014. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1109: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1104 | 12/28/2014 | A pair of threes | Choose two or three entities represented by a single three-letter combination beginning with E- through H- — see the links at bit.ly/abbrevs-e-h — and say how they are alike or different. | LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Larry Gray | 1108: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1103 | 12/21/2014 | Themes good enough for us | Suggest an existing song to be used as the theme for a TV series or program for comic effect. | MUS TEL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Larry Gray | 1107: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1102 | 12/14/2014 | Let's get Sirius | Suggest a new radio channel and describe it. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Pam Sweeney | 1106: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1101 | 12/07/2014 | The year in redo | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 1047 through Week 1097, except for Week 1050. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1105: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1100 | 11/30/2014 | Pun and ink -- the feghoot | Contrive an elaborate scenario that ends in a novel groaner pun on a familiar expression, title, etc. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1104: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1099 | 11/23/2014 | 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. | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1103: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1098 | 11/16/2014 | Prime time for some Amazon reviews | Send us a creative "review" for any of the provided items that are listed on Amazon. | BUS CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 1102: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1097 | 11/09/2014 | 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". | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1101: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1096 | 11/02/2014 | Picture this | Write a humorous caption for any of the provided Bob Staake cartoons. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Mann | 1100: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1095 | 10/26/2014 | TankaWanka! | Write a TankaWanka about something that's been in the news lately. The poem must consist of five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables in that order. And it must include at least one rhyme. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1099: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1094 | 10/19/2014 | 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. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ann Martin | 1098: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1093 | 10/12/2014 | You're only as rich as you fee | What are some really bad ideas for various businesses to make a few more bucks? | BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gordon Cobb | 1097: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1092 | 10/05/2014 | Are we having funds yet? | Suggest a humorous fundraising "challenge" for any organization. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1096: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1091 | 09/28/2014 | Good idea! or not. | Come up with a good idea and, through a small change in wording, a bad idea. | WOR ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1095: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1090 | 09/21/2014 | 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. | WOR POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1094: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1089 | 09/14/2014 | 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. | WOR LET NEO GRD | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1093: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1088 | 09/07/2014 | Ask backwards with our answers, your questions | Supply the questions to as many of the 16 supplied answers as you like. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danny Gallagher | 1092: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1087 | 08/31/2014 | The core ridiculum | Come up with a comical class (any type of school) and provide a course catalog description. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1091: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1086 | 08/24/2014 | Playing the dozens | 1. Start with any 12-letter word, name or multi-word phrase. 2. Add one letter OR drop one letter OR substitute another letter OR switch the position of two letters to create a new term, as in the examples given. 3. Define or describe the result humorously. |
LET WOR CAL NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Larry Gray | 1090: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1085 | 08/17/2014 | 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. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Duffy | 1089: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1084 | 08/10/2014 | Limerixicon XI: Fi-, fo-, go! | Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "Fl-" through "fo-". | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 1088: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1083 | 08/03/2014 | Everybody get appy | Offer up an idea for either a humorously useful app or a humorously counterproductive one. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Falk | 1087: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1082 | 07/27/2014 | 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. | MUS WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1086: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1081 | 07/20/2014 | It's the stupidity, stupid | Write us stupid questions that will make us laugh. | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1085: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1080 | 07/13/2014 | 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. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Thomas Blain | 1084: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1079 | 07/06/2014 | Little piddle riddle | Ask a question and answer it with a rhyme. | POE QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rachel A. Bernhardt | 1083: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1078 | 06/29/2014 | 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. | HYP WAS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Gips | 1082: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1077 | 06/22/2014 | 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"). | WOR CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Greg Arnold | 1081: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1076 | 06/15/2014 | Dactyly fractyly | Send us some double dactyls that conform to Gene Weingarten's rules. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeremy Horowitz | 1080: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1075 | 06/08/2014 | Falsity is Job One | Send us some fictoids about cars and trucks and driving and stuff. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Schechter | 1079: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1074 | 06/01/2014 | Let's go parody-hopping | Describe a stage or movie musical in a parody of a song from a different musical. | POE MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1078: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1073 | 05/25/2014 | 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. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Gips | 1077: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1072 | 05/18/2014 | 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. | LET SCR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 1076: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1071 | 05/11/2014 | 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. | LET DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Huffman | 1075: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1070 | 05/04/2014 | Colt following -- our grandfoals contest | Breed" any two of the foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect the parents' names. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1074: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1069 | 04/27/2014 | It's a small, small world | Write a humorous poem of no more than eight lines -- it doesn't have to rhyme -- using only the top 1,000 words on Wiktionary.org's list of the most common among 20 million words found in movie and TV scripts. | POE WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ward Kay, Mark Raffman |
1073: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1068 | 04/20/2014 | 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 _____. | POL ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ben Aronin | 1072: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1067 | 04/13/2014 | A(t)tribute to your wit | Alter a well-known quote slightly and attribute it to someone else. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1071: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1066 | 04/06/2014 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jim Stiles | 1070: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 20140330 | 03/30/2014 | (We) give us a (spring) break | There's no new contest this week, because the Empress will be on assignment overseas four weeks from now. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | ||
| 1065 | 03/23/2014 | 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. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen |
1068: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
1069: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1064 | 03/16/2014 | HistoRebuffs | Alter some moment in history and tell us -- in no more than about 50 words -- the likely outcome. | HIS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett |
1067: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
1069: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1063 | 03/09/2014 | Same difference | Take any two items from the provided list and explain how they're similar or different. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dave Letizia |
1066: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
1069: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1062 | 03/02/2014 | Scanning the headlines | Write a rhyming poem about something currently in the news. | POE POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin |
20140330: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
1069: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1061 | 02/23/2014 | 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. | CRO LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1065: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1060 | 02/16/2014 | Picture this | Write a caption, or captions, for one or more of the provided cartoons. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ward Kay | 1064: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1059 | 02/09/2014 | With parens like these . . . | Add some words in parentheses to a well-known song title to make it funnier in some way. | WOR MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1063: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1058 | 02/02/2014 | Eastwood Ho | Create a good-bad-ugly progression. | JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1062: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1057 | 01/26/2014 | Sportin' lie | Give us some fake sports trivia. | ATH TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Seth Tucker | 1061: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1056 | 01/19/2014 | Weather or nuts | Coin a term relating to the weather, climate, etc. -- either literal or figurative -- and define it. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Megan Durham | 1060: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1055 | 01/12/2014 | Oh, K! | This week, to commemorate both Kevin Dopart and his 1K ink blots: Change a word, phrase or name by adding one or more K's, and define your new term. | LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kristen Rahman | 1059: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1054 | 01/05/2014 | Dead letters | Write a short, humorous poem commemorating someone (or maybe even something) who died in 2013. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 1058: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1053 | 12/29/2013 | Questionable journalism | Quote an actual sentence, from The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com, or another print or online publication dated between Dec. 26 and Jan. 6, and follow it with a question that the sentence might answer. | QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John Folse | 1057: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1052 | 12/22/2013 | Clue us in | Come up with up to 25 creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms that appear in the provided grid. | CRO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 1056: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1051 | 12/15/2013 | 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. | ANA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1055: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1050 | 12/08/2013 | Just redo it | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 1000 through Week 1046. | STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 1054: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1049 | 12/01/2013 | Be rating | Come up with a new movie rating and describe it. | MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John Shea | 1053: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1048 | 11/24/2013 | Ask Backwards | You supply the questions to as many of the provided answers as you like. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1052: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1047 | 11/17/2013 | Bank shots | Quote a headline appearing in The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com or another publication, print or online, dated Nov. 14 to Nov. 25, and supply a humorous "bank" headline that either misinterprets it or comments wryly on it. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danielle Nowlin | 1051: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1046 | 11/10/2013 | Derive us crazy | Offer a bogus but funny explanation of how a particular expression originated. | HIS WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen | 1050: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1045 | 11/03/2013 | Songs for the asking | Take a sentence, phrase or title from a song and provide a funny question it might answer. | MUS QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Larry Gray | 1049: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1044 | 10/27/2013 | Play it safe | Come up with a comically safety-conscious rule for the workplace or elsewhere. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Stan McCoy | 1048: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1043 | 10/20/2013 | Rechanneling celebrity | Describe a TV reality show featuring a celebrity pursuing some unlikely endeavor. | TEL CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Tim Livengood | 1047: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1042 | 10/13/2013 | 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. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1046: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1041 | 10/06/2013 | What have you got to lose? | Answer a question, real or rhetorical, that appears in a song. | MUS QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Trevor Kerr | 1045: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1040 | 09/29/2013 | 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. |
POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Edmund Conti | 1044: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1039 | 09/22/2013 | Shookespeare | Combine any of the words in Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, in any order, to create a humorous sentence or longer passage. | WOR POE BNK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Craig Dykstra | 1043: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1038 | 09/15/2013 | It's like this, see | Answer a simple question with a ridiculously argued answer citing various connections and parallels. | ??? | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 1042: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1037 | 09/08/2013 | Outrage us | Find something offensive about an inoffensive name of a product, organization, place, etc. | BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Falk | 1041: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1036 | 09/01/2013 | Just for liffs | Use a real place name, from anywhere in the world, as a new term. | WOR LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Joel Knanishu | 1040: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1035 | 08/25/2013 | The Empy 500 | Explain what news Bob Staake is trying to tell in any of the provided drawings. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Gips | 1039: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1034 | 08/18/2013 | 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]. | JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Falk | 1038: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1033 | 08/11/2013 | LimeriXicon | Supply a humorous limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with "fa-". | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Matt Monitto | 1037: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1032 | 08/04/2013 | Hid stuff | Explain the symbolism "obviously" evident in any well-known site, artwork, etc., in 75 words or fewer. | ART | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Shirley | 1036: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1031 | 07/28/2013 | 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. | WOR INS NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Barbara Turner | 1035: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1030 | 07/21/2013 | 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. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1034: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1029 | 07/14/2013 | Ditty Harry | Write a descriptive theme song for a well-known movie, set to a well-known tune. | MOV MUS POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 1033: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1028 | 07/07/2013 | Joint Legislation | Combine the names of two or more of the First Congress senators and/or representatives to create "joint legislation". | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Doug Hamilton | 1032: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1027 | 06/30/2013 | Built for two | Give humorous related names for any pair of features in a given building, organization, etc. | BUS POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Phil Frankenfeld | 1031: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1026 | 06/23/2013 | 'Might' makes ink | Give us a joke using any of the using any of the provided "you might be" templates. | JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chuck Smith |
1030: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
1031: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 20130616 | 06/16/2013 | (We) give us a break | The Empress is spending a week touring her dominions and so she's giving you a week off as well. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | ||
| 1025 | 06/09/2013 | In so many words | Create an original backronym for a name or other term, especially one that's been in the news lately. | WOR CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jay Cummings | 1029: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1024 | 06/02/2013 | 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. | LET POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jennifer Gittins-Harfst | 1028: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1023 | 05/26/2013 | 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. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Huffman | 1027: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1022 | 05/19/2013 | What's the diff? | Explain how any two of the provided items are alike or different. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Gips | 20130616: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1021 | 05/12/2013 | 'Gram theft | Come up with a term by scrambling any of the letters sets in the provided list, and define it. | LET SCR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Frank Osen |
1025: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
1026: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1020 | 05/05/2013 | Colt following | Breed any two of this week's winning foals and name the grandfoal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Laurie Brink | 1024: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1019 | 04/28/2013 | What a turnoff | Tell us some creative things that children and families could do during Screen-Free Week. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Art Grinath | 1023: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1018 | 04/21/2013 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Huffman | 1022: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1017 | 04/14/2013 | Vowel play | Write a "univocalic" newspaper headline -- one that uses only one vowel throughout. | LET HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 1021: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1016 | 04/07/2013 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Eckenwiler | 1020: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1015 | 03/31/2013 | Faux re mi | Give us some humorously false trivia about music or musicians. | MUS TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Paul Kondis | 1019: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1014 | 03/24/2013 | 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. | WAS WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Gips | 1018: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1013 | 03/17/2013 | Har monikers | Write a riddle that uses a pun of a person's name in the answer. | JOK WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Natalie Beary | 1017: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1012 | 03/10/2013 | The news at 5 | Write a limerick about a recent news event. | LIM CUL POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 1016: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1011 | 03/03/2013 | Top these! | Try your hand at any of the contests mentioned in this look back. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Schechter | 1015: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1010 | 02/24/2013 | Picture this | Write a caption for any of the five provided cartoons. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John Glenn | 1014: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1009 | 02/17/2013 | What's in a name? | Write something about some person, real or fictional, using only the letters in the person's name. | LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Matt Monitto | 1013: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1008 | 02/10/2013 | Switched reels | Re-arrange all the words in the title of a movie, and describe the resulting work. | WOR MOV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Roy Ashley | 1012: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 20130203 | 02/03/2013 | Primping for our big day | There's no new contest this week, because four weeks from now, the Empress will devote this entire space to a celebration of the Style Invitational's 20th anniversary. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | ||
| 1007 | 01/27/2013 | Clue us in | Come up with creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. | CRO WOR | Text PrintPDF | Barbara Turner | 1010: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1006 | 01/20/2013 | It's a ... a ... | Create a new superhero (or duo) and describe the superpower, or not-very-superpower. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Reinemer | 1009: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1005 | 01/13/2013 | Send us the bill | Name a piece of legislation "cosponsored" by two or more of the 98 new House and Senate members provided. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rick Haynes | 1008: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1004 | 01/06/2013 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem about anyone who died in 2012. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Schechter, Nan Reiner |
20130203: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1003 | 12/30/2012 | Just do it | Use a well-known advertising slogan for a different company, organization or product to humorous effect. | SLO BUS POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 1007: Text PrintPDF |
| 1002 | 12/23/2012 | Wring out the OED | Make up a false definition for any of the listed OED words. | WOR DIC MEN | Text PrintPDF | Frank Osen | 1006: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1001 | 12/16/2012 | Make us ROFL | Give us a funny, original acronym. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF | Dayna Fellows | 1005: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 1000 | 12/09/2012 | 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. | LET WOR CAL NEO | Text PrintPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 1004: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0999 | 12/02/2012 | Drectrospective | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 946 through Week 995, except for Week 948. | PRE | Text PrintPDF | Lawrence McGuire | 1003: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0998 | 11/25/2012 | Set the law on us | Suggest an odd law for a particular place in the world. | POL LOC | Text PrintPDF | Beverley Sharp | 1002: Text PrintPDF |
| 0997 | 11/18/2012 | Unworthy causes | Name a dubious charity and describe its mission. | BUS | Text PrintPDF | Mark Raffman | 1001: Text PrintPDF |
| 0996 | 11/11/2012 | 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. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | (none) | 1000: Text PrintPDF |
| 0995 | 11/04/2012 | Ask backwards | We give you the "answers" and you supply jokes in the form of a question. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Raffman | 0999: Text PrintPDF |
| 0994 | 10/28/2012 | Stick it to us | Suggest a slogan for one of our two new honorable-mention Loser Magnets for 2012-2013. | SLO STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bruce Carlson | 0998: Text PrintPDF |
| 0993 | 10/21/2012 | Versus, verses | Write a short "rap battle" between any two characters, real or fictional. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF | Amanda Yanovitch | 0997: Text PrintPDF |
| 0992 | 10/14/2012 | 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. | BUS TEL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Neal Starkman | 0996: Text PrintPDF |
| 0991 | 10/07/2012 | Tour de Fours IX | Create a new word or two-word term containing the letter block V, O, T, and E and define it. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Laurie Tompkins | 0995: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0990 | 09/30/2012 | Indecent relations | Pair two people, real or fictional, who have the same last name; say how they're alike or different, or something they might do (even in fantasy), as a pair. | DIF CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Schechter | 0994: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0989 | 09/23/2012 | On the double | Come up with a double or multiple profession, and explain how each job complements the other(s). | BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Hazle | 0993: Text PrintPDF |
| 0988 | 09/16/2012 | A faster break | Suggest ways to make sports and other leisure activities more time-efficient or exciting. | ATH ADV | Text PrintPDF | Martin Bancroft | 0992: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0987 | 09/09/2012 | Bank shots | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com from Sept. 6 through Sept. 17 and reinterpret it by adding a "bank head," or subtitle. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Melissa Balmain | 0991: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0986 | 09/02/2012 | Hear here! | Give us a sentence or short dialogue that would be a lot funnier if a word in it were mistaken for a homophone of that word. | WOR LAN | Text PrintPDF | Mark Richardson | 0990: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0985 | 08/26/2012 | What art art thou? | Tell us which Style Invitational contest any of the provided Bob Staake cartoons might be illustrating. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Beverley Sharp | 0989: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0984 | 08/19/2012 | Another brilliant contest | Write something whose words begin with consecutive letters of the alphabet. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF | Christopher Lamora | 0988: Text PrintPDF |
| 0983 | 08/12/2012 | Limerixicon IX | Supply a humorous limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters "eq-" through "ez-". | LIM LET POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 0987: Text PrintPDF |
| 0982 | 08/05/2012 | 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. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 0986: Text PrintPDF |
| 0981 | 07/29/2012 | Feeling testy | Write a question that "ought to" be on a qualifying test for a particular job. | BUS | Text PrintPDF | Barry Koch | 0985: Text PrintPDF |
| 20120722 | 07/22/2012 | You can't lose this week! | Because there’s not a new contest this week. Three and a half weeks from now, the Empress will be lounging on an exotic (okay, Delaware) beach, blissfully disconnected from this newspaper's "content management system," Methode, better known within the newsroom as "that piece of [not 'blueberry pie'] Methode. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | ||
| 0980 | 07/15/2012 | Def jam | Supply a humorous definition for any of the provided Loser-penned neologisms. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Paul Burnham | 0983: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0979 | 07/08/2012 | The madding crowd | Suggest funny, original ways to tick people off. | ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John Shea | 0982: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0978 | 07/01/2012 | A reason to rhyme the news | Write a short verse about something that's been in the news recently. | POE CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 0981: Text PrintPDF |
| 0977 | 06/24/2012 | 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. | GOO LAN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 20120722: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0976 | 06/17/2012 | 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. | HYP WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Schechter | 0980: Text PrintPDF |
| 0975 | 06/10/2012 | Gone mything | Debunk a "Sixth Myth" about one of more of the recent "5 Myths" topics provided. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0979: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0974 | 06/03/2012 | Eat our dust! | Write a limerick humorously describing a book, play, movie, or TV show. | LIM LIT TEL MOV POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle |
0978: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
0984: Text PrintPDF |
| 0973 | 05/27/2012 | A real triple crown | The horses in this week's list either produced no inking "foals" in Week 965, or ran in the Kentucky Derby but weren't on the initial list. "Breed" any two and name the foal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0977: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0972 | 05/20/2012 | Trends and neighbors | Choose any two items on the provided list and explain how they are alike or different. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | Bird Waring | 0976: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0971 | 05/13/2012 | 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. | LIT | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0975: Text PrintPDF |
| 0970 | 05/06/2012 | Couple it | Take a line from any well-known poem and pair it with your own second line to make a humorous couplet. | POE LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 0974: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0969 | 04/29/2012 | Colt following | Breed any two "foals" in today's results, and name the grandfoal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Kathy El-Assal | 0973: Text PrintPDF |
| 0968 | 04/22/2012 | Take us for grants | Come up with a proposal to the National Science Foundation or other research-funding organization for a study based on a stupid hypothesis. | SCI | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robert Schechter | 0972: Text PrintPDF |
| 0967 | 04/15/2012 | Overlap dance II | Create a phrase that overlaps two terms, each of two words or more, and describe the result. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Mae Scanlan |
0971: Text PrintPDF
0984: Text PrintPDF |
| 0966 | 04/08/2012 | Inkremental change | Start with any word or name, and create a series of words that change by one letter at a time, until you come up with a related word or name. | WOR LET CHN | Text PrintPDF | Dave Zarrow | 0970: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0965 | 04/01/2012 | Foaling around | Breed any two of the horses in this year's Triple Crown races and name their foal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Susan Thompson | 0969: Text PrintPDF |
| 0964 | 03/25/2012 | The Grossery Bag? | Suggest a design and/or slogan to go on the side of the ardently desired Style Invitational Loser Bag. | SLO STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Melissa Balmain | 0968: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0963 | 03/18/2012 | 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. | WOR CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Gil Glass | 0967: Text PrintPDF |
| 0962 | 03/11/2012 | Questionable journalism | Take any sentence (or a major part of it) that appears in the Post or in an article on washingtonpost.com anytime from now through March 19 and supply a question it could answer. | WAS QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Cathy Lamaze | 0966: Text PrintPDF |
| 0961 | 03/04/2012 | The end of our rhops | Write a funny passage or headline whose words all have the same number of letters. | LET HEA WOR | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0965: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0960 | 02/26/2012 | Raving reviews | Send us a creative "review" for any of the provided items that are listed on Amazon. | BUS CUL | Text PrintPDF | Melissa Balmain | 0964: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0959 | 02/19/2012 | Out of network | Move a current or former TV program (or type of programming) to a different network and explain what would change. | TEL | Text PrintPDF | Kurt Stahl | 0963: Text PrintPDF |
| 0958 | 02/12/2012 | 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. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jason Russo | 0962: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0957 | 02/05/2012 | Fearful Symmetry | Write a clever passage whose successive words are one letter longer until the middle of the passage, and then become one letter shorter. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF | Bird Waring | 0961: Text PrintPDF |
| 0956 | 01/29/2012 | Give us some bad ideas | Finish any of the provided "You know" phrases. | JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Noah Meyerson | 0960: Text PrintPDF |
| 0955 | 01/22/2012 | Twits' twist | Create a phrase by combining a word or phrase with an anagram of that word or phrase, and define or describe it. | ANA WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nancy Schwalb | 0959: Text PrintPDF |
| 0954 | 01/15/2012 | Bring on the 'fight' jokes | Tell us an original joke ending with “And then the fight started.” | JOK | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0958: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0953 | 01/08/2012 | Clue us in | Come up with creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms in the crossword puzzle that's already run in The Post. | CRO | Text PrintPDF | Seth Brown | 0957: Text PrintPDF |
| 0952 | 01/01/2012 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2011. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Gold | 0956: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0951 | 12/25/2011 | Say that again | Double a word, or use a word and its homophone, to make a phrase, and define it. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Kathy Fraeman | 0955: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0950 | 12/18/2011 | Of all the nerve! | Give us a humorous example of hypothetical chutzpah. | ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 0954: Text PrintPDF |
| 0949 | 12/11/2011 | Analogies | Give us an analogy using "a is to b as x is to y." | WOR ANL | Text PrintPDF | Edmund Conti | 0953: Text PrintPDF |
| 0948 | 12/04/2011 | 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). | PRE | Text PrintPDF | David Prevar | 0952: Text PrintPDF |
| 0947 | 11/27/2011 | Tour de Fours VIII: Neologisms | Come up with a new word or two-word term that includes the letter block N-O-E-L, in any order but with no other letters between them, and define it. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF | Eric Fritz | 0951: Text PrintPDF |
| 0946 | 11/20/2011 | Another round of Bierce | Write a clever definition of a word, name or multi-word term. | WOR MEN | Text PrintPDF | Melissa Balmain | 0949: Text PrintPDF |
| 0945 | 11/13/2011 | Laugh-baked ideas | Cleverly depict a person, event or phenomenon of the 21st century — real history as well as scenes from movies, books, videos, etc. — using edible materials, and send us a photo of your creation. | PIX HIS MOV LIT | Text PrintPDF | Alethea Dopart, Kevin Dopart |
0950: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0944 | 11/06/2011 | Uh, yeah, it's just you | Give us one or more "Is it just me" questions. | QUE | Text PrintPDF | Neal Starkman | 0948: Text PrintPDF |
| 0943 | 10/30/2011 | Ask backward XXIX | You are on "Jeopardy!" You supply the questions for as many of the provided answers as you like. | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Danny Bravman | 0947: Text PrintPDF |
| 0942 | 10/23/2011 | Singular ideas | Give us an idea for a contest for which there's likely only one good entry. | STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 0946: Text PrintPDF |
| 0941 | 10/16/2011 | They don't say! | Give us a quote that a particular person, present or past, real or fictional, sooo wouldn't have said. | HIS FIC | Text WebPDF | Larry Flynn | 0945: Text PrintPDF |
| 0940 | 10/09/2011 | Our type o' headline | Change a headline by one letter, or switch two letters, or change spacing or punctuation, in a headline (or most of a headline) appearing on an article or ad in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com from Oct. 7 through Oct. 17, and elaborate on it in a "bank" headline (subhead). | HEA LET CAL | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0944: Text PrintPDF |
| 0939 | 10/02/2011 | MASH 2: The Retread | Combine two movie titles and describe the result. | MOV | Text PrintPDF | Kathye Hamilton | 0943: Text PrintPDF |
| 0938 | 09/25/2011 | Free and Lear | Write a limerick using the first two lines of any of Edward Lear's 115 limericks plus your own remaining three lines. | LIM POE LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Hugh Thirlway | 0942: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0937 | 09/18/2011 | Staake it to him | Write a caption for any of the five pages or details pictured from some of Bob's more than 50 picture books. | CAP ART LIT | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0941: Text WebPDF |
| 0936 | 09/11/2011 | Hoho contendere | Slightly alter a well-known foreign-language term and define it. | LAN WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Greg Deye | 0940: Text PrintPDF |
| 0935 | 09/04/2011 | The 400 blows | Write a humorous poem--choose your form--about the Virginia earthquake, Hurricane Irene or another well-known natural event. | POE CUL | Text PrintPDF | Matt Monitto | 0939: Text PrintPDF |
| 0934 | 08/28/2011 | Same difference | Explain how any two items in the provided list are similar or different. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | Rob Huffman | 0938: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0933 | 08/21/2011 | Stories that count (to 56) | Write a humorous story in exactly 56 words. | WOR LAN | Text PrintPDF | (none) | 0937: Text PrintPDF |
| 0932 | 08/14/2011 | We'll call them your-mama jokes | Tell us an original "your mama" joke. | CUL JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ben Aronin | 0936: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0931 | 08/07/2011 | Limerixicon 8 | Supply a humorous limerick significantly featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters ea- through -el. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 0935: Text PrintPDF |
| 0930 | 07/31/2011 | We WANT stupid complaints! | Complain comically unreasonably about some innocuous thing appearing in the print Post or on washingtonpost.com over the next week or the previous few days. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Peter Jenkins | 0934: Text PrintPDF |
| 0929 | 07/24/2011 | Now sit right back ... | Write a funny song introducing a TV show, past or present. | MUS TEL POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Nan Reiner | 0933: Text PrintPDF |
| 0928 | 07/17/2011 | Play feature | Use the title of a movie as the answer to a riddle or other question. | MOV QUE | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0932: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0927 | 07/10/2011 | 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. | POE BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 0931: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0926 | 07/03/2011 | Outrageous fortunes | Come up with a fortune cookie line that you'd like to see. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Ward Kay | 0930: Text PrintPDF |
| 0925 | 06/26/2011 | A remeaning task | Redefine a word in the dictionary beginning with I through O. | LET WOR MEN | Text PrintPDF | Jamie Pazur | 0929: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0924 | 06/19/2011 | Doomed to repeat it | Create "Unreal Facts" about history. | HIS TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF | Judy Blanchard | 0928: Text PrintPDF |
| 0923 | 06/12/2011 | Chemical Wordfare | Create a new chemical element or other chemical term. | SCI | Text PrintPDF | Christopher Lamora | 0927: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0922 | 06/05/2011 | A Banner Week | Write entirely new, humorous lyrics to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner”; they can be on any subject. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF | Gary Crockett | 0926: Text PrintPDF |
| 0921 | 05/29/2011 | Give Us Willies | Write an original Little Willie poem, perhaps reflecting our current era. This is a venerable four-line genre in which Master W. does some nasty thing and doesn't tend to learn to be a Good Boy by poem's end. | POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0925: Text PrintPDF |
| 0920 | 05/22/2011 | Sarchiasm | Write an original chiasmus, in which the elements of a phrase are inverted for comedic effect. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | John Shea | 0924: Text PrintPDF |
| 0919 | 05/15/2011 | 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. | LET WOR CAL NEO | Text PrintPDF | David Ballard | 0923: Text PrintPDF |
| 0918 | 05/08/2011 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Pam Sweeney | 0922: Text PrintPDF |
| 0917 | 05/01/2011 | 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. | POE CUL | Text PrintPDF | Danny Bravman | 0921: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0916 | 04/24/2011 | Bank shots | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from April 22 through May 2 and reinterpret it by adding a "bank head," or subtitle. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | John Shea | 0920: Text PrintPDF |
| 0915 | 04/17/2011 | Picture this | Write a caption for any of the cartoons pictured here. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF | Jack Hingel | 0919: Text PrintPDF |
| 0914 | 04/10/2011 | Foaling around | Breed any two of 100 of the almost 400 horses eligible for this year's Triple Crown races, and name the foal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0918: Text PrintPDF |
| 0913 | 04/03/2011 | 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. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF | Kyle Bonney | 0917: Text PrintPDF |
| 0912 | 03/27/2011 | 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. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Michael Reinemer | 0916: Text PrintPDF |
| 0911 | 03/20/2011 | 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. | ??? | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Russell Beland | 0915: Text PrintPDF |
| 0910 | 03/13/2011 | Your ad here | Slightly alter an advertising slogan so that someone else could use it. | SLO BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rachel Braun | 0914: Text PrintPDF |
| 0909 | 03/06/2011 | Reprizing | Suggest humorous uses for one or more of the items above, alone or in combination. | CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0913: Text PrintPDF |
| 0908 | 02/27/2011 | Recast away | Fire an actor or actress from a movie or TV show, past or present, and offer a replacement for the role. | MOV TEL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 0912: Text PrintPDF |
| 20110220 | 02/20/2011 | Give it a rest | No new contest this week. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | ||
| 0907 | 02/13/2011 | Naming rite | Come up with a creative, somehow fitting sponsor for some public facility or part of one. | BUS | Text PrintPDF | Tom Panther | 0910: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0906 | 02/06/2011 | Your mug here | Give us a new design for the Loser Mug. | STY | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Gips, Edmund Conti, Howard Walderman |
0909: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0905 | 01/30/2011 | Anticdotes | Give us an untrue anecdote responding to one of these past Editor's Query topics. | WAS FIC | Text PrintPDF | Gary Crockett | 0908: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0904 | 01/23/2011 | We move on back | Move the first letter in a word or name to the end of that word and define the resulting word. | LET WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Marian Carlsson, Dave Garratt |
20110220: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
0911: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0903 | 01/15/2011 | Bill us now | Combine the names of two or more members of Congress as co-sponsors of a bill. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0907: Text PrintPDF |
| 0902 | 01/08/2011 | 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). | WAS HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dixon Wragg | 0906: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0901 | 01/01/2011 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2010. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Christopher Lamora | 0905: Text PrintPDF |
| 0900 | 12/25/2010 | Dear us! | Submit a "Dear Blank" letter to us instead. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0904: Text PrintPDF |
| 0899 | 12/18/2010 | Clue us in | Send us funny, clever clues for any of the words already in this grid. | CRO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0903: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0898 | 12/11/2010 | Pre-current events | Predict some humorous news event that would happen in 2011. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Arthur Adams | 0902: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0897 | 12/04/2010 | Catch their drift | Take any sentence from an article or ad in The Washington Post or washingtonpost.com from Dec. 3 to Dec. 13 and translate it into "plain English. | WAS LAN ENG | Text PrintPDF | Danny Bravman | 0901: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0896 | 11/27/2010 | 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. | BUS REL POL | Text PrintPDF | Larry Yungk | 0900: Text PrintPDF |
| 0895 | 11/20/2010 | Picture this | Supply a caption for any of these cartoons. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF | Doug Frank | 0899: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0894 | 11/13/2010 | Look Back in Inker | Enter any Style Invitational from Week 841 through Week 890 (except for Week 844). | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Craig Dykstra | 0898: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0893 | 11/06/2010 | Give us a hint | Write a humorously witty story in 25 words or fewer. | WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 0897: Text PrintPDF |
| 0892 | 10/30/2010 | Get a move on | Change the location of something for humorous effect. Provide an explanation if you wish. | LOC | Text PrintPDF | Drew Bennett | 0896: Text PrintPDF |
| 0891 | 10/23/2010 | Mirror, Mirror | Write a word-palindrome sentence, in which the first and last words are the same; the second and next-to-last, etc. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Peter Jenkins | 0895: Text PrintPDF |
| 0890 | 10/16/2010 | Double-teaming | Combine the names of any two pro sports teams -- even from different sports -- and describe the result. | ATH | Text PrintPDF | Keith Maynard | 0894: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0889 | 10/09/2010 | 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. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0893: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0888 | 10/02/2010 | 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 | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 0892: Text PrintPDF |
| 0887 | 09/25/2010 | Plus-Fours | Write a limerick whose third or fourth line is one of those listed above. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Gold | 0891: Text PrintPDF |
| 0886 | 09/18/2010 | Look both ways | Give us a new term that's a palindrome and define it. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Tom Flaherty | 0890: Text PrintPDF |
| 0885 | 09/11/2010 | 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. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0889: Text PrintPDF |
| 0884 | 09/04/2010 | Rekindling the spork | Combine two devices or other products to make a new one. | BUS | Text PrintPDF | Scott Weinstein | 0888: Text PrintPDF |
| 20100828 | 08/28/2010 | Not this week, honey | No new contest this week -- it's the first break that the Empress has given the Obsessive Losers since February 2008. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | ||
| 0883 | 08/21/2010 | Same difference | Choose any two items from the list above and explain why they are alike or are different from each other. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Craig Dykstra | 0886: Text PrintPDF |
| 0882 | 08/14/2010 | Limerixicon VII | Supply a humorous limerick prominently featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters dr-. | LIM LET POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Carole Lyons |
0885: Text PrintPDF
0887: Text PrintPDF |
| 0881 | 08/07/2010 | What's in a name? | Take the name of a person or institution. Find within it a hidden message. | LET BUS POL | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0884: Text PrintPDF |
| 0880 | 07/31/2010 | 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. | WOR LET CAL | Text PrintPDF | Lennie Magida |
20100828: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
0887: Text PrintPDF |
| 0879 | 07/24/2010 | Say Venn | Express some sentiment in the form of a Venn diagram. | PIX | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0883: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0878 | 07/17/2010 | Safety in blunders | Tell us a way to make the nation more secure. | SCI POL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Jon Graft | 0882: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0877 | 07/10/2010 | Quipped from the headlines | Write a rhyming couplet about some matter in the news. | POE CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0881: Text PrintPDF |
| 0876 | 07/03/2010 | Oilies but goodies | Write lyrics somehow related to the oil spill, set to an existing tune. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mae Scanlan | 0880: Text PrintPDF |
| 0875 | 06/26/2010 | 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. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Drew Bennett | 0879: Text PrintPDF |
| 0874 | 06/19/2010 | Stat Us | Write a funny Facebook status line. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Dudley Thompson | 0878: Text PrintPDF |
| 0873 | 06/12/2010 | Back to Square 1A | Replace the shaded letters in this grid with your own letters to come up with a different word or phrase -- either an existing word or one you make up -- and define it humorously. | CRO LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Cathy Lamaze | 0877: Text PrintPDF |
| 0872 | 06/05/2010 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Cliff Kellogg | 0876: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0871 | 05/29/2010 | Remarquees | Change a movie title by one letter (or number, if the title includes a number) and describe the new film. | LET MOV CAL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Gary Crockett | 0875: Text PrintPDF |
| 0870 | 05/22/2010 | Let's play Nopardy | Describe any of the above phrases in the form of a question. | QUE GOO JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Russell Beland | 0874: Text PrintPDF |
| 0869 | 05/15/2010 | Clue us in | Send us funny, clever clues for any of the words already in this grid. | CRO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dana Austin | 0873: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0868 | 05/08/2010 | Count the ways | Give us some musings of a technical wonk. | SCI | Text PrintPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 0872: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0867 | 05/01/2010 | Back in the saddle | Breed any two of the foals in today's results -- OR one foal with one of the actual horses used in today's entries, and name the grandfoal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Barry Koch | 0871: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0866 | 04/24/2010 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Malcolm Fleschner | 0870: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0865 | 04/17/2010 | No Googlenopes left | Come up with a humorous Googlenope. | GOO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mark Richardson | 0869: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0864 | 04/10/2010 | 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. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Ann Martin | 0868: Text PrintPDF |
| 0863 | 04/03/2010 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Pam Sweeney | 0867: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0862 | 03/27/2010 | Be cheerful | Send us a cheer or fight song for any pro sports team or any national team. | POE MUS ATH | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | 0866: Text PrintPDF |
| 0861 | 03/20/2010 | 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. | LEG | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0865: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0860 | 03/13/2010 | Ten, Anyone? | Humorously define or describe something or someone in exactly 10 words. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Phil Frankenfeld | 0864: Text PrintPDF |
| 0859 | 03/06/2010 | Can't goods | Cast a joke in one of the forms listed above. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Beverley Sharp | 0863: Text PrintPDF |
| 0858 | 02/27/2010 | Same OED | Make up a false definition for any of the words listed below. | WOR DIC MEN | Text PrintPDF | Michael Gips | 0862: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0857 | 02/20/2010 | 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. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0861: Text PrintPDF |
| 0856 | 02/13/2010 | 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. | ART LIT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 0860: Text PrintPDF |
| 0855 | 02/06/2010 | The news could be verse | Sum up an article (or even an ad!) in any Washington Post print or online edition from Feb. 6 through Feb. 15 in verse. | POE WAS | Text PrintPDF | David "Stockton" Smith | 0859: Text PrintPDF |
| 0854 | 01/30/2010 | What's not to liken? | Produce one or more similes in any of the following categories. | LAN | Text PrintPDF | Russ Taylor | 0858: Text PrintPDF |
| 0853 | 01/23/2010 | 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. | LET WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | John Glenn | 0857: Text PrintPDF |
| 0852 | 01/16/2010 | Small, Let's get | Write a rhopalic sentence (or fanciful newspaper headline) in which each successive word is one letter shorter. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF | Jeffrey Contompasis | 0856: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0851 | 01/09/2010 | Going to the shrink | Downsize the title of a book, movie or play to make it smaller or less momentous and describe it. | LIT MOV | Text PrintPDF | Adam Beland, Russell Beland |
0855: Text PrintPDF |
| 0850 | 01/02/2010 | Dead letters | Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2009. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0854: Text PrintPDF |
| 0849 | 12/26/2009 | Homonymphomania | Create a new homonym (or homophone) for any existing word and define it. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Christopher Lamora | 0853: Text PrintPDF |
| 0848 | 12/19/2009 | Up and addin' | Compose a humorous rhopalic sentence (or multiple sentences) in which each word is one letter longer than the previous word. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0852: Text PrintPDF |
| 0847 | 12/12/2009 | Questionable journalism | Find any sentence (or a substantive part of a sentence) that appears in The Post or in an article on washingtonpost.com from Dec. 11 through Dec. 21 and come up with a question it might answer. | WAS QUE | Text PrintPDF | George Vary | 0851: Text PrintPDF |
| 0846 | 12/05/2009 | Season's gratings | Write a brief (50 words or fewer) holiday letter from a personage from past or present, or from fiction. | HIS LIT CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Peter Metrinko | 0850: Text PrintPDF |
| 0845 | 11/28/2009 | Reologisms | Write a description for any of 50 genuine Loser-created neologisms. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0849: Text PrintPDF |
| 0844 | 11/21/2009 | Healthy choice | Enter any Style Invitational from Week 790 through Week 840, except for Week 793 and Week 798. | PRE | Text PrintPDF | John Shea | 0848: Text PrintPDF |
| 0843 | 11/14/2009 | Prefrains | Provide a sentence or two of lead-in to the first line of a well-known book, poem, or song. | LIT MUS POE | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0847: Text PrintPDF |
| 0842 | 11/07/2009 | Ask backwards | Here are your 12 possible answers. Tell us your joke in the form of a question, please. | JOK JEO | Text PrintPDF | Judy Blanchard | 0846: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0841 | 10/31/2009 | Food for naught | Alter the name of a food or dish slightly and describe the result. | FOO NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dave Zarrow | 0845: Text PrintPDF |
| 0840 | 10/24/2009 | Frittering away the neurons | Give us some more colorfully useful phrases; they don't have to be in the X'ing-the-Y form. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Elwood Fitzner | 0844: Text PrintPDF |
| 0839 | 10/17/2009 | 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. | LET WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Patricia Casey | 0843: Text PrintPDF |
| 0838 | 10/10/2009 | Picture This | Provide a caption for any of these pictures. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF | Andrew Hoenig | 0842: Text PrintPDF |
| 0837 | 10/03/2009 | Strip Search | Combine two comic strips that appear in The Washington Post or at washingtonpost.com/comics and describe the results. | WAS COM | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Craig Dykstra | 0841: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0836 | 09/26/2009 | 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. | POL BUS REL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Bruce Alter | 0840: Text PrintPDF |
| 0835 | 09/19/2009 | 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. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Tom Witte | 0839: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0834 | 09/12/2009 | 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. | HYP WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Sylvia Betts | 0838: Text PrintPDF |
| 0833 | 09/05/2009 | 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. | WOR LET CAL | Text PrintPDF | Pam Sweeney | 0837: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0832 | 08/29/2009 | Clue Us In | You supply one or more clues for the words in a filled-in grid. | CRO | Text PrintPDF | Jim Lubell | 0836: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0831 | 08/22/2009 | A Big To-Do | Name a "bucket list" item for a well-known real or fictional character. | LIT CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rick Haynes | 0835: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0830 | 08/15/2009 | Mess With Our Heads | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from Aug. 14 through Aug. 24 and reinterpret it by adding a "bank head," or subtitle. | HEA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 0834: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0829 | 08/08/2009 | Limerixicon 6 | Supply a humorous limerick prominently featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters di-. | LIM WOR LET POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Andrew Burnet | 0833: Text PrintPDF |
| 0828 | 08/01/2009 | Inhuman Puns | Make a pun on the name of a familiar group, organization or company, and describe it or provide a quote from it. | BUS JOK WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Craig Dykstra | 0832: Text PrintPDF |
| 0827 | 07/25/2009 | Caller Idiot | Name a real product or company and supply a stupid question or complaint for the consumer hotline person. | BUS QUE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Hazle | 0831: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0826 | 07/18/2009 | 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. | WOR INS NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Mike Ostapiej | 0830: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0825 | 07/11/2009 | Disinstrumentals | Write some words to music that has no words. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Doyle | 0829: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0824 | 07/04/2009 | Jestinations | Give us a slogan for any city or town. | SLO LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jay Shuck | 0828: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0823 | 06/27/2009 | Wryku | Compose a humorous (or at least wry or clever) haiku. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Dave Zarrow | 0827: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0822 | 06/20/2009 | For Real Folks | Suggest some attractions for a Festival of Real American Folklife. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Wayne Rodgers | 0826: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0821 | 06/13/2009 | Spit the Difference | How are any of the items on the list above alike or different? | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dan Ramish | 0825: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0820 | 06/06/2009 | Be Mister Language Person | Supply a Mister Language Person-type question and answer. | LAN QUE | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0824: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0819 | 05/30/2009 | Art Re-View | These objects are not what they seem to be, at first glance. They are something else entirely. What are they? | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0823: Text PrintPDF |
| 0818 | 05/23/2009 | 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. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Don Kirkpatrick | 0822: Text PrintPDF |
| 0817 | 05/16/2009 | Flopflip | Reverse the first half and second half of a word or name and define the result. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Erik Wennstrom | 0821: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0816 | 05/09/2009 | Googillions | Come up with an original phrase that generates at least 1 million listings on a Google search. | GOO | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0820: Text PrintPDF |
| 0815 | 05/02/2009 | Wittecisms | Create an original word containing -- in any order -- at least a W, an I, two T's and an E. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Tom Witte | 0819: Text PrintPDF |
| 0814 | 04/25/2009 | There Will Be Bloodline | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in this week's results, and name their foal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Rubio, Lois Douthitt |
0818: Text PrintPDF |
| 0813 | 04/18/2009 | Aw, Shocks | Give us a humorous example of the "shocking -- not. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Hazle | 0817: Text PrintPDF |
| 0812 | 04/11/2009 | Rx-Related Humor | Offer up some entirely false medical or psychological "fact. | SCI TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0816: Text PrintPDF |
| 0811 | 04/04/2009 | Rock-Bottom Lines | Tell us a sign that the economy couldn't get worse. | BUS CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John Russell Tuohy | 0815: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0810 | 03/28/2009 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0814: Text PrintPDF |
| 0809 | 03/21/2009 | Unkindest Cutlines | Supply cutlines, or captions, for any of these newspaper photos. | CAP | Text PrintPDF | Elizabeth Molye | 0813: Text PrintPDF |
| 0808 | 03/14/2009 | 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. | POE WOR STY | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0812: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0807 | 03/07/2009 | Pretty Graphic Expressions | Express some insight as an equation or other mathematical expression. | SCI | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Phyllis Reinhard | 0811: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0806 | 02/28/2009 | DQ Very Much | Give us a phrase or sentence that would nip a potential relationship in the bud (or elsewhere). | ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Peter Metrinko, Greg Dobbins, Ed Gordon |
0810: Text PrintPDF |
| 0805 | 02/21/2009 | Brand Eccchs | Give us an original name in any of the above categories (not an actual badly named product). | BUS | Text PrintPDF | Cy Gardner | 0809: Text PrintPDF |
| 0804 | 02/14/2009 | 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. | HEA CAL LET | Text PrintPDF | Jay Shuck | 0808: Text PrintPDF |
| 0803 | 02/07/2009 | The Pepys Show | Write a humorous diary or journal entry for someone, famous or not, for any point in history. | HIS CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0807: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0802 | 01/31/2009 | Dreck TV | Suggest a new cable TV channel, with a description or example of its programming. | TEL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John O'Byrne | 0806: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0801 | 01/24/2009 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. You supply one or more of the questions. | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0805: Text PrintPDF |
| 0800 | 01/17/2009 | Compairison | Briefly define or sum up an existing word or short phrase, then change it very slightly and do the same with the result. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Lawrence McGuire | 0804: Text PrintPDF |
| 0799 | 01/10/2009 | Send Us the Bill | Come up with legislation that, given their names, two or more freshman senators or representatives might sponsor together. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF | Dudley Thompson | 0803: Text PrintPDF |
| 0798 | 01/03/2009 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem commemorating someone who died in 2008. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0802: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0797 | 12/27/2008 | Be Resolute | Make a humorous resolution for some particular person or institution to accomplish next year. | POL BUS | Text PrintPDF | Christopher Lamora | 0801: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0796 | 12/20/2008 | Sincerest Flattery | Make up a pun on a familiar name of a real of fictional person and provide a fitting description or quote. | JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Christopher Lamora | 0800: Text PrintPDF |
| 0795 | 12/13/2008 | Stimulate Us | Tell us what the government ought to be spending our money on. | POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Russ Taylor | 0799: Text PrintPDF |
| 0794 | 12/06/2008 | Ripped Off From the Headlines | Send us some Onion-type headlines. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Malcolm Fleschner | 0798: Text PrintPDF |
| 0793 | 11/29/2008 | 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. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Rob Cohen | 0797: Text PrintPDF |
| 0792 | 11/22/2008 | Clue Us In | Compile a set of funny alternative clues to a crossword penned by Ace Constructor Paula Gamache. | CRO | Text PrintPDF | Judith Cottrill | 0796: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0791 | 11/15/2008 | The 1K Club | Supply a chain of 20 names -- they may be names of people, places, organizations, products, etc., but they must be names -- beginning and ending with "Chris Doyle. | STY CHN | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0795: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0790 | 11/08/2008 | If Only! | Explain how the world would be different had some event not occurred. | POL HIS CUL | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0794: Text PrintPDF |
| 0789 | 11/01/2008 | Doctrine in The House? | State a humorous, original "doctrine" for a person or other entity. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Mellema | 0793: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0788 | 10/25/2008 | The Back End of a Bulwer | Give us a comically terrible ending of a novel. | LIT LAN | Text PrintPDF | LuAnn Bishop | 0792: Text PrintPDF |
| 0787 | 10/18/2008 | 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. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0791: Text PrintPDF |
| 0786 | 10/11/2008 | Top of the Staake | So get your thoughts provoked for No. Umpteen of our cartoon caption contest. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Ned Bent | 0790: Text PrintPDF |
| 0785 | 10/04/2008 | The Ballad Box | Write a short, humorous song somehow relating to the presidential campaign, set to a familiar tune. | POE POL MUS | Text PrintPDF | Barb Sarshik, Andy Pike |
0789: Text PrintPDF |
| 0784 | 09/27/2008 | Words to The Wiseacres | Give us some proverbs for 21st-century life. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Michael Dailey | 0788: Text PrintPDF |
| 0783 | 09/20/2008 | The Shill Game | Name a celebrity or fictional character to endorse a real product or company. | BUS CUL | Text PrintPDF | Marty McCullen | 0787: Text PrintPDF |
| 0782 | 09/13/2008 | That's the Ticket! | Explain why any of the items on the list below is qualified to be President of the United States. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Rick Wood | 0786: Text PrintPDF |
| 0781 | 09/06/2008 | 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. | LET WOR CAL NEO | Text PrintPDF | Barry Koch | 0785: Text PrintPDF |
| 0780 | 08/30/2008 | Location, Location, Location | Say how you know you're in a particular place. | LOC | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0784: Text PrintPDF |
| 0779 | 08/23/2008 | Gripe for the Picking | Rant about any issue that wouldn't make your top 100 for airing in The Post. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Chris Rollins | 0783: Text PrintPDF |
| 0778 | 08/16/2008 | Tied Games | Combine any two sports or nonathletic activities into a single sport or game. | ATH | Text PrintPDF | Hugh Pullen | 0782: Text PrintPDF |
| 0777 | 08/09/2008 | Limerixicon 5 | Supply a humorous limerick featuring any English word, name or term beginning with the letters da-. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0781: Text PrintPDF |
| 0776 | 08/02/2008 | An Act of Sunny Side | Note the silver lining in some otherwise disappointing turn of events. | ??? | Text PrintPDF | Drew Bennett | 0780: Text PrintPDF |
| 0775 | 07/26/2008 | 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. | HYP WOR | Text PrintPDF | Beth Morgan | 0779: Text PrintPDF |
| 0774 | 07/19/2008 | Tour De Forks | Supply a name for a restaurant dish named after someone (or some product or organization) and describe it. | WOR CUL FOO | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0778: Text PrintPDF |
| 0773 | 07/12/2008 | Always Looking for Sects | Coin a religion or belief system and tell us its basic tenet or distinguishing characteristic. | REL | Text PrintPDF | Lawrence McGuire | 0777: Text PrintPDF |
| 0772 | 07/05/2008 | Make It Simile, Stupid | Translate a sentence or two of literature or other good writing so that "Los Angeles residents under 40" can appreciate it. | LAN LIT CUL | Text PrintPDF | Mike Ostapiej | 0776: Text PrintPDF |
| 0771 | 06/28/2008 | Groaner's Manuals | Come up with a humorous name for a guide or manual for, or a book about, a particular enterprise or organization. | WOR BUS | Text PrintPDF | Beverley Sharp | 0775: Text PrintPDF |
| 0770 | 06/21/2008 | A Knack for Anachronism | Take a famous historical moment, literary passage, or movie scene and place it in an entirely different age. | HIS LIT MOV | Text PrintPDF | Peter Metrinko | 0774: Text PrintPDF |
| 0769 | 06/14/2008 | Splice Work If You Can Get It | Combine two words -- overlapping by at least two letters -- into what's known by polysyllabic types as a portmanteau word, and by the rest of us as mash word, and define it. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Rick Haynes | 0773: Text PrintPDF |
| 0768 | 06/07/2008 | The Events Described Herein Are Entirely Fictitious | Come up with fictitious movie trivia. | MOV TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0772: Text PrintPDF |
| 0767 | 05/31/2008 | Questionable Journalism | Find any sentence (or a substantive part of a sentence) that appears in the Post or in an article on washingtonpost.com from May 31 through June 9 and come up with a question it might answer. | WAS QUE | Text PrintPDF | Beverley Sharp | 0771: Text PrintPDF |
| 0766 | 05/24/2008 | Think to Shudder | Come up with scenarios that are even more awkward (and more imaginative) than the wincers mentioned above. | ??? | Text PrintPDF | David Prevar | 0770: Text PrintPDF |
| 0765 | 05/17/2008 | 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. | POE LOC | Text PrintPDF | Barry Koch | 0769: Text PrintPDF |
| 0764 | 05/10/2008 | Can You Up Chuck? | Come up with entirely new and funny Chuck Norris Facts. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Robert Gallagher | 0768: Text PrintPDF |
| 0763 | 05/03/2008 | Another Time Around the Track | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in this week's results, and name THEIR foal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Pam Sweeney, Kevin Dopart |
0767: Text PrintPDF |
| 0762 | 04/26/2008 | Look This Up in Your Funk & Wagnalls | Supply the pair of terms listed at the top of a page of any print dictionary to indicate the first and last listings on the page, and define that hyphenated term. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Pam Dalrymple | 0766: Text PrintPDF |
| 0761 | 04/19/2008 | Strip Mining | Supply the text for any or all three of these Bob Staake comic strips. | CAR COM | Text PrintPDF | Randy Lee | 0765: Text PrintPDF |
| 0760 | 04/12/2008 | Whacksy Buildup | Describe any of these Googlewhacks in the form of a question, "Jeopardy"-style. | GOO JEO | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0764: Text PrintPDF |
| 0759 | 04/05/2008 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Cy Gardner | 0763: Text PrintPDF |
| 0758 | 03/29/2008 | Wrong Address | Using any of the words of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in whatever order you like, create your own passage. | HIS WOR BNK | Text PrintPDF | Barry Koch | 0762: Text PrintPDF |
| 0757 | 03/22/2008 | Gorey Thoughts From A to Z | Send us some rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. | POE LET | Text PrintPDF | Beth Baniszewski | 0761: Text PrintPDF |
| 0756 | 03/15/2008 | Mess With Our Heads | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from March 15 through 24 and reinterpret it by adding a "bank head," or subtitle. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Christopher Lamora | 0760: Text PrintPDF |
| 0755 | 03/08/2008 | Take Another 'Whack | Send us a phrase of two or more words that produces exactly one Web page on the Google search engine and describe the phrase. | GOO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Michael Levy | 0759: Text PrintPDF |
| 0754 | 03/01/2008 | Canny Similarities | Cite a humorous "uncanny similarity" between any two of the very different people listed above. | DIF | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Larry Yungk | 0758: Text PrintPDF |
| 20080223 | 02/23/2008 | Get In Your Last Shot: Photo Contest's Final Days | No new contest this week. While the sun never seems to set on the Empress, even she ventures outside the Forbidden City once in a while. | Text PrintPDF | (none) | ||
| 0753 | 02/16/2008 | Hot Off The Riddle | Supply a simple riddle and both the wholesome answer and the (printable) Invitational answer. | JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kelton Vincent | 0757: Text PrintPDF |
| 0752 | 02/09/2008 | The Might-Mates Right | Fill out any of these five "you just might" joke-templates. | JOK | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0755: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0751 | 02/02/2008 | Strike Gold | Slightly change the name of an existing or former TV show to create a program that can scab the writers' strike. | TEL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Wilson Varga | 0754: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0750 | 01/26/2008 | Hit Us With Your Best Shot: Photo Contest No. 4 | Illustrate, any way you like, any of the provided five captions with your own original photo. | PIX CAP | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0756: Text PrintPDF |
| 0749 | 01/19/2008 | 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. | LET WOR MEN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Peter Metrinko, Pie Snelson |
0753: Text PrintPDF WebPDF
20080223: Text PrintPDF |
| 0748 | 01/12/2008 | Dead Letters | Write a humorous poem about a well-known personage who died in 2007. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 0752: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0747 | 01/05/2008 | Boeing Us Silly | Suggest some comical ways to improve air travel, either in general or for yourself. | CUL BUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverley Sharp | 0751: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0746 | 12/29/2007 | We Err The World | Give us a motto or short slogan for any country in the world. | SLO LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Thomas Murphy | 0750: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0745 | 12/22/2007 | Hurry Up and Slow Down! | Suggest particular ways that would slow life down, or ways that would speed it up. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Christopher Lamora | 0749: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0744 | 12/15/2007 | You OED Us One | Make up a humorous and false definition for any of the words listed below. | WOR DIC MEN | Text PrintPDF | Bill Spencer | 0748: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0743 | 12/08/2007 | Picture This | Write a caption for any of these Bob Staake cartoons. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Roger Dalrymple | 0747: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0742 | 12/01/2007 | Clue Us In | Give us a whole new set of clues to a crossword puzzle penned by Ace Constructor Paula Gamache. | CRO | Text PrintPDF | John O'Byrne | 0746: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0741 | 11/24/2007 | Well, What Do You Know? | Tell us what Major Life Lessons can be derived from any of these venues or situations. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Fred Dawson | 0745: Text PrintPDF |
| 0740 | 11/17/2007 | Give Us a Hint | Offer clues in various situations that something isn't working out well. | ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ben Aronin | 0744: Text PrintPDF |
| 0739 | 11/10/2007 | Lies, All Lies | Give us some humorous fictional revelation about a current or past political figure. | HIS POL TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Joel Knanishu | 0743: Text PrintPDF |
| 0738 | 11/03/2007 | 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. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0742: Text PrintPDF |
| 0737 | 10/27/2007 | No River, No Woods | Send us a funny parody of a well-known song, with lyrics that commemorate an occasion other than Christmas or Hanukkah. | POE HIS MUS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 0741: Text PrintPDF |
| 0736 | 10/20/2007 | 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. | QUE CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Rollins | 0740: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0735 | 10/13/2007 | Look Back in Inker | Enter any Style Invitational contest from Week 680 through Week 731. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Anne Paris | 0739: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0734 | 10/06/2007 | Turnaround Time | Write a rhyming couplet containing two words that are anagrams of each other. | POE ANA | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 0738: Text PrintPDF |
| 0733 | 09/29/2007 | Just Drop It, Okay? | Drop the first letter from an actual word or term to make a new word or term, and define it. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Deanna Busick | 0737: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0732 | 09/22/2007 | 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. | POL CHN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Danny Bravman | 0736: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0731 | 09/15/2007 | Doo Process | Describe for us a wildly inefficient and ridiculous way to produce or prepare an ordinary dish or beverage. | FOO ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Ellen Raphaeli | 0735: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0730 | 09/08/2007 | Time-Wastes For Everyman | Describe activities that make entering The Style Invitational seem like a constructive use of one's time. | STY ADV | Text PrintPDF | Anne Paris | 0734: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0729 | 09/01/2007 | Otherwordly Visions | Take any sentence in an article or ad in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com from Sept. 1 through Sept. 10 and translate it into "plain English. | WAS WOR ENG | Text PrintPDF | Russ Taylor | 0733: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0728 | 08/25/2007 | 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. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0732: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0727 | 08/19/2007 | We Get a C-Section | Tell us some pros and cons of moving The Style Invitational to the Saturday Style section; or write us up some free promo-ad copying announcing the move. | STY | Text PrintPDF | Seth Brown | 0731: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0726 | 08/12/2007 | Limerixicon 4 | Supply a humorous limerick based on any word in the dictionary beginning with cl- through co-. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF | Chris Strolin | 0730: Text PrintPDF |
| 0725 | 08/05/2007 | Beggars For Description | Describe, without being boring, a cartoon to fit any of the provided captions. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Cy Gardner | 0729: Text PrintPDF |
| 0724 | 07/29/2007 | Abridged Too Far | Sum up a book, play or movie in a humorous rhyming verse of two to four lines. | POE LIT MOV | Text PrintPDF | Ellen Raphaeli | 0728: Text PrintPDF |
| 0723 | 07/22/2007 | Name Your Poison | Create a name and recipe for a cocktail and, if you like, describe when it might be served. | FOO NEO | Text PrintPDF | Roy Ashley | 0727: Text PrintPDF |
| 0722 | 07/15/2007 | 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. | GOO JEO | Text PrintPDF | Steve Ettinger | 0726: Text PrintPDF |
| 0721 | 07/08/2007 | 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. | CAP STY | Text PrintPDF | Ben Aronin | 0725: Text PrintPDF |
| 0720 | 07/01/2007 | The Course of Humor Events | Sum up a historical event in a two-line rhyme or other clever and pithy epigram. | POE HIS | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0724: Text PrintPDF |
| 0719 | 06/24/2007 | We Har the World | Come up with a creative name for a sports team for a town or city anywhere outside the United States. | ATH LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Elwood Fitzner | 0723: Text PrintPDF |
| 0718 | 06/17/2007 | Put Our Heads Together | Create a new, funny headline from the words of any headlines appearing anywhere in a single day's Washington Post (or on washingtonpost.com) | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Mae Scanlan | 0722: Text PrintPDF |
| 0717 | 06/10/2007 | Pitch Us a No-Hitter | Send us some genuine Googlenopes. A Googlenope is a phrase or very brief sentence that, entered into the Google search engine with quotation marks around it, produces no hits. | GOO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Malcolm Fleschner | 0721: Text PrintPDF |
| 0716 | 06/03/2007 | The Hard Spell | Write a humorous poem featuring one of the 75 words we've selected from this year's National Spelling Bee. | POE BEE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 0720: Text PrintPDF |
| 0715 | 05/27/2007 | Your Mug Here | Send us an idea for a slogan for the back of the new Loser T-shirt. | TSH SLO | Text PrintPDF | Lawrence McGuire, Beverley Sharp, Chris Doyle, Russell Beland |
0719: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0714 | 05/20/2007 | Amalgamated Steal | Merge two or more company or product names into a new, ORIGINAL company or product. | BUS NEO | Text PrintPDF | Gregory Bartolett | 0718: Text PrintPDF |
| 0713 | 05/13/2007 | Painings | Name and interpret any of the provided paintings by Fred Dawson. | ART | Text PrintPDF | Glen Crawford | 0717: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0712 | 05/06/2007 | Another Time Around the Track | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in the results of Week 708, and name THEIR foal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Pam Sweeney | 0716: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0711 | 04/29/2007 | 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. | HYP WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Dennis Lindsay | 0715: Text PrintPDF |
| 0710 | 04/22/2007 | Aw, Shoot | Send us a funny, clever, entirely original photo featuring kitchen utensils and/or small household tools. | PIX | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0714: Text PrintPDF |
| 0709 | 04/15/2007 | A Return Engagement | Come up with some novel change to the tax code: a tax on something ought to be taxed, a credit for something that should be rewarded, what the $3 should go to instead of presidential campaigns, etc. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Ernie Staples | 0713: Text PrintPDF |
| 0708 | 04/08/2007 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Mark Eckenwiler | 0712: Text PrintPDF |
| 0707 | 04/01/2007 | 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. | WOR LIT BNK | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0711: Text PrintPDF |
| 0706 | 03/25/2007 | 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. | WAS QUE | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0710: Text PrintPDF |
| 0705 | 03/18/2007 | Simile Outrageous | Come up with funny analogies, perhaps with some 21st-century references. | ANL | Text PrintPDF | Jay Shuck | 0709: Text PrintPDF |
| 0704 | 03/11/2007 | Another Game of Tag | Create vanity plates for well-known people, real or fictional. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Phyllis Reinhard | 0708: Text PrintPDF |
| 0703 | 03/04/2007 | Freak Trade Agreements | Think of one thing to trade for another, and supply a short and funny explanation. | BUS CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Rick Haynes | 0707: Text PrintPDF |
| 20070225 | 02/25/2007 | (We) Give Us a Break | The Empress takes a day off from judging to go lounge poolside in the Imperial Hammock, taking care first to don the Imperial Parka and Earmuffs and Moon Boots. | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | (none) | ||
| 0702 | 02/18/2007 | Unreal Facts | Come up with a comically false factoid. | TRI FIC | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0706: Text PrintPDF |
| 0701 | 02/11/2007 | Untitlement | Here are the covers for what just might be Bob Staake's next four books. What are they called and what are they about? | CAR ART LIT | Text PrintPDF | Andrea Kelly | 0704: Text PrintPDF |
| 0700 | 02/04/2007 | Stump Us | Come up with someone's slogan for the 2008 presidential campaign. | POL SLO | Text PrintPDF | Ira Allen | 0703: Text PrintPDF |
| 0699 | 01/28/2007 | 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. | LET CAL NEO | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary, Barbara Turner |
0702: Text PrintPDF
20070225: Text PrintPDF WebPDF 0705: Text PrintPDF |
| 0698 | 01/21/2007 | 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. | BUS CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0702: Text PrintPDF |
| 0697 | 01/14/2007 | 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. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | Dave Komornik | 0701: Text PrintPDF |
| 0696 | 01/07/2007 | Send Us the Bill | Come up legislation the newly-elected members of Congress might sponsor together. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF | Pam Sweeney | 0700: Text PrintPDF |
| 0695 | 12/31/2006 | Dead Letters | Write a poem about someone who died in 2006. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0699: Text PrintPDF |
| 0694 | 12/24/2006 | Hopelessly Ever After | Offer up a gloomy interpretation of any ungloomy piece of writing. | LIT | Text PrintPDF | Cy Gardner | 0698: Text PrintPDF |
| 0693 | 12/17/2006 | Everything Being Sequel | Give a brief scenario for the sequel to a well-known movie. | MOV ADV | Text PrintPDF | Andy Bassett | 0697: Text PrintPDF |
| 0692 | 12/10/2006 | 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. | PRE WOR | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0696: Text PrintPDF |
| 0691 | 12/03/2006 | 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. | CRO WOR | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0695: Text PrintPDF |
| 0690 | 11/26/2006 | Funnies: How Time Flies | Pull Billy of "The Family Circus" -- or any of his comic strip neighbors in The Washington Post -- out of his time warp to a different age, era or place, and provide a short storyline or dialogue or caption. | WAS COM | Text PrintPDF | Martin Bancroft | 0694: Text PrintPDF |
| 0689 | 11/19/2006 | Busted Play | Come up with a more objectionable or stupid toy than a working fart-powered toy rocket. | BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0693: Text PrintPDF |
| 0688 | 11/12/2006 | Making Short Work | Write a humorous six-word story. | LIT WOR | Text PrintPDF | Michael Levy | 0692: Text PrintPDF |
| 0687 | 11/05/2006 | 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. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Peter Metrinko | 0691: Text PrintPDF |
| 0686 | 10/29/2006 | 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. | ART | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0690: Text PrintPDF |
| 0685 | 10/22/2006 | Thank it Over | Tell us some things to be thankful for. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Bruce Alter | 0689: Text PrintPDF |
| 0684 | 10/15/2006 | Backtricking | Spell a word backward and define the result, somehow relating the definition to the original word. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0688: Text PrintPDF |
| 0683 | 10/08/2006 | 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. | LIT WOR BNK | Text PrintPDF | Dennis Lindsay | 0687: Text PrintPDF |
| 0682 | 10/01/2006 | Punkin'd! | Send us a funny, clever, entirely original photo featuring one or more pumpkins and/or other vegetables. | PIX | Text PrintPDF | Jane Auerbach | 0686: Text PrintPDF |
| 0681 | 09/24/2006 | Ticket to Write | Write a jingle for a business (or its product), organization or government agency, set to a Beatles song. | POE BUS POL MUS | Text PrintPDF | Jay Shuck | 0685: Text PrintPDF |
| 0680 | 09/17/2006 | Rendered Speechless | Provide dialogue to fill the balloons in any of these cartoons. | CAR COM | Text PrintPDF | Ned Bent | 0684: Text PrintPDF |
| 0679 | 09/10/2006 | Ask Backwards | Here are the answers. You supply the questions to as many as you dare. | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Elwood Fitzner | 0683: Text PrintPDF |
| 0678 | 09/03/2006 | Limerick Smackdown! | Chris Doyle and Brendan Beary will go head to head in a series of 10 limericks. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF | (none) | 0682: Text PrintPDF |
| 0677 | 08/27/2006 | 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. | POE LIM | Text PrintPDF | David "Stockton" Smith | 0681: Text PrintPDF |
| 0676 | 08/20/2006 | 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. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF | Fran Pryluck | 0680: Text PrintPDF |
| 0675 | 08/13/2006 | Cut Us Some Slack | Come up with humorous ways to be lazy. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0679: Text PrintPDF |
| 0674 | 08/06/2006 | Limerixicon 3 | Supply a humorous limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with ca-. | LIM LET POE | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0678: Text PrintPDF |
| 0673 | 07/30/2006 | 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. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Fred Winter | 0677: Text PrintPDF |
| 0672 | 07/23/2006 | Just Sign This | Write a funny message for an overhead highway sign. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Lisa Younce | 0676: Text PrintPDF |
| 0671 | 07/16/2006 | 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. | HYP NEO | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0675: Text PrintPDF |
| 0670 | 07/09/2006 | 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. | LET DIF CAL NEO | Text PrintPDF | Ben Aronin | 0674: Text PrintPDF |
| 0669 | 07/02/2006 | Huddled Messes | Suggest some bad advice for new arrivals to this country (legal or illegal). | POL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Gordon Labow | 0673: Text PrintPDF |
| 0668 | 06/25/2006 | Cut From the Chase | Write an original John-Bunnell-style wrap-up to a crime story -- or one for a more minor transgression. | CUL LIT LAN | Text PrintPDF | Bob Sprague | 0672: Text PrintPDF |
| 0667 | 06/18/2006 | 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. | WAS QUE | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0671: Text PrintPDF |
| 0666 | 06/11/2006 | Bedevil Us | Give a mini-sermon explaining how some innocuous object or event signals the End of Days. | REL | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0670: Text PrintPDF |
| 0665 | 06/04/2006 | Your One-in-a-Million | Coin the millionth word in the English language and define it. The word must end in -ion. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Marty McCullen | 0669: Text PrintPDF |
| 0664 | 05/28/2006 | A Thousand Times?! No! | Come up with a new signature line for Russell Beland's -- or anyone else's -- e-mails. | CUL STY | Text PrintPDF | Howard Walderman | 0668: Text PrintPDF |
| 0663 | 05/21/2006 | Worth at Least a Dozen Words | Interpret any of the provided cartoons as you see fit in a caption. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF | Michelle Stupak | 0667: Text PrintPDF |
| 0662 | 05/14/2006 | How Low Will You Go? | Humiliate yourself for ink, and a stupid prize. | STY | Text PrintPDF | Fred Dawson | 0666: Text PrintPDF |
| 0661 | 05/07/2006 | Name Any Good Movies Lately? | Give us a funny new title for an existing movie. | MOV | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0665: Text PrintPDF |
| 0660 | 04/30/2006 | Foaling Down: The Next Generation | Breed any two of the winning "offspring" included in this week's results, and name THEIR foal. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Pam Sweeney | 0664: Text PrintPDF |
| 0659 | 04/23/2006 | Tell Us a Fib | Compose a six-line poem with the following number of syllables per line: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. It must be about a person or topic currently in the news, and two successive lines must rhyme. | POE CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0663: Text PrintPDF |
| 0658 | 04/16/2006 | Not in the Cards | Send us ideas for cards that would likely be ruled "FBN" (Funny, But No) by Hallmark but F&YYY by the Empress. | LET CUL | Text PrintPDF | Randy Lee | 0662: Text PrintPDF |
| 0657 | 04/09/2006 | Nuts Fruit | Send in funny (but printable) images of real pieces of fruit. | PIX | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0661: Text PrintPDF |
| 0656 | 04/02/2006 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Mark Eckenwiler | 0660: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0655 | 03/26/2006 | Laughing Inside | Take any article appearing in The Washington Post or online on washingtonpost.com from today through April 3 -- the more serious and/or mundane its headline, the better -- and write a funny poem or other passage using only words that appear in that article. | POE BNK | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0659: Text PrintPDF |
| 0654 | 03/19/2006 | It Plays to Recycle | Come up with funny ways to recycle things, people, writing (except for your old Invitational entries) or ideas. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | David Prevar | 0658: Text PrintPDF |
| 0653 | 03/12/2006 | 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 | WOR CUL | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0657: Text PrintPDF |
| 0652 | 03/05/2006 | Ask Backward | You are on "Jeopardy!" Above are the answers. You supply the questions. | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Sue Lin Chong | 0656: Text PrintPDF |
| 0651 | 02/26/2006 | Show Us Some Character | Add a character to a book or movie and tell us what happens in it. | LIT MOV | Text PrintPDF | Jay Shuck | 0655: Text PrintPDF |
| 0650 | 02/19/2006 | King Us | Give us a scenario for a horror novel based on an everyday item. | LIT | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0654: Text PrintPDF |
| 0649 | 02/12/2006 | Across the Wide What? | Give us some Virginia-appropriate lyrics for "Shenandoah. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0653: Text PrintPDF |
| 0648 | 02/05/2006 | Caller IDiot | Name a product or company and supply a stupid question to ask the consumer hotline person. | BUS QUE ADV | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0652: Text PrintPDF |
| 0647 | 01/29/2006 | 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. | HEA LET | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0651: Text PrintPDF |
| 0646 | 01/22/2006 | Warped Perspectives | Tell us how two different types of people, animals, organizations, etc., would interpret any of the provided cartoons. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Pam Sweeney | 0650: Text PrintPDF |
| 0645 | 01/15/2006 | A Hearty Har Har | Write up a Valentine's sentiment to any personage, or to someone in some generic category. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart, Chris Doyle |
0649: Text PrintPDF |
| 0644 | 01/08/2006 | Winter Limp Picks | Brighten up the Winter Olympics with some new events and rules. Alternatively, you can suggest a commercial or ad campaign that could be tied in with the Winter Games or one of its sports. | ATH BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF | Joel Knanishu | 0648: Text PrintPDF |
| 0643 | 01/01/2006 | The Post's Mortems | Give us a rhyming poem about some notable who died in 2005. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0647: Text PrintPDF |
| 0642 | 12/25/2005 | 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. | LET WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0646: Text PrintPDF |
| 0641 | 12/18/2005 | 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. | BUS | Text PrintPDF | Jane Auerbach | 0645: Text PrintPDF |
| 0640 | 12/11/2005 | Whassa Motto Wid You? | Give us a slogan or motto for any of the states, the District or the U.S. Territories. | SLO LOC | Text PrintPDF | Phil Frankenfeld | 0644: Text PrintPDF |
| 0639 | 12/04/2005 | What's the Small Idea? | Do you have a senseless idea for improving the day-to-day lives of everyday Americans? | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Dopart | 0643: Text PrintPDF |
| 0638 | 11/27/2005 | 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. | MOV TEL ADV | Text PrintPDF | P.H. Stevenson | 0642: Text PrintPDF |
| 0637 | 11/20/2005 | Full Steam Ahead | Write a steamy passage of a novel that's ostensibly by some well-known person who isn't a novelist. | LIT | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0641: Text PrintPDF |
| 0636 | 11/13/2005 | A Song From Tex Arcana | Write a verse of a song about sea urchin sushi or any of the other provided ostensibly unlyrical topics. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0640: Text PrintPDF |
| 0635 | 11/06/2005 | 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. | PRE | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0639: Text PrintPDF |
| 0634 | 10/30/2005 | Mess With Our Heads | Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from today through next Sunday, and change its meaning by adding either a "bank headline," or subtitle, or the first sentence of an article that might appear under it. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | George Smith | 0638: Text PrintPDF |
| 0633 | 10/23/2005 | Your Secret Here! | Send us some original secrets (they don't have to be true). | FIC CUL | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0637: Text PrintPDF |
| 0632 | 10/16/2005 | 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. | WOR BUS | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Guberman | 0636: Text PrintPDF |
| 0631 | 10/09/2005 | Picture This | What's going on in any of these cartoons? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Elwood Fitzner | 0635: Text PrintPDF |
| 0630 | 10/02/2005 | Hyphen the Terrible | Combine the beginning and end of any two multisyllabic words in this week's Invitational, and then define the compound. | HYP WOR | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte, Chris Doyle |
0634: Text PrintPDF |
| 0629 | 09/25/2005 | Odd Couplings | Marry or otherwise combine famous names and supply the result. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Marcy Alvo | 0633: Text PrintPDF |
| 0628 | 09/18/2005 | You Gotta Have Connections | Choose any two or more items from the provided truly random list and describe how they are alike or different. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | David "Stockton" Smith | 0632: Text PrintPDF |
| 0627 | 09/11/2005 | Per-Verse | Write a limerick or other short poem with comically awful rhyming. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF | Jesse Frankovich | 0631: Text PrintPDF |
| 0626 | 09/04/2005 | Course Light | Come up with a comical college class, along with a description for the course catalog. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Doug Frank | 0630: Text PrintPDF |
| 0625 | 08/28/2005 | Haven't Seen It | Make up a new plot for an existing movie title. | MOV | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Jamison | 0629: Text PrintPDF |
| 0624 | 08/21/2005 | Limerixicon 2 | Supply a limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with bd- through bl-. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0628: Text PrintPDF |
| 0623 | 08/14/2005 | Try to Remember | Give us an original mnemonic for any list that someone might want to remember. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0627: Text PrintPDF |
| 0622 | 08/07/2005 | Our Sunday Constitutional | Write a new article or amendment to the Constitution, using on the words contained in the existing document (including amendments). | POL WOR | Text PrintPDF | Marty McCullen | 0626: Text PrintPDF |
| 0621 | 07/31/2005 | 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. | WAS QUE | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0625: Text PrintPDF |
| 0620 | 07/24/2005 | Keep the Empress Employed | Suggest some original, creative ways that The Post could increase its circulation. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0624: Text PrintPDF |
| 0619 | 07/17/2005 | WordCount Us In | Write a poem of no more than four lines containing four or more consecutive words on the WordCount list. They must occur in the sentence in the order they appear on the list. | POE WOR | Text PrintPDF | Michelle Stupak | 0623: Text PrintPDF |
| 0618 | 07/10/2005 | Of D.C. I Sing | Give us a song about Washington, set to a recognizable tune. | POE MUS WAS | Text PrintPDF | Barb Sarshik | 0622: Text PrintPDF |
| 0617 | 07/03/2005 | Best the Best | Write something about any famous personage that uses only the letters in his or her name. | LET CUL | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0621: Text PrintPDF |
| 0616 | 06/26/2005 | Picture This, Kids | Supply title and one-sentence synopsis for Bob Staake new kids' project, incorporating any of the provided cartoons. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Ron Stanley | 0620: Text PrintPDF |
| 0615 | 06/19/2005 | Airy Persiflage | Write some jokes you'd like to hear in an airport announcement. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0619: Text PrintPDF |
| 0614 | 06/12/2005 | In-Stock Characters | Pitch us an idea for a summer movie featuring two or more of the provided characters. | MOV | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0618: Text PrintPDF |
| 0613 | 06/05/2005 | Tour de Fours II | Create and define a word that includes, consecutively, E, R, A and N. in any order. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF | Danny Bravman | 0617: Text PrintPDF |
| 0612 | 05/29/2005 | Oh, and One More Thing | What was the thing that didn't make the cut on any list? | ??? | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0616: Text PrintPDF |
| 0611 | 05/22/2005 | Ask Backwards, Erudite Edition | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the sophisticated answers. You supply the questions. | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Barbara Turner | 0615: Text PrintPDF |
| 0610 | 05/15/2005 | 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. | MOV LIT TEL WOR | Text PrintPDF | Paul Whittemore | 0614: Text PrintPDF |
| 0609 | 05/08/2005 | A2D2 | Give us some funny "corrections" to brighten up Page A2. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0613: Text PrintPDF |
| 0608 | 05/01/2005 | Comeback Next Week | Come up with original snide retorts to various rude questions or comments. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Roger Dalrymple, Pam Dalrymple |
0612: Text PrintPDF |
| 0607 | 04/24/2005 | Contest Fodder Created! | Produce absurdly parochial views of historical events. | HIS | Text PrintPDF | Anne Clark | 0611: Text PrintPDF |
| 0606 | 04/17/2005 | The News Could be Verse | Translate the fine prose of Washington Post articles into verse. Choose any article appearing in The Post of on its Web site from April 17 through April 25. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0610: Text PrintPDF |
| 0605 | 04/10/2005 | Truly Stupendous Ideas | Name two people with the same initials (the people can be living or dead, real or fictional) and explain how they are similar or different. | DIF LET CUL | Text PrintPDF | Mark Eckenwiler | 0609: Text PrintPDF |
| 0604 | 04/03/2005 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Lori Price | 0608: Text PrintPDF |
| 0603 | 03/27/2005 | Sui Genesis | Take one or two of the 50 chapters of the KJV Book of Genesis and draw thou from them, using words in the order in which they appear in the original, your own passage. | REL WOR BNK | Text PrintPDF | Michelle Stupak | 0607: Text PrintPDF |
| 0602 | 03/20/2005 | 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. | LET CAL NEO | Text PrintPDF | Seth Brown | 0606: Text PrintPDF |
| 0601 | 03/13/2005 | Anticdotes | Give us an untrue anecdote in response to one of the provided Editor's Query topics. | FIC | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0605: Text PrintPDF |
| 0600 | 03/06/2005 | Top of the Inking | Tell us some ways the District of Columbia will change now that we have the Nationals. | CUL ATH WAS | Text PrintPDF | Dudley Thompson | 0604: Text PrintPDF |
| 0599 | 02/27/2005 | So What's the News? | Tell us what the illustrated events are. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0603: Text PrintPDF |
| 0598 | 02/20/2005 | 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. | WOR BUS | Text PrintPDF | Robin Grove | 0602: Text PrintPDF |
| 0597 | 02/13/2005 | Eccchsibits | Come up with some alternative museums and exhibits for the nation's capital. | WAS ADV | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0601: Text PrintPDF |
| 0596 | 02/06/2005 | 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. | WOR BNK | Text PrintPDF | Bob Dalton | 0600: Text PrintPDF |
| 0595 | 01/30/2005 | Listing Precariously | 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. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Bruce Alter | 0599: Text PrintPDF |
| 0594 | 01/23/2005 | History Loves Company | Name an appropriate corporate sponsor for some historical event or for someone's life story. | BUS HIS | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer LaFleur, Jim Getz |
0598: Text PrintPDF |
| 0593 | 01/16/2005 | 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. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Rob Poole | 0597: Text PrintPDF |
| 0592 | 01/09/2005 | 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. | ATH BUS CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Peter Larsen | 0596: Text PrintPDF |
| 0591 | 01/02/2005 | Dead Letters | Write rhyming poems about notable personages who have died in the past year. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0595: Text PrintPDF |
| 0590 | 12/26/2004 | 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. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF | Angela Murphy-Walters | 0594: Text PrintPDF |
| 0589 | 12/19/2004 | 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. | HYP WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0593: Text PrintPDF |
| 0588 | 12/12/2004 | Gadget If You Can | Tell us what these nifty, indispensable items are. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | John Conti | 0592: Text PrintPDF |
| 0587 | 12/05/2004 | The B-List | Come up with an In-Out list for 2005, or other pairings. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0591: Text PrintPDF |
| 0586 | 11/28/2004 | 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 ----. | REL JOK | Text PrintPDF | Steve Fahey | 0590: Text PrintPDF |
| 0585 | 11/21/2004 | It's Parody Time | Offer, in the holiday spirit of goodwill, some advice--as constructive and unifying as Loserly suggestions always are--to our nation's leaders (or the loyal opposition) as we prepare for the next four years. This advice will be set to the tune of some winter holiday song, either religious or secular. | POE POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Barb Sarshik | 0589: Text PrintPDF |
| 0584 | 11/14/2004 | Deliver Us a Post | Come up with some new Cabinet or other positions that the president could establish, and describe the job responsibilities. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0588: Text PrintPDF |
| 0583 | 11/07/2004 | Mess With Our Heads | Take any headline, verbatim, from the Washington Post or its Web site from today through next Sunday, and reinterpret it by writing either a "bank headline"--or subtitle--or the first sentence of an article that changes the original meaning entirely. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Michelle Stupak | 0587: Text PrintPDF |
| 0582 | 10/31/2004 | Perversery Rhymes | Update a nursery rhyme or children's song with an edgier text. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0586: Text PrintPDF |
| 0581 | 10/24/2004 | Evil Things in Store | Think of evil or just plain stupid practices that the staff of a retail or other establishment might perpetrate. | BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF | Michael Cisneros | 0585: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0580 | 10/17/2004 | United Nations | Combine the names of any two countries in the world and describe the new hybrid country. | LOC | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0584: Text PrintPDF |
| 0579 | 10/10/2004 | Another Brilliant Contest! Do Enter! | Write us a sentence or phrase consisting of words beginning with consecutive letters, in the A-to-Z direction. | LET WOR | Text PrintPDF | Lawrence McGuire | 0583: Text PrintPDF |
| 0578 | 10/03/2004 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" Above are the answers. Send us the questions. | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Robert Levin | 0582: Text PrintPDF |
| 0577 | 09/26/2004 | Teledubbies | Slightly change the title of a TV show, past or present, and describe it. | TEL WOR | Text PrintPDF | Jack Cackler | 0581: Text PrintPDF |
| 0576 | 09/19/2004 | Well, Excuuuuse Us! | Come up with new excuses for any common human shortcoming or imperfection. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Erika Reinfeld | 0580: Text PrintPDF |
| 0575 | 09/12/2004 | T Hee Hee | Come up with new ideas for both front and back of the Loser T-shirts. | TSH STY | Text PrintPDF | Sarah Worcester, Brendan Beary, Russell Beland |
0579: Text PrintPDF |
| 0574 | 09/05/2004 | Boor Us Silly | Come up with some unwise attempts at humor--one either likely to backfire or to create other unpleasant consequences. | JOK ADV | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0578: Text PrintPDF |
| 0573 | 08/29/2004 | Thine Ad Goest Here | Propose biblical and other literary passages, poems, etc., that could benefit from product placement. | POE REL LIT BUS | Text PrintPDF | Peter Metrinko | 0577: Text PrintPDF |
| 0572 | 08/22/2004 | The Limerixicon | Supply a limerick based on any word in the dictionary (except proper nouns) beginning with ai- through ar-. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brendan Beary | 0576: Text PrintPDF |
| 0571 | 08/15/2004 | A Tour de Fours | Create and define a word that includes T, H, E, and S in any order. The letters must appear consecutively. | TDF NEO | Text PrintPDF | Frank Mullen III | 0575: Text PrintPDF |
| 0570 | 08/08/2004 | Timeline Rhyme Lines | Produce colorful chronological couplets about some historical event. They must rhyme and be in good meter. | HIS POE | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0574: Text PrintPDF |
| 0569 | 08/01/2004 | Murphy's Lore | Give Eric Murphy advice he deserves on the provided questions. | QUE ADV | Text PrintPDF | Mai Nguyen | 0573: Text PrintPDF |
| 0568 | 07/25/2004 | Tome Deftness | Make a pun or similar wordplay on a book title. | WOR LIT | Text PrintPDF | Wayne Rodgers | 0572: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0567 | 07/18/2004 | A Running Gag | Explain how any of the provided bizarre cartoons by Bob Staake relates to the current presidential campaign. | CAR POL | Text PrintPDF | Josh Tucker | 0571: Text PrintPDF |
| 0566 | 07/11/2004 | Get Whack | Type a two-word phrase into the Google search engine that produces exactly one result. | GOO | Text PrintPDF | Pam Sweeney | 0570: Text PrintPDF |
| 0565 | 07/04/2004 | Anthem Is as Anthem Does | Give us a verse for an alternative U.S. national anthem, set to any well-known tune. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0569: Text PrintPDF |
| 0564 | 06/27/2004 | Redefine Print | Redefine any word from the dictionary. | WOR MEN | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0568: Text PrintPDF |
| 0563 | 06/20/2004 | Take Two | Take any two of the provided items and explain how they resemble or differ from each other. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | Mark Young | 0567: Text PrintPDF |
| 0562 | 06/13/2004 | The LMNs of Style | Write a funny sentence (or more) that you spell with only the sounds of the names of letters and those of numbers 1 through 9. | LET | Text PrintPDF | Milo Sauer | 0566: Text PrintPDF |
| 0561 | 06/06/2004 | Deform of a Question | Take any sentence appearing in The Washington Post or washingtonpost.com today through June 14, and make up a question to which the sentence could be an answer. | WAS QUE | Text PrintPDF | Marc Leibert | 0565: Text PrintPDF |
| 0560 | 05/30/2004 | The 97.5-Meter Dash | Suggest some time- and cost-saving measures so the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens will open on time. | ATH ADV | Text PrintPDF | Marc Leibert | 0564: Text PrintPDF |
| 0559 | 05/23/2004 | Your Slogan Here | Come up with a clever slogan or sign for a business. | SLO BUS | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle, Eric Murphy |
0563: Text PrintPDF |
| 0558 | 05/16/2004 | Set Us Right | Send us conservative-leaning humor in any of the provided genres. | JOK POL | Text PrintPDF | Danny Bravman | 0562: Text PrintPDF |
| 0557 | 05/09/2004 | Oh, for Namesakes! | Take two people, real or fictional, who share some element of their names and explain the difference between them. | DIF CUL | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0561: Text PrintPDF |
| 0556 | 05/02/2004 | So Zoo Us | Combine any two kinds of animals, give its name and describe it. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Greg Pearson | 0560: Text PrintPDF |
| 0555 | 04/25/2004 | 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. | WOR LAN | Text PrintPDF | Jane Auerbach | 0559: Text PrintPDF |
| 0554 | 04/18/2004 | Love the Tiny Tail Stain | Write an anagram based on a name or event that's been in the news recently. | ANA | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0558: Text PrintPDF |
| 0553 | 04/11/2004 | Picture This | Tell us what's going on in one or more of the provided cartoons. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Allan Moore | 0557: Text PrintPDF |
| 0552 | 04/04/2004 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Cuddihy | 0556: Text PrintPDF |
| 0551 | 03/28/2004 | 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. | GOO LAN | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Mettinger | 0555: Text PrintPDF |
| 0550 | 03/21/2004 | Spring Cleaning | Suggest creative uses for things you've already used, or never will use, or other disposable household thingies, singly or in combination. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Bird Waring | 0554: Text PrintPDF |
| 0549 | 03/14/2004 | Show Us Your Best Quantities | Come up with novel units of measure, and explain or quantify them. | SCI | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Anthony | 0553: Text PrintPDF |
| 0548 | 03/07/2004 | Inklings | Tell us about certain people's childhood experiences and behaviors that hint at their destinies. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Walt Johnston | 0552: Text PrintPDF |
| 0547 | 02/29/2004 | Give Us a Bad Name | Take an existing product or business name and pair it with an incompatible one. | BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0551: Text PrintPDF |
| 0546 | 02/22/2004 | A Nice Pair of Cities | Choose any two or more real U.S. towns and come up with a joint endeavor they would undertake. | LOC | Text PrintPDF | Dudley Thompson | 0550: Text PrintPDF |
| 0545 | 02/15/2004 | Put It in Reverse | Spell a word backward and define it, with the definition relating in some way to the original word. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0549: Text PrintPDF |
| 0544 | 02/08/2004 | You Gotta Have Heart | Write us some valentine sentiments from one particular person (real or fictional) to another. | POE CUL | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0548: Text PrintPDF |
| 0543 | 02/01/2004 | 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. | WAS BUS LIT STY HIS | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0547: Text PrintPDF |
| 0542 | 01/25/2004 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0546: Text PrintPDF |
| 0541 | 01/18/2004 | Celled Up the River | Give us a delicious scenario, in which a cellphone yakker's yakking could be taken profitably out of context. | ??? | Text PrintPDF | Erika Reinfeld | 0545: Text PrintPDF |
| 0540 | 01/11/2004 | 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. | CUL TEL | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0544: Text PrintPDF |
| 0539 | 01/04/2004 | Dead Letters | Pay tribute in verse to someone who died in 2003. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF | Bob Dalton | 0543: Text PrintPDF |
| 0538 | 12/28/2003 | Try, Try Again | Enter any previous Invitational. Your entry must be substantially different from the original winners. | PRE | Text PrintPDF | Drew Knoblauch | 0542: Text PrintPDF |
| 0537 | 12/21/2003 | 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. | WAS HEA | Text PrintPDF | Milo Sauer | 0541: Text PrintPDF |
| 0536 | 12/14/2003 | And the Horse He Rodin On | Come up with some words we can stick in the back of The Inker. | STY | Text PrintPDF | Dave Zarrow, Josh Borken, Andrew Elby |
0540: Text PrintPDF |
| 0535 | 12/07/2003 | Picture This | Can you tell us what astonishing news Bob Staake is trying to pass on with cartoons? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | John Shea | 0539: Text PrintPDF |
| 0534 | 11/30/2003 | The Feminine Touch | Propose how any male-dominated occupation or institution would change if it suddenly became female-dominated. | BUS CUL | Text PrintPDF | Tom McCudden | 0538: Text PrintPDF |
| 0533 | 11/23/2003 | 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. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0537: Text PrintPDF |
| 0532 | 11/16/2003 | Short Pans | Come up with a terse review (four words or fewer) of any work of art. | ART | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0536: Text PrintPDF |
| 0531 | 11/09/2003 | 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. | WOR LAN JOK | Text PrintPDF | Tom McCudden | 0535: Text PrintPDF |
| 0530 | 11/02/2003 | 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. | LET NEO | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0534: Text PrintPDF |
| 0529 | 10/26/2003 | United We Stanza | Summarize in four rhyming lines of verse any famous document, theory, principle or speech. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0533: Text PrintPDF |
| 0528 | 10/19/2003 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0532: Text PrintPDF |
| 0527 | 10/12/2003 | Rite of First Defusal | Come up with witty or bizarre things to say to defuse the tension in awkward moments. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Mark Young | 0531: Text PrintPDF |
| 0526 | 10/05/2003 | Conventional Wisdumb | Answer any of the provided questions. | QUE | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0530: Text PrintPDF |
| 0525 | 09/28/2003 | It Won't Belong Now | Tell us which of three cartoons provided does not belong, and why. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0529: Text PrintPDF |
| 0524 | 09/21/2003 | Around Things Moving | Take the title of any book or movie, rearrange the words, and explain what the new book or movie is about. | LIT MOV WOR | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0528: Text PrintPDF |
| 0523 | 09/14/2003 | Hard to Overstate | Propose ways to make modern life just a little bit harder than it needs to be. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Danny Bravman | 0527: Text PrintPDF |
| 0522 | 09/07/2003 | Being There | Set the agenda for a flash mob, one of those existential, Web-arranged, sudden, pointless, instantaneous but brief gatherings of people at odd places, to do odd things. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Sarah Worcester | 0526: Text PrintPDF |
| 0521 | 08/31/2003 | 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. | HYP WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Jane Auerbach | 0525: Text PrintPDF |
| 0520 | 08/24/2003 | I, Object | These items were ordered by well-known people. Who ordered them, and why? | CAR CUL | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0524: Text PrintPDF |
| 0519 | 08/17/2003 | Hey, Baby, What's Your Sector? | Come up with pickup lines that could be heard only in Washington. | WAS JOK | Text PrintPDF | Cindy Burnham | 0523: Text PrintPDF |
| 0518 | 08/10/2003 | Say, Kids, What Time Is It? | Fill in the blanks in the following sentence: "You know it's time to ------ when ------. | CUL JOK | Text PrintPDF | Michael Connaghan | 0522: Text PrintPDF |
| 0517 | 08/03/2003 | Insert Joke Here | Slip a single bogus sentence into next year's State of the Union address, figuring the Prez will probably just read it right off the teleprompter. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Craig Zimmerman | 0521: Text PrintPDF |
| 0516 | 07/27/2003 | Err Apparent | Come up with unwise things to say in any of the provided circumstances. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Milo Sauer | 0520: Text PrintPDF |
| 0515 | 07/20/2003 | A Cellebration of Tasteful Living | Come up with ways that Martha Stewart can prettify and improve her new prison surroundings using only her skills, her impeccable taste and those resources available to her. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0519: Text PrintPDF |
| 0514 | 07/13/2003 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are your answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Sanford Horn | 0518: Text PrintPDF |
| 0513 | 07/06/2003 | 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. | WOR ADV | Text PrintPDF | Tom Kreitzberg | 0517: Text PrintPDF |
| 0512 | 06/29/2003 | Live On, Sweet, Earnest Reader | Take the name of any person--living, dead, fictional--and use the letters of his name, in succession, to form the first letters of an expression appropriate to that person. | LET CUL | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0516: Text PrintPDF |
| 0511 | 06/22/2003 | It All Impends | Tell us what is something unusual about to happen in the provided cartoons. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Dave Hebda | 0515: Text PrintPDF |
| 0510 | 06/15/2003 | Universal Embarrassment | What would you like to see Miss Universe Pageant contestants asked live, on national TV? | TEL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Jack Welsch, Sugar Strawn |
0514: Text PrintPDF |
| 0509 | 06/08/2003 | Be a Real Card | Come up with a greeting card rhyme for an un-greeting-card occasion. | POE CUL | Text PrintPDF | Joe Cackler | 0513: Text PrintPDF |
| 0508 | 06/01/2003 | Letter Rip | Take a word from the dictionary, add, change, or delete a single letter, and redefine the word. | LET CAL NEO | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0512: Text PrintPDF |
| 0507 | 05/25/2003 | Crocktails | Come up with a drink named for something or someone associated with Washington and describe the drink. | WAS FOO | Text PrintPDF | Joe Cackler | 0511: Text PrintPDF |
| 0506 | 05/18/2003 | The Battle of All Mottoes | Provide a slogan for any federal department agency, department, office, etc. | SLO | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0510: Text PrintPDF |
| 0505 | 05/11/2003 | 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. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Mark Briscoe | 0509: Text PrintPDF |
| 0504 | 05/04/2003 | Life Is Snort | Write a schmaltzy last line of a "Life Is Short. | LAN | Text PrintPDF | David K. Ronka | 0508: Text PrintPDF |
| 0503 | 04/27/2003 | Doody and Muldoon | Write poetry that out-Muldoons Paul Muldoon, the Princeton professor who won this year's Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Your poem must be a single quatrain, containing at least one rhyme and references to at least two body parts and one geographic name. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0507: Text PrintPDF |
| 0502 | 04/20/2003 | Picture This | Who are these people? What are they doing? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0506: Text PrintPDF |
| 0501 | 04/13/2003 | Questionable Sentences | Take any sentence appearing anywhere in today's Washington Post and make it the answer to a question. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Tom Kreitzberg | 0505: Text PrintPDF |
| 0500 | 04/06/2003 | Ergo-Nomics | Create a sillygism--a syllogism that doesn't quite work. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Dan Dunn | 0504: Text PrintPDF |
| 0499 | 03/30/2003 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Emily Lloyd | 0503: Text PrintPDF |
| 0498 | 03/23/2003 | Unamazing But True! | Submit a true fact that is of absolutely no use, but interesting in a weirdly Invitationalist way. | TRI | Text PrintPDF | Milo Sauer | 0502: Text PrintPDF |
| 0497 | 03/16/2003 | Ask Backward | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Cuddihy | 0501: Text PrintPDF |
| 0496 | 03/09/2003 | 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. | PRE | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0500: Text PrintPDF |
| 0495 | 03/02/2003 | Words of One Syl- . . . Um, Just Short Words | Take some complex issue of any sort and explain it to all us morons entirely in words of one syllable. | CUL LAN | Text PrintPDF | R.N. Oerter | 0499: Text PrintPDF |
| 0494 | 02/23/2003 | Quote-idian | Take any extremely banal piece of familiar writing and rewrite it in the style of a famous writer, poet or lyricist. | LIT POE LAN | Text PrintPDF | Jeff Brechlin | 0498: Text PrintPDF |
| 0493 | 02/16/2003 | A Major Offensive | Find something anywhere in today's Washington Post and complain about it with absurd oversensitivity. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Cecil Clark | 0497: Text PrintPDF |
| 0492 | 02/09/2003 | Cheap Tricks | Come up with extreme cost-conserving measures for these difficult economic times. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Lindsay Lacy | 0497: Text PrintPDF |
| 0491 | 02/02/2003 | Hirschfeld Follies | Try to figure out which celebrities Bob Staake is trying to draw in imitation of Al Hirschfeld. | CUL CAR | Text PrintPDF | Ben Pitkin | 0495: Text PrintPDF |
| 0490 | 01/26/2003 | Eyes on Reprise | Submit any good entries you might have thought of, for any previous contest, after the deadline passed. | PRE | Text PrintPDF | Helene Haduch | 0494: Text PrintPDF |
| 0489 | 01/19/2003 | 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. | WOR CUL | Text PrintPDF | Beverly Miller | 0493: Text PrintPDF |
| 0488 | 01/12/2003 | No Rest for the Query | Come up with a vexing, funny question about life. | QUE ADV | Text PrintPDF | John Durkin | 0492: Text PrintPDF |
| 0487 | 01/05/2003 | Eee! Rotica | Come with a passage in a novel that ineptly describes hanky-panky. | LIT LAN | Text PrintPDF | Marc Leibert | 0491: Text PrintPDF |
| 0486 | 12/29/2002 | 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. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0490: Text PrintPDF |
| 0485 | 12/22/2002 | Asterisky Business | Write a joke with a punch line depending on knowledge so esoteric that it requires an asterisked explanation. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Seth Brown | 0489: Text PrintPDF |
| 0484 | 12/15/2002 | Manufracturing | Take any product and explain how it would be different if it were designed by a different existing company. | BUS | Text PrintPDF | Milo Sauer | 0488: Text PrintPDF |
| 0483 | 12/08/2002 | Obitter Fate | Give us an obit headline for some famous person, currently living or dead. | HEA EPI CUL | Text PrintPDF | Dan Steinberg | 0487: Text PrintPDF |
| 0482 | 12/01/2002 | Inspect Our Gadgets | What are these gadgets? What do they do? | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Seth Brown | 0486: Text PrintPDF |
| 0481 | 11/24/2002 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Michael Levy | 0485: Text PrintPDF |
| 0480 | 11/17/2002 | In No Uncertain Terminations | Come up with a way to stop any unwanted overture in its tracks. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Barry Blyveis | 0484: Text PrintPDF |
| 0479 | 11/10/2002 | Invest Case Scenario | Suggest new companies in which it might be unwise to invest. | BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF | John Cogburn | 0483: Text PrintPDF |
| 0478 | 11/03/2002 | Do You Mindset? | Anticipate items for the Mindset List for the freshman class of the year 2020. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Tony Noerpel | 0482: Text PrintPDF |
| 0477 | 10/27/2002 | A Load of Bulwer | Give us the beginning of incompetently written novel. | LIT LAN | Text PrintPDF | Bob Dalton, Brian Barrett, Chuck Smith |
0479: Text PrintPDF
0481: Text PrintPDF |
| 0476 | 10/20/2002 | Portmanteautapping | Make a new word by squishing together two existing words. The constituent words must share at least two letters. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Meg Sullivan | 0480: Text PrintPDF |
| 0475 | 10/13/2002 | 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. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | (none) | |
| 0474 | 10/06/2002 | Alphabettering | Create a sentence that uses each letter of the alphabet at least once but that would never be heard on the politically correct, genteel, rarefied air of NPR. | LET | Text PrintPDF | Milo Sauer | 0478: Text PrintPDF |
| 0473 | 09/29/2002 | Offensive Line | Find what's offensive in any of the provided cartoons, and explain. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Seth Brown | 0477: Text PrintPDF |
| 0472 | 09/22/2002 | Water Stupid Idea | Propose bad ideas for saving water in the continuing drought. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Roy Ashley | 0476: Text PrintPDF |
| 0471 | 09/15/2002 | 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. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Kelley Lund | 0475: Text PrintPDF |
| 0470 | 09/08/2002 | Czar Har | Take the name of someone famous, rhyme it with a product, and describe the unholy union. | POE CUL BUS | Text PrintPDF | Brendan Beary | 0474: Text PrintPDF |
| 0469 | 09/01/2002 | Playing Check-In | Suggest appropriate hotel check-in names for any celebrities, past or present, living or dead. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0473: Text PrintPDF |
| 0468 | 08/25/2002 | Ism This Stupid? | Take any common prefix and attach it to any well-known "ism" and define the new term. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Paul A. Stone | 0472: Text PrintPDF |
| 0467 | 08/18/2002 | 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). | ANL | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0471: Text PrintPDF |
| 0466 | 08/11/2002 | Spit the Difference | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0470: Text PrintPDF |
| 0465 | 08/04/2002 | 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. | HYP NEO | Text PrintPDF | James Pierce | 0469: Text PrintPDF |
| 0464 | 07/28/2002 | Cursive Writing | Come up with a new curse for this millennium. | CUL JOK | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0468: Text PrintPDF |
| 0463 | 07/21/2002 | Retell Sales | Give us the beginning of any well-known story as retold by any famous person, living or dead, except for Ronald Reagan. | LIT CUL | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0467: Text PrintPDF |
| 0462 | 07/14/2002 | Cast Away | Come up with a terrible bit of miscasting in a movie or TV show, past or present, real or imagined. | MOV TEL | Text PrintPDF | William Rothstein | 0466: Text PrintPDF |
| 0461 | 07/07/2002 | Punch Us Again | Take any comic from the daily Washington Post during the next week and make it better by changing the contents of the final word balloon. | WAS COM | Text PrintPDF | Meg Sullivan | 0465: Text PrintPDF |
| 0460 | 06/30/2002 | Pompous Assets | Come up with the first paragraph of a review of a real book or movie, past or present, that is narcissistic, pretentious, and self-aggrandizing. | LIT MOV | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0464: Text PrintPDF |
| 0459 | 06/23/2002 | Stock Humor | Look at any of the abbreviated company names in the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange listings in any newspaper's business section and suggest what business the companies might be in. | BUS | Text PrintPDF | Mike Hammer | 0463: Text PrintPDF |
| 0458 | 06/16/2002 | It's a Setup | Come up with joke setups for any of the provided punch lines. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | William Zamojcin | 0462: Text PrintPDF |
| 0457 | 06/09/2002 | Letter Rip | Give us the beginning of a letter to the editor that is certain never to see print. | ??? | Text PrintPDF | Fil Feit | 0461: Text PrintPDF |
| 0456 | 06/02/2002 | 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. | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Mark Young | 0460: Text PrintPDF |
| 0455 | 05/26/2002 | Comixing | Create new comic characters by crossing two existing characters, then describe the character. | COM | Text PrintPDF | Seth Brown | 0459: Text PrintPDF |
| 0454 | 05/19/2002 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Sue Lin Chong | 0458: Text PrintPDF |
| 0453 | 05/12/2002 | Haiku 2 U2 | Write a haiku summarizing the career of any American politician, living or dead. A haiku is generally defined as a nonrhyming poem, of three lines. The first and last lines are five syllables; the middle line is seven. | POE POL | Text PrintPDF | Daniel Horner | 0457: Text PrintPDF |
| 0452 | 05/05/2002 | 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. | STY | Text PrintPDF | J.D. Berry | 0456: Text PrintPDF |
| 0451 | 04/28/2002 | Make Your Pix | Which two of the provided cartoons are related, and how? | CAR DIF | Text PrintPDF | Dan Steinberg | 0455: Text PrintPDF |
| 0450 | 04/21/2002 | Blues It or Lose It | Write the first verse of a blues song expressing some Washington area woe. | WAS MUS | Text PrintPDF | Bob Dalton | 0454: Text PrintPDF |
| 0449 | 04/14/2002 | Cut and Pastiche | Create a new, funny headline from the words of any headlines appearing anywhere in today's Post. You cannot subdivide words. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Dave Zarrow | 0453: Text PrintPDF |
| 0448 | 04/07/2002 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Mark Eckenwiler | 0452: Text PrintPDF |
| 0447 | 03/31/2002 | Acronimble | Take any of the provided witty statements and use the first letters in each of the words to create a brand-new, unrelated funny statement. | LET | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Nelson | 0451: Text PrintPDF |
| 0446 | 03/24/2002 | Poems Where the Heart Is | Take any recent news event and summarize it in a rhyming poem of eight lines or fewer. | POE POL | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0450: Text PrintPDF |
| 0445 | 03/17/2002 | Another Round of Bierce | Add a few entries to Ambrose Bierce's famous "Devil's Dictionary. | WOR DIC | Text PrintPDF | Mike Genz | 0449: Text PrintPDF |
| 0444 | 03/10/2002 | Advice Squad | Take any letter from today's advice columns and answer it in the voice of someone famous, living or dead. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Mike Genz | 0448: Text PrintPDF |
| 0443 | 03/03/2002 | Sick Humor | Come up with modern diseases of Washington life. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Deborah Searson | 0447: Text PrintPDF |
| 0442 | 02/24/2002 | Titletales | Take any real book or movie, change one word slightly, and describe the resulting new product. | LIT MOV WOR | Text PrintPDF | Jeffrey Martin | 0446: Text PrintPDF |
| 0441 | 02/17/2002 | 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. | WAS WOR | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0445: Text PrintPDF |
| 0440 | 02/10/2002 | Picture This | What is going on in these cartoons? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Chris Hill | 0444: Text PrintPDF |
| 0439 | 02/03/2002 | No Can Do | Write signs of incompetence. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Kyle Bonney | 0443: Text PrintPDF |
| 0438 | 01/27/2002 | What's the Pun Line? | Ask a question and answer it, somewhere incorporating the name of a least one famous person. | QUE CUL | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0442: Text PrintPDF |
| 0437 | 01/20/2002 | The Telegraph Poll | Tell us the beginning of a joke that badly telegraphs the punch line. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Seth Brown | 0441: Text PrintPDF |
| 0436 | 01/13/2002 | Takes a Powder | The contest resumes next week. Czar ran biographies of Elden Carnahan, Stephen Dudzik, Joseph Romm, and Art Grinath, each containing one lie. | Text PrintPDF | (none) | ||
| 0435 | 01/06/2002 | Vegies Out | No contests until mid-January. Czar ran biographies of Tom Witte, Dave Zarrow, Sandra Hull, and Kevin Cuddihy, each containing one lie. | Text PrintPDF | (none) | ||
| 0434 | 12/30/2001 | Takes a Breather | No contests until mid-January. Czar ran biographies of Jennifer Hart, Jonathan Paul, Mike Genz and Robin Grove, each containing one lie. | Text PrintPDF | (none) | ||
| 0433 | 12/23/2001 | Takes a Break | No contests until mid-January. Czar ran biographies of Russell Beland, Sarah Gaymon, John Kammer, and Paul Kondis, each containing one lie. | Text PrintPDF | (none) | ||
| 0432 | 12/16/2001 | 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. | Text PrintPDF | (none) | ||
| 0431 | 12/09/2001 | Please Bear With Us . . . | There is no contest. Czar ran biographies of Chuck Smith and Jean Sorensen, each containing one lie. | Text PrintPDF | (none) | ||
| 0430 | 12/02/2001 | 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. | PRE | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0440: Text PrintPDF |
| 0429 | 11/25/2001 | Shark Instruments | Tell us what would be a sign that any current institution--TV show, newspaper feature, magazine, business, etc.--has jumped the shark. | TEL CUL BUS | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0438: Text PrintPDF |
| 0428 | 11/18/2001 | No Rest for the Query | Answer any of the provided supposedly unanswerable questions in the voice of any famous person, living or dead. | QUE CUL | Text PrintPDF | Elliott Schiff | 0437: Text PrintPDF |
| 0427 | 11/11/2001 | Skinned | Come up with events that have a smaller chance of happening than the Redskins winning the Super Bowl. | ATH | Text PrintPDF | Sarah Worcester | 0439: Text PrintPDF |
| 0426 | 11/04/2001 | Captions Courageous | Take any photograph or illustration from today's Washington Post and give it a more interesting caption. | CAP | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0430: Text PrintPDF |
| 0425 | 10/28/2001 | 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. | HYP NEO | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0429: Text PrintPDF |
| 0424 | 10/21/2001 | Osama Chanted Evening | Write poems about Osama bin Laden. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Patricia Helmetag | 0428: Text PrintPDF |
| 0423 | 10/14/2001 | Roling With Laughter | Take a character from one movie, use him or her to replace a character in a second movie, and then explain how this change would affect the second movie. | MOV | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0427: Text PrintPDF |
| 0422 | 10/07/2001 | Taught Language | Come up with lessons learned from (1) the movies, (2) popular songs, (3) romance novels or (4) the comics page. | MOV MUS LIT COM ADV | Text PrintPDF | Bob Sorensen | 0426: Text PrintPDF |
| 0421 | 09/30/2001 | Picture This | These objects are not what they seem to be, at first glance. They are something else entirely. What are they? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0425: Text PrintPDF |
| 0420 | 09/23/2001 | Ha Anxiety | Make us laugh. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | (none) | 0424: Text PrintPDF |
| 0419 | 09/16/2001 | Don't Spare the Rodney | Come up with indications that one might not be getting no respect. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0423: Text PrintPDF |
| 0418 | 09/09/2001 | Xtreme Invitational | Come up with signs you are overdoing it any in any of the provided categories. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | John Burton | 0422: Text PrintPDF |
| 0417 | 09/02/2001 | 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. | LET | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0421: Text PrintPDF |
| 0416 | 08/26/2001 | Diff'rent Jokes | Describe how things might have been different if a famous person, living or dead, had had one of the provided conditions. | HIS | Text PrintPDF | Drew Knoblauch | 0420: Text PrintPDF |
| 0415 | 08/19/2001 | Sentence Us to Death | Take any sentence appearing anywhere in today's Washington Post, and invent a question that it answers. | WAS QUE | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0419: Text PrintPDF |
| 0414 | 08/12/2001 | No Rest for the Query | Complete the provided rhetorical question by filling in the blanks. It must be a put-down. | QUE JOK | Text PrintPDF | Paul Kocak | 0418: Text PrintPDF |
| 0413 | 08/05/2001 | Bland Ambition | Come up with one or more items from an underachiever's list of midlife resolutions. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Gail Fiorini | 0417: Text PrintPDF |
| 0412 | 07/29/2001 | Painful Climaxes | Come up with statements that start really dramatically, but leave you sorta flat at the end. | LAN | Text PrintPDF | Cindy Coe, Ray Aragon |
0416: Text PrintPDF |
| 0411 | 07/22/2001 | X's and Oaths | Take any oath, pledge, declaration or slogan and update it. | SLO | Text PrintPDF | Jean Sorensen | 0415: Text PrintPDF |
| 0410 | 07/15/2001 | Ask Backwards | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0414: Text PrintPDF |
| 0409 | 07/08/2001 | 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. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Gary Patishnock | 0413: Text PrintPDF |
| 0408 | 07/01/2001 | What's In a Name? | Take the name of any politician, living or dead, and construct an appropriate message from the letters of the name. You may use any letter as many times as you wish, and you may insert punctuation. | LET POL | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0412: Text PrintPDF |
| 0407 | 06/24/2001 | 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. | JOK WOR | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0411: Text PrintPDF |
| 0406 | 06/17/2001 | Bum Steerage | Offer some spectacularly bad advice to any of the provided people. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | David Moore | 0410: Text PrintPDF |
| 0405 | 06/10/2001 | 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. | WOR INS NEO | Text PrintPDF | Steve Fahey | 0409: Text PrintPDF |
| 0404 | 06/03/2001 | Balloonacy | Create a comic strip of one to four panels. For your dialogue or thought balloons, you may choose from the provided menu. You may invent one line of your own. | CAR COM | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0408: Text PrintPDF |
| 0403 | 05/27/2001 | Cry, Uncle! | Write the beginnings of an obituary that will provide the details of what happened to the Style Invitational Uncle. | EPI | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0407: Text PrintPDF |
| 0402 | 05/20/2001 | Spitting the Difference | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | Jim Pond | 0406: Text PrintPDF |
| 0401 | 05/13/2001 | 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. | ??? | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0405: Text PrintPDF |
| 0400 | 05/06/2001 | Life Is Snort | Write a "Life is Short" entry in under 100 words, in the voice of a celebrity, living or dead. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Don Burdett | 0404: Text PrintPDF |
| 0399 | 04/29/2001 | IT PAYS TO BE GENDEROUS | Write a short film description that could persuade a woman that the guy movie he wants to see is really close to being a gal movie, or vice versa. | MOV CUL | Text PrintPDF | Robin Grove | 0403: Text PrintPDF |
| 0398 | 04/22/2001 | 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. | LIT CUL WOR | Text PrintPDF | Brian Foster | 0402: Text PrintPDF |
| 0397 | 04/15/2001 | Sins of Omission | Omit a letter or letters from a real-life sign to create a name for a new business, comically different from the original. Describe the new business or include a slogan that explains it. | LET BUS | Text PrintPDF | Selma Mathias | 0401: Text PrintPDF |
| 0396 | 04/08/2001 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0400: Text PrintPDF |
| 0395 | 04/01/2001 | Devilishly Clever | Describe someone's special little corner of Hell. | REL | Text PrintPDF | Andy Lees | 0399: Text PrintPDF |
| 0394 | 03/25/2001 | Life in the Blurbs | Come up with a blurb used to sell a real or imagined book or movie that would be likely to have the opposite of the intended effect. | LIT MOV | Text PrintPDF | Christina Mach | 0398: Text PrintPDF |
| 0393 | 03/18/2001 | Things Could Be Verse | Take any story in today's Washington Post and rewrite it into a rhyming poem of no more than eight lines. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Lindsay Shafer, Geoff Shafer |
0397: Text PrintPDF |
| 0392 | 03/11/2001 | 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, | CAR COM | Text PrintPDF | Drew Knoblauch | 0396: Text PrintPDF |
| 0391 | 03/04/2001 | Spinning Out of Control | Take a headline in today's Washington Post and create a subhead that spins the story in an opposite or unexpected direction. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Sarah Worcester | 0395: Text PrintPDF |
| 0390 | 02/25/2001 | 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. | CAP ART | Text PrintPDF | Kelli Midgley | 0394: Text PrintPDF |
| 0389 | 02/18/2001 | Operation Overkill | Present a solution to a problem that goes just a little too far. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Saria Brewer | 0393: Text PrintPDF |
| 0388 | 02/11/2001 | Pitches in the Dirt | Come up with a sales pitch to get any surplus product off the shelves. | BUS | Text PrintPDF | Mike Genz | 0392: Text PrintPDF |
| 0387 | 02/04/2001 | By Jingo | Come up with a joke that could be written and understood only by a Washingtonian. | WAS JOK | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0391: Text PrintPDF |
| 0386 | 01/28/2001 | The Game of Clue | What are some clues that someone might be any of the provided characterizations? | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Judith Cottrill | 0390: Text PrintPDF |
| 0385 | 01/21/2001 | Proceed Gingerly | What is the still-secret invention, code-name "Ginger", that is said to meet the provided criteria? | SCI | Text PrintPDF | Ervin Stembol | 0389: Text PrintPDF |
| 0384 | 01/14/2001 | What's Your Story? | Take at least four of the provided cartoons, arrange them in any sequence you wish, and make up a funny story that they would illustrate. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Sarah Worcester | 0388: Text PrintPDF |
| 0383 | 01/07/2001 | A Kinder, Gender Nation | Take an noun and give us a reason or two why it should be either masculine or feminine. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Jim Martin | 0387: Text PrintPDF |
| 0382 | 12/31/2000 | Pickup Schticks | Write inept pickup lines, by either sex, to either sex. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0386: Text PrintPDF |
| 0381 | 12/24/2000 | Idiom Savant | Take any well-known idiom, or expression, and invent an interesting derivation for it. | WOR FIC | Text PrintPDF | Gordon Labow | 0385: Text PrintPDF |
| 0380 | 12/17/2000 | 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. | WOR LOC | Text PrintPDF | Lynne Filderman | 0384: Text PrintPDF |
| 0379 | 12/10/2000 | Rather Unusual | Come up with lines that could be uttered by Dan Rather, with his unbearably folksy excesses. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0383: Text PrintPDF |
| 0378 | 12/03/2000 | Bill Us Now | Come up with a bill sponsored by any of the newly elected U.S. senators and representatives, and explain the purpose of the bill. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF | Dave Zarrow | 0382: Text PrintPDF |
| 0377 | 11/26/2000 | 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. | HEA HIS | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0381: Text PrintPDF |
| 0376 | 11/19/2000 | Apply Yourself | Supply bad openings to college application biographies. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0380: Text PrintPDF |
| 0375 | 11/12/2000 | Show Us Up | Combine the names of two existing TV shows (past or present) to make an entirely new show. Then, describe the show. | TEL | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0379: Text PrintPDF |
| 0374 | 11/05/2000 | Bill Us Later | Take a well-known expression and update it for the new millennium. | CUL LAN | Text PrintPDF | Twyla Vernon | 0378: Text PrintPDF |
| 0373 | 10/29/2000 | An Extra Large Challenge | What should we put on the back of the new Style Invitational T-shirt? | TSH STY | Text PrintPDF | Mike Elliott | 0377: Text PrintPDF |
| 0372 | 10/22/2000 | Trial Balloons | Fill in the balloons. | CAR COM | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0376: Text PrintPDF |
| 0371 | 10/15/2000 | Ask Backward | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Meg Sullivan, Fred Hayes |
0375: Text PrintPDF |
| 0370 | 10/08/2000 | No End in Sight | Write the beginnings of sentences you don't want to hear the end of. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Bill Chang | 0374: Text PrintPDF |
| 0369 | 10/01/2000 | Punch Us | Complete any of the provided jokes. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0373: Text PrintPDF |
| 0368 | 09/24/2000 | 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. | HYP NEO | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0372: Text PrintPDF |
| 0367 | 09/17/2000 | Future Schlock | Come up with a line that will surely not appear in an upcoming work. | LIT | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0371: Text PrintPDF |
| 0366 | 09/10/2000 | Just Fulghum | Come up with a list of at least three Major Life Lessons one can learn from any of the venues provided. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Martin Bredeck | 0370: Text PrintPDF |
| 0365 | 09/03/2000 | 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. | POE | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0369: Text PrintPDF |
| 0364 | 08/27/2000 | 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. | LAN | Text PrintPDF | Bob Dalton | 0368: Text PrintPDF |
| 0363 | 08/20/2000 | It's Your Movie | Take the title of any movie and make it the answer to a riddle. | MOV JOK | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0367: Text PrintPDF |
| 0362 | 08/13/2000 | Something Missing | Tell us what is missing in each of the provided cartoons. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Sam Rosenberg | 0366: Text PrintPDF |
| 0361 | 08/06/2000 | Bad Libs | Select one subject, one verb, and one object from the provided lists, and then answer the riddle you create. | WOR JOK | Text PrintPDF | Edward Asher | 0365: Text PrintPDF |
| 0360 | 07/30/2000 | No Competition | Create a list of 25 names, each linked in some way to the name before, and you must begin and end with Mary Ann Madden. | CHN | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0364: Text PrintPDF |
| 0359 | 07/23/2000 | It's No Party | Come up with a new political party and its main political tenet. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0363: Text PrintPDF |
| 0358 | 07/16/2000 | Finish the Fire | Finish "We Didn't Start the Fire," to summarize 1990 to the present. | MUS | Text PrintPDF | Chris Doyle | 0362: Text PrintPDF |
| 0357 | 07/09/2000 | Coming to a Bad End | Take some immortal line from literature or film and ruin it by adding a short phrase or sentence. | MOV | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0361: Text PrintPDF |
| 0356 | 07/02/2000 | Med Icks | Invent a clever name for a new medical product, and specify the condition it would treat. | SCI NEO | Text PrintPDF | Chester Myslicki | 0360: Text PrintPDF |
| 0355 | 06/25/2000 | Seeing Stars | Tell us ways we can attract celebrity participation to this contest. | STY CUL | Text PrintPDF | Jacob Weinstein | 0359: Text PrintPDF |
| 0354 | 06/18/2000 | Everyone's a Critic | Adopt the style of a famous writer and review any of the provided dishes. | LIT LAN | Text PrintPDF | Phil Frankenfeld | 0358: Text PrintPDF |
| 0353 | 06/11/2000 | Patently Silly | What do these devices do? | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Jean Sorensen | 0357: Text PrintPDF |
| 0352 | 06/04/2000 | A Laff Riot | Take the name of a company and/or its commercial product and provide it a new definition. | BUS MEN | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Nelson | 0356: Text PrintPDF |
| 0351 | 05/28/2000 | Dubya Fun | Take any well-known statement, expression, slogan, etc., and rewrite it the way Dubya might have said it. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0355: Text PrintPDF |
| 0350 | 05/21/2000 | Employing Irony | Propose bad career choices. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0354: Text PrintPDF |
| 0349 | 05/14/2000 | 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. | POE BNK | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0353: Text PrintPDF |
| 0348 | 05/07/2000 | 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. | POE ANL SLO JOK | Text PrintPDF | Mike Elliott | 0352: Text PrintPDF |
| 0347 | 04/30/2000 | Capital Pun-ishment | Take an expression, or a lyric for a song, or any recognizable line of prose, and make it the punchline of an awful pun. | JOK LIT | Text PrintPDF | Bill Strider | 0351: Text PrintPDF |
| 0346 | 04/23/2000 | 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. | HIS | Text PrintPDF | Mary Lou French | 0350: Text PrintPDF |
| 0345 | 04/16/2000 | Picture This | What is going on in these cartoons? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0349: Text PrintPDF |
| 0344 | 04/09/2000 | What Kind of Foal Am I? | Envision the mating of any two of the 387 horses qualifying for this year's Triple Crown, and propose a name for their foal. The foal's name must be contained in 18 or fewer letters and spaces. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | T.J. Murphy | 0348: Text PrintPDF |
| 0343 | 04/02/2000 | Eastwood Ho. | Create a Good-Bad-Ugly progression. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Teen Sheng | 0347: Text PrintPDF |
| 0342 | 03/26/2000 | Plainly Ridiculous | Take any direct quotation from any article in today's Washington Post and translate it into "plain English. | WAS ENG | Text PrintPDF | Martin Bredeck | 0346: Text PrintPDF |
| 0341 | 03/19/2000 | What's In a Name? | Write something about any famous person that uses only the letters in his or her name. | LET CUL | Text PrintPDF | Richard Grossman | 0345: Text PrintPDF |
| 0340 | 03/12/2000 | ASK BACKWARDS 12 | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Sandra Hull | 0344: Text PrintPDF |
| 0339 | 03/05/2000 | Campaignful Developments | Come up with signs that a presidential campaign might be in trouble. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Kelli Midgley | 0343: Text PrintPDF |
| 0338 | 02/27/2000 | 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? | TEL | Text PrintPDF | Greg Pearson | 0342: Text PrintPDF |
| 0337 | 02/20/2000 | 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. | ??? | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0341: Text PrintPDF |
| 0336 | 02/13/2000 | 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. | WOR INS NEO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte, Elden Carnahan |
0339: Text PrintPDF
0340: Text PrintPDF |
| 0335 | 02/06/2000 | A LOVER'S SPAT | Come up with some inept "sweet nothings"--graceless terms of endearment. | STY | Text PrintPDF | Ben F. Noviello | 0338: Text PrintPDF |
| 0334 | 01/30/2000 | The New Style Invitational: Six Choices for Czar | Vote for one of six possible editors of the Style Invitational, from among the current Czar and five worthy competitors. | STY | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul |
0336: Text PrintPDF
0337: Text PrintPDF |
| 19990905 | 09/05/1999 | SAVE THE STYLE INVITATIONAL | No contest, no results, just a plea | Text PrintPDF | (none) | ||
| 0333 | 08/01/1999 | GET A LOAD OF THIS TA-TA | Submit episodes for the three winning strips from Week 331. | COM | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | |
| 0332 | 07/25/1999 | AUTHORS IN SEARCH OF A CHARACTER | Come up with a three- or four-panel cartoon about any of the winning characters from Week 332. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chuck Smith, Meg Sullivan, Art Grinath, David Genser |
0333: Text PrintPDF |
| 0331 | 07/18/1999 | DRAWING ON CREATIVITY | Come up with an idea for a fictional central character for a comic strip based in Washington, D.C., and the environs. Describe your character in as much detail as you wish, and give the strip a name. | WAS COM | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan, Joyce Rains |
|
| 0330 | 07/11/1999 | NERD PLANET FROM THE SUN | Come up with comments from the Nerd Side even less interesting than the observation that the 21st century doesn't really start until 2001. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Marcia Reecer | 0333: Text PrintPDF |
| 0329 | 07/04/1999 | THE STYLE INVITATIONAL: HELL | Take the name of a person or institution. Find within it a hidden message. You may add spacing and punctuation, but you may not move letters around. | LET | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Russell Haynes, Chrissy Haynes |
0332: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0328 | 06/27/1999 | 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. | LAN | Text PrintPDF | Janet Arrowsmith-Love | 0331: Text PrintPDF |
| 0327 | 06/20/1999 | ASK BACKWARDS | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0330: Text PrintPDF |
| 0326 | 06/13/1999 | COMIC RELIEF | Look at today's comics pages, select one panel and one panel only from any comic strip, and rewrite the dialogue. | COM CAP | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0329: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0325 | 06/06/1999 | THE BURMA ROAD | Propose welcoming doggerel for states or cities patterned after Burma Shave signs. | POE SLO LOC | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0328: Text PrintPDF |
| 0324 | 05/30/1999 | 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. | MOV LIT | Text PrintPDF | Aaron Kravitz | 0327: Text PrintPDF |
| 0323 | 05/23/1999 | THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD INVITATIONAL | Come up with not-quite-ready inventions, past or present. | SCI BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Brian Broadus | 0326: Text PrintPDF |
| 0322 | 05/16/1999 | YOU NAME IT | Take a well known pair or group of names, extend one of them in some manner, and explain how the group dynamic changes. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Tom Glynn | 0325: Text PrintPDF |
| 0321 | 05/09/1999 | INTERPRET THIS | Take any of the provided cartoons and come up with a matched pair of interpretations for what is happening. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Art Grinath | 0324: Text PrintPDF |
| 0320 | 05/02/1999 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Dante D. Bruno | 0323: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0319 | 04/25/1999 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Craig McGowan | 0322: Text PrintPDF |
| 0318 | 04/18/1999 | 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. | HYP NEO | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0321: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0317 | 04/11/1999 | PICK US A WINNER | Come up with flawed contest ideas, and the single, obvious, too-good-to-beat entry. | STY ADV | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0320: Text PrintPDF |
| 0316 | 04/04/1999 | CALLING THE TOON | What are these things? | CAR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jennifer Hart, Sandra Hull |
0319: Text PrintPDF |
| 0315 | 03/28/1999 | FERMENTING TROUBLE | Write a rhyming poem, eight lines maximum, on the subject of cheese or any of the provided items. | POE FOO | Text PrintPDF | Niels Hoven | 0318: Text PrintPDF |
| 0314 | 03/21/1999 | 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. | CHN | Text PrintPDF | Elisa Nichols | 0317: Text PrintPDF |
| 0313 | 03/14/1999 | THE STYLE INVITATIONAL SOUVENIR SHOP | Come up with bad names for a new store at a mall. | WOR BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF | Brian Broadus | 0316: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0312 | 03/07/1999 | 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. | LIT | Text PrintPDF | Mike Long | 0315: Text PrintPDF |
| 0311 | 02/28/1999 | 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. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0314: Text PrintPDF |
| 0310 | 02/21/1999 | IT'S LIKE THIS | Come up with really lame analogies. | ANL | Text PrintPDF | J.F. Knowles | 0313: Text PrintPDF |
| 0309 | 02/14/1999 | A STINKING PILE OF THESES | Write an all-purpose first line or paragraph for any doctoral dissertation, designed to impress the heck out of academics. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0312: Text PrintPDF |
| 0308 | 02/07/1999 | 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. | POE | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0311: Text PrintPDF |
| 0307 | 01/31/1999 | 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. | POE CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Howard Walderman | 0310: Text PrintPDF |
| 0306 | 01/24/1999 | YOUNGIAN THERAPY | Suggest ways in which the Style Invitational or any other Washington area institution can become more relevant to younger people. | WAS STY CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Meg Sullivan | 0309: Text PrintPDF |
| 0305 | 01/17/1999 | ASK BACKWARDS CMXVI2 | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0308: Text PrintPDF |
| 0304 | 01/10/1999 | TIME OF THE SIGNS | Come up with appropriate signage to appear outside any business or retail establishment in the Washington area, including government offices. | WAS BUS POL | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0307: Text PrintPDF |
| 0303 | 01/03/1999 | BOOM TIMES | Come up with old and new concerns for the baby boom generation. | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0306: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0302 | 12/27/1998 | UNSTATED TRUTHS | Come up with lines that you'll never hear the provided people say. | ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Beverly Miller | 0305: Text PrintPDF |
| 0301 | 12/20/1998 | PICTURE THIS | What is happening in these cartoons? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0304: Text PrintPDF |
| 0300 | 12/13/1998 | A BRAND NEW CONTEST | Come up with celebrity-brand products. | BUS | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0303: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0299 | 12/06/1998 | 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.) | LET | Text PrintPDF | Eric Lenning | 0302: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0298 | 11/29/1998 | 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. | LET | Text PrintPDF | Barbara Collier | 0301: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0297 | 11/22/1998 | 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. | WAS CUL POL REL | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0300: Text PrintPDF |
| 0296 | 11/15/1998 | 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. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF | Mike Genz | 0299: Text PrintPDF |
| 0295 | 11/08/1998 | PANEL DISCUSSION | Supply the contents of the missing panel in the provided cartoon strips. | CAR COM | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0298: Text PrintPDF |
| 0294 | 11/01/1998 | PRODUCT LIARBILITY | Take the name of any commercial product and redefine it. | BUS MEN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | J. Larry Schott | 0297: Text PrintPDF |
| 0293 | 10/25/1998 | THE VERSE OF AMERICA | Take any story in today's Washington Post and create a poem or song by stringing together various phrases from that story. Each phrase must be a least two words long. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Greg Arnold | 0296: Text PrintPDF |
| 0292 | 10/18/1998 | PAYING THE BILL | Propose appropriate punishments for President Clinton. | POL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0295: Text PrintPDF |
| 0291 | 10/11/1998 | 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. | HYP NEO | Text PrintPDF | Susan Reese | 0294: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0290 | 10/04/1998 | THE WORLD THEORIES | Codify some of life's more populist theories. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0293: Text PrintPDF |
| 0289 | 09/27/1998 | PLAY IT AGAIN, SHAM | Submit entries to any previous contest, ideas you might have thought of after the contest deadline had passed. | PRE | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0292: Text PrintPDF |
| 0288 | 09/20/1998 | PICTURE THIS | What is happening in these pictures? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0291: Text PrintPDF |
| 0287 | 09/13/1998 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Douglas Riley | 0290: Text PrintPDF |
| 0286 | 09/06/1998 | CLINTOONS | Make your own Clintoon, a comic strip consisting of any or all of the provided drawings. | CAR COM POL | Text PrintPDF | Meg Sullivan | 0289: Text PrintPDF |
| 0285 | 08/30/1998 | ELEVENIS, ANYTWO? | Take a common phrase containing a specific number, add or subtract one, and explain the revised phrase. | NEO | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0288: Text PrintPDF |
| 0284 | 08/23/1998 | ASK BACKWARDS MCLXVII | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Jami Cashell | 0287: Text PrintPDF |
| 0283 | 08/16/1998 | 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. | ??? | Text PrintPDF | Philip Vitale | 0286: Text PrintPDF |
| 0282 | 08/09/1998 | 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. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Ralph Scott | 0285: Text PrintPDF |
| 0281 | 08/02/1998 | CALCULATE THE ODDS | Tell us which of the two provided items does not belong with the other two, and why. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | J. Larry Schott | 0284: Text PrintPDF |
| 0280 | 07/26/1998 | EXPRESSING IT NICELY | Come up with colorful expressions for any of the six provided activities, to make them sound a little less tawdry. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Joe Kobylski | 0283: Text PrintPDF |
| 0279 | 07/19/1998 | TREACLE-DOWN THEORY | Come up with a treacly and deeply moving piece of crap. It must somehow mine joy and goopy inspiration from the vicissitudes of life. It must also rhyme. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Niels Hoven | 0282: Text PrintPDF |
| 0278 | 07/12/1998 | THE STALE INVITATIONAL | Begin with a word. Add, subtract or change a single letter only, and then provide a new definition. | LET CAL NEO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0281: Text PrintPDF |
| 0277 | 07/05/1998 | LIFE IN THE BLURBS | Come up a simple plot summary to help attract the modern audience to any classic work of fiction. It must be literally true and defensible. | LIT | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0280: Text PrintPDF |
| 0276 | 06/28/1998 | SPIT THE DIFFERENCE | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0279: Text PrintPDF |
| 0275 | 06/21/1998 | THERE ONCE WAS CONTEST FROM NANTUCKET . . . | Write a limerick in which the first line is about someone who comes from some place in the Washington area. | LIM WAS POE | Text PrintPDF | Courtney Knauth | 0278: Text PrintPDF |
| 0274 | 06/14/1998 | 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. | WAS COM | Text PrintPDF | Sandra Hull | 0277: Text PrintPDF |
| 0273 | 06/07/1998 | UNSEENS WE'D LIKE TO SEE | Provide examples of any of the provided categories of things that will never happen. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | E.J. Lloyd | 0276: Text PrintPDF |
| 0272 | 05/31/1998 | PICTURE THIS | What is happening in these cartoons? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Edward Mickolus | 0275: Text PrintPDF |
| 0271 | 05/24/1998 | YOGI BEARER | Come up with new Yogi-isms, which seem to make sense, but collapse like a soufflé when you poke it a little | WOR LAN | Text PrintPDF | Phil Frankenfeld | 0274: Text PrintPDF |
| 0270 | 05/17/1998 | PALINODE--HAVE PUN, WILL TRAVEL | Write a "palinode", retracting something said in an earlier poem. Your poem must be four lines long and contain at least one rhyme. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Jon Chananie | 0273: Text PrintPDF |
| 0269 | 05/10/1998 | 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. | CUL LOC | Text PrintPDF | David Litman | 0272: Text PrintPDF |
| 0268 | 05/03/1998 | WHAT KIND OF FOAL AM I? | Take the names of this year's Triple Crown nominees, mate any two of them, a propose a name for the foal. The foal's name must be contained in 18 characters, including spaces. | HOR | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Chris Kaufman | 0271: Text PrintPDF |
| 0267 | 04/26/1998 | THE CONCEPT CONCEPT | Come up with a situation for a "People Unclear on the Concept" cartoon. Describe the situation and supply any necessary dialogue. | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John B. Allen | 0270: Text PrintPDF |
| 0266 | 04/19/1998 | DEFINITELY WEIRD | Take any word from the dictionary and redefine it. | WOR MEN | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Jacob Weinstein | 0269: Text PrintPDF |
| 0265 | 04/12/1998 | A SPORK OF GENIUS | Come up with new products like the spork: combinations of two existing products that work together in some special way. Name the device and explain its function. | BUS NEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | T.J. Murphy | 0268: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0264 | 04/05/1998 | ASK BACKWARDS | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Sue Lin Chong | 0267: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0263 | 03/29/1998 | THE GAME OF THE NAME | Propose a bad name for the provided categories. | WOR ADV | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Erica Magram | 0266: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0262 | 03/22/1998 | 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. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0265: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0261 | 03/15/1998 | WHAT IF YOU GIVE IT A TRY II | Alter some crucial moment in history, and then tell us the likely outcome. | HIS | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Andrew B. Gibson | 0264: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0260 | 03/08/1998 | IT'S A SNAP | Come up with replacements for the two hackneyed answers: "Is the Pope Catholic?" and "When Hell freezes over. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Sue Lin Chong | 0263: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0259 | 03/01/1998 | 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. | LET POL BUS WAS | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0262: Text PrintPDF |
| 0258 | 02/22/1998 | 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. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Christina Courtney | 0261: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0257 | 02/15/1998 | LET US PLAY | Create a game, or a prank, that can be played using any two or more of the provided objects. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0260: Text PrintPDF |
| 0256 | 02/08/1998 | THE PYLE INVITATIONAL | Come up with hip, contemporary riddles and answers. The punch line must contain a painful pun. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith, Dave Ferry |
0259: Text PrintPDF |
| 0255 | 02/01/1998 | SCANDAL IN THE WIND | Each of the provided items is somehow related to the current presidential scandal. Tell us how. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Drew Knoblauch | 0258: Text PrintPDF |
| 0254 | 01/25/1998 | 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. | WAS QUE | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0257: Text PrintPDF |
| 0253 | 01/18/1998 | 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. | PRE | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | David Sherman | 0256: Text PrintPDF |
| 0252 | 01/11/1998 | MAKE YOUR MOVIE | Propose people who were the secret inspiration for famous movies. | MOV | Text PrintPDF | Charlie Steinhice | 0255: Text PrintPDF |
| 0251 | 01/04/1998 | QUOTH THE MAVEN | Take any famous line, change it by one letter only (add, subtract or change a single letter), and reattribute it. | LET CAL | Text PrintPDF | Meredith Robinson | 0254: Text PrintPDF |
| 0250 | 12/28/1997 | OH, GREAT | Complete the sentence "Wouldn't it be great if . . . | WOR JOK | Text PrintPDF | Barry Blyveis | 0253: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0249 | 12/21/1997 | BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS | Supply a silver lining for any scourge or social ill facing America or the world. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0252: Text PrintPDF |
| 0248 | 12/14/1997 | 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. | BUM STY | Text PrintPDF | Brian Broadus | 0251: Text PrintPDF |
| 0247 | 12/07/1997 | BLACK AND WHITE AND WED ALL OVER | Propose the marriage of any two people, and the song they should not play at their wedding. The people must be a man and a woman. | MUS CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0250: Text PrintPDF |
| 0246 | 11/30/1997 | OUR OWN DEVICES | What do these contraptions do? Tell us in 50 words or fewer. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0249: Text PrintPDF |
| 0245 | 11/23/1997 | LIKE FUN | Complete any of the provided "A is like B because" sentences. | WOR ANL | Text PrintPDF | Dave Ferry | 0248: Text PrintPDF |
| 0244 | 11/16/1997 | 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. | HYP NEO | Text PrintPDF | Robin Grove | 0247: Text PrintPDF |
| 0243 | 11/09/1997 | 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. | POE EPI DLT | Text PrintPDF | Charlie Steinhice | 0246: Text PrintPDF |
| 0242 | 11/02/1997 | 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. | POL CUL REL JOK | Text PrintPDF | Charlie Steinhice | 0245: Text PrintPDF |
| 0241 | 10/26/1997 | CAN YOU BEAT THIS? | Come up with headlines describing the defeat of one pro team by another. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0244: Text PrintPDF |
| 0240 | 10/19/1997 | ADDING INSULT | Come up with elegant insults directed at any famous person, living or dead, such as the real encomiums above. | CUL POL JOK | Text PrintPDF | Phil Frankenfeld | 0243: Text PrintPDF |
| 0239 | 10/12/1997 | NAME THAT TOON | Send us the captions for cartoons not provided. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0242: Text PrintPDF |
| 0238 | 10/05/1997 | CHALK IT UP TO STUPIDITY | Propose apologies for yourself in the style of Bart Simpson writing on his blackboard. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0241: Text PrintPDF |
| 0237 | 09/28/1997 | ASK BACKWARD | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Bob Dalton | 0240: Text PrintPDF |
| 0236 | 09/21/1997 | CALLING THE TOON. | What is happening here? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Hank Wallace | 0239: Text PrintPDF |
| 0235 | 09/14/1997 | ROOTS | Make up historical explanations--they should be vaguely plausible--for the etymology of any term you wish. The term should be the punch line. | HIS WOR FIC | Text PrintPDF | Sue Lin Chong | 0238: Text PrintPDF |
| 0234 | 09/07/1997 | THE JOKE'S ON YOU | Complete any of the provided jokes as it would be told by someone famous, living or dead. | JOK CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Stephen A. Simon | 0237: Text PrintPDF |
| 0233 | 08/31/1997 | SEEKING PARODY | Take any paragraph appearing on Page A1 of today's Washington Post, and rewrite it in the style of any famous writer. | WAS LIT LAN | Text PrintPDF | Phil Frankenfeld | 0236: Text PrintPDF |
| 0232 | 08/24/1997 | PRIMAL URGES | Update, for the millennium, the old "A is for Apple" reading primer. An entry must include the four letters in one of these blocks: A-D, E-H, I-L, M-P, Q-T, U-Z. | LET POE | Text PrintPDF | Jacob Weinstein | 0235: Text PrintPDF |
| 0231 | 08/17/1997 | GIVING QUARTER | Suggest a motto for the "tails" side of any of the state-themed quarters. | SLO LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Barry Blyveis | 0234: Text PrintPDF |
| 0230 | 08/10/1997 | TALES FROM THE CRYPTOGRAM | Take any proper noun--a person, a book, a movie, whatever--and create for it an appropriate cryptogram. | LET | Text PrintPDF | Don Juran | 0233: Text PrintPDF |
| 0229 | 08/03/1997 | WE CAN'T HEAR YOU | Supply an example for any of the five "Things you don't want to hear" categories provided. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0232: Text PrintPDF |
| 0228 | 07/27/1997 | MAKE MY DAY | Supply advice to today's spoiled kids about how bad things were when we were growing up. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Barry Blyveis | 0231: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0227 | 07/20/1997 | 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. | CAR BUS | Text PrintPDF | Dave Ferry | 0230: Text PrintPDF |
| 0226 | 07/13/1997 | GOING WITHOUT | Complete some variation of the expression "An A without a B is like a C without a D. | WOR ANL | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0229: Text PrintPDF |
| 0225 | 07/06/1997 | 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. | TSH BUM | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte, Dan Kaplan |
0228: Text PrintPDF |
| 0224 | 06/29/1997 | DRAWING CONCLUSIONS | What is wrong with these pictures? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Dan Kaplan | 0227: Text PrintPDF |
| 0223 | 06/22/1997 | ATTEMPTING REENTRY | Submit entries to any past contest, so long as you never submitted them before. | PRE | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0226: Text PrintPDF |
| 0222 | 06/15/1997 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Robin Grove | 0225: Text PrintPDF |
| 0221 | 06/08/1997 | SONG SUNG BROWN | Pick any song, pick a well-known line, and give us the discarded first draft. If it is part of a rhyme, you must maintain the rhyme. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF | Lily Fu Swenson | 0224: Text PrintPDF |
| 0220 | 06/01/1997 | RSVP | Provide an answer to any of the dumb questions from Week 217. | QUE ADV | Text PrintPDF | David Kleinbard | 0223: Text PrintPDF |
| 0219 | 05/25/1997 | VERBOSITY | Come up with new, obnoxious, self-conscious faux verbs and use them in sentences. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0222: Text PrintPDF |
| 0218 | 05/18/1997 | CALLING THE TOON | Who are these people? What are they doing? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Dave Yourell | 0221: Text PrintPDF |
| 0217 | 05/11/1997 | NO QUESTION ABOUT IT | Come up with truly stupid questions. | QUE ADV | Text PrintPDF | Edith Eisenberg | 0220: Text PrintPDF |
| 0216 | 05/04/1997 | WHAT KIND OF FOAL AM I? | Pair up any two of the 400-plus horses who have qualified for this year's Triple Crown races, and name their foal, in a maximum of 18 characters, including spaces. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Larry Marcus | 0219: Text PrintPDF |
| 0215 | 04/27/1997 | 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. | WOR LAN | Text PrintPDF | Jerry Pannullo | 0218: Text PrintPDF |
| 0214 | 04/20/1997 | ASK BACKWARDS IX | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are your answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Greg Arnold | 0217: Text PrintPDF |
| 0213 | 04/13/1997 | A SIN OF THE TIMES | Submit campaign or other political practices that would be illegal and/or unethical. | POL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Bill Moulden | 0216: Text PrintPDF |
| 0212 | 04/06/1997 | DUMB AS THE POST | Come up with even stupider crimes than those committed by Montgomery County's "gentleman burglars. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Sandra Hull | 0215: Text PrintPDF |
| 0211 | 03/30/1997 | GIVE US THE BACKS OFF YOUR SHIRTS | Design the back of the fourth Style Invitational T-shirt, with anything that captures the transcendent indignity of this contest. | TSH STY | Text PrintPDF | Craig Ulander | 0214: Text PrintPDF |
| 0210 | 03/23/1997 | RANDOM MEMO | Supply embarrassing "While You Were Out" phone messages that might be left for famous people, in plain sight, while they are away from their desks. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0213: Text PrintPDF |
| 0209 | 03/16/1997 | WE NEED SOME SEASONING | Come up with the first signs of spring in Washington. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Tommy Litz | 0212: Text PrintPDF |
| 0208 | 03/09/1997 | SEND IN THE CLONES | Suggest questions a commission to investigate the moral, legal and practical question raised by cloning might consider. | POL REL SCI | Text PrintPDF | Joan Schloo | 0211: Text PrintPDF |
| 0207 | 03/02/1997 | 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. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | David Genser | 0210: Text PrintPDF |
| 0206 | 02/23/1997 | 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. | HYP NEO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0209: Text PrintPDF |
| 0205 | 02/16/1997 | SOME PIG | Beg for the prize: convince us why you, and you alone, deserve to get it. | STY | Text PrintPDF | Jon Williams | 0208: Text PrintPDF |
| 0204 | 02/09/1997 | DOUBLE EXPRESSO | Take any well-known colorful expression, and modernize it. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Maja Keech | 0207: Text PrintPDF |
| 0203 | 02/02/1997 | CAN IT GET MUCH VERSE? | Create Very Bad Poetry, containing banalities masquerading as profundities, overstretched metaphors, etc. Special attention should be paid to dreadful syntax and painful rhyme | POE | Text PrintPDF | Charlie Steinhice | 0206: Text PrintPDF |
| 0202 | 01/26/1997 | THE ELEMENTS OF SMILE | Interpret any of the provided computer emoticons, or "smileys. | SCI | Text PrintPDF | Alex Neill | 0205: Text PrintPDF |
| 0201 | 01/19/1997 | THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE | Come up with a new element and its symbol, and provide a brief description of its chemical or physical properties. | SCI | Text PrintPDF | Irwin Singer | 0204: Text PrintPDF |
| 0200 | 01/12/1997 | CAPTION CRUNCH IV | Supply a new caption to any photograph appearing anywhere in today's Post, to make it funnier. | CAP | Text PrintPDF | Jessica Mathews | 0203: Text PrintPDF |
| 0199 | 01/05/1997 | WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | Rob Klotz | 0202: Text PrintPDF |
| 0198 | 12/29/1996 | YOU MUST BE MAD II | Come up with proposals designed to infuriate special interest groups. | POL CUL | Text PrintPDF | Bob Sorensen | 0201: Text PrintPDF |
| 0197 | 12/22/1996 | 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. | STY JOK | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0200: Text PrintPDF |
| 0196 | 12/15/1996 | YOU MUST BE MAD | Come up with a contemporary Scene We'd Like to See. | COM CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Bob Kulawiec, Art Grinath |
0199: Text PrintPDF |
| 0195 | 12/08/1996 | THE MARTHIAN CHRONICLES | Come up with items for Martha Stewart's December-January calendar of projects. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0198: Text PrintPDF |
| 0194 | 12/01/1996 | ADVICE SQUAD | Answer any of the provided questions unwisely. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0197: Text PrintPDF |
| 0193 | 11/24/1996 | ASK BACKWARDS VIII | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | John O'Brien, Chuck Smith |
0196: Text PrintPDF |
| 0192 | 11/17/1996 | HILL'S BILLS | Come up with bills any of the new members of Congress might jointly sponsor. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF | Tommy Litz | 0195: Text PrintPDF |
| 0191 | 11/10/1996 | 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. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Jacob Harley | 0194: Text PrintPDF |
| 0190 | 11/03/1996 | OFFICE YOU CAN'T REFUSE | Come up with a Principle for the Workplace. | BUS | Text PrintPDF | John Kammer | 0193: Text PrintPDF |
| 0189 | 10/27/1996 | YOU CAN PRANK ON IT | Come up with a hoax or prank that begins with any of the provided scenarios. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Gary Lefkowitz, Paul Kondis |
0192: Text PrintPDF |
| 0188 | 10/20/1996 | BLANKETY BLANKS | Complete any of the above sentences, substituting your own phrases for the well-known omitted words. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Joe Shepherd | 0191: Text PrintPDF |
| 0187 | 10/13/1996 | RACE TO THE FINISH LINE | In 75 words or fewer, continue in a productive fashion the story line of the provided real first lines of famous literary works. | LIT | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul, Susan Reese |
0190: Text PrintPDF |
| 0186 | 10/06/1996 | CALLING THE TOON | Who are these people? What are they doing? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Philip Vitale | 0189: Text PrintPDF |
| 0185 | 09/29/1996 | WONDERLUST | Come up with replacements for the Seven Wonders of the World. To qualify, an object must really exist, and be manmade and, in some way, awesome. | HIS | Text PrintPDF | Don Maclean | 0188: Text PrintPDF |
| 0184 | 09/22/1996 | ED ANGUISH | Create an argument on some social issue, in 75 words or fewer, taking an extreme liberal view. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | John Kammer | 0187: Text PrintPDF |
| 0183 | 09/15/1996 | COCKNEY RHYMING SLANG II | Create hawkers' rhymes for modern-day occupations like lobbyists, lawyers, talk show hosts, actuaries, etc., at a maximum of four lines. It must contain at least one rhyme. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0186: Text PrintPDF |
| 0182 | 09/08/1996 | CAN YOU STOP THIS? | Come up with a conversation stopper, a line likely to end all further discourse, perhaps even empty a room. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Tom Henry | 0185: Text PrintPDF |
| 0181 | 09/01/1996 | YOU CAN TAKE IT TO DEBUNK | Take a common slogan or saying and prove it wrong with at least one example. | SLO | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0184: Text PrintPDF |
| 0180 | 08/25/1996 | WHEN IN DOUBT, PUN | Take any headline in today's Post and improve it by somehow turning it into a pun. | HEA WAS | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart, Kate Renner |
0183: Text PrintPDF |
| 0179 | 08/18/1996 | A CLOCKWORK, UM, UM, ... ER | Write single sentences containing no fewer than three examples of rhyming slang. | POE LAN | Text PrintPDF | Richard DeMello, Stephen Dudzik, Stephen Dudzik, Stephen Dudzik, Jonathan Paul, Tommy Litz, Russell Beland, Kevin Cuddihy, Mark Greenblatt, Tom Green, Roy Ashley |
0182: Text PrintPDF |
| 0178 | 08/11/1996 | 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. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0181: Text PrintPDF |
| 0177 | 08/04/1996 | SOUNDS LIKE TROUBLE | Tell us what any of the provided sounds are. | ??? | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0180: Text PrintPDF |
| 0176 | 07/28/1996 | WRITE IN THE KISSER | In the style of any famous author, write a description of any one of these people: Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Prince Charles or Sylvester Stallone. | POL CUL | Text PrintPDF | Kitty Thuermer | 0179: Text PrintPDF |
| 0175 | 07/21/1996 | FOSSIL FOOLS | What would aliens mistakenly conclude about us from any of the provided items? | SCI | Text PrintPDF | Art Grinath | 0178: Text PrintPDF |
| 0174 | 07/14/1996 | THE EDGE OF MIGHT | Complete any of the four provided "you might" phrases. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Jon Miller, Brian Thurber |
0177: Text PrintPDF |
| 0173 | 07/07/1996 | 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. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Ken Kaufman | 0176: Text PrintPDF |
| 0172 | 06/30/1996 | POEDTRY | An entire poetic form, making its global debut in the Style Invitational. The first line must contain only six words of one syllable each; the second line, three words of two syllables each; the third line, two words of three syllables each, and the final line a single word of six syllables. At least two lines must rhyme. The general subject matter should be mundane. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Roger L. Browdy | 0175: Text PrintPDF |
| 0171 | 06/23/1996 | ON SECOND THOUGHT | Ideas that never got off the drawing board, for good reason. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0174: Text PrintPDF |
| 0170 | 06/16/1996 | THE ELEMENTS OF SMILE | Why are these people smiling? | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Ned Bent | 0173: Text PrintPDF |
| 0169 | 06/09/1996 | DIFF'RENT JOKES | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | David "Stockton" Smith | 0172: Text PrintPDF |
| 0168 | 06/02/1996 | LICENSE TO CARRY A PUN | Come up with original jokes like those provided. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Dave Zarrow | 0171: Text PrintPDF |
| 0167 | 05/26/1996 | CRAPSEY | Resurrect the "cinquain," a long-deceased poetic form, poems so ickily precocious and pretentious they make haiku look like Kipling. There are five lines, the first containing two syllables, the second containing four syllables, the third six, the fourth eight and the last, with grave finality and thunderous drama, only two. Your subject matter must be suitable for the 1990s. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Christine Tabbert | 0170: Text PrintPDF |
| 0166 | 05/19/1996 | DOO WAH DOODY | We are looking for really bad lyrics to real rock songs. Your lyrics must be from a reasonably popular song, and you must include the name of the singer or songwriter. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF | Carolyn Armstrong, Dave Ferry, Don Beale, Jane Hanna, Jessica Mathews, Jessica Mathews, Scott Barney, Dean Meservy, Arthur J. Murphy, Sandy Tenenbaum, Jeff Wadler, Pam Wadler, Steve Rouzer |
0169: Text PrintPDF |
| 0165 | 05/12/1996 | WHEEL OF TORTURE | Complete any of the provided "Wheel of Fortune" phrases. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Sarah Worcester | 0168: Text PrintPDF |
| 0164 | 05/05/1996 | MEAN MEANINGS | Translate things politicians say into what they really mean. | POL | Text PrintPDF | M. Schmidtman, Tom Witte |
0167: Text PrintPDF |
| 0163 | 04/28/1996 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0166: Text PrintPDF |
| 0162 | 04/21/1996 | MAY WE HAVE YOUR PRETENSION, PLEASE? | Come up with the most pretentious original sentence possible. | LAN | Text PrintPDF | Tommy Litz | 0165: Text PrintPDF |
| 0161 | 04/14/1996 | CAPITOL MISTAKES | Come up with very, very bad advice for first-time visitors to Washington. | WAS ADV | Text PrintPDF | Phil Plait | 0164: Text PrintPDF |
| 0160 | 04/07/1996 | SEEKING WISE GUYS | Come up with cool new bad-guy terms. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Moe Hammond | 0163: Text PrintPDF |
| 0159 | 03/31/1996 | ODDBALLS | Which item in each series does not belong? Explain your answer. | ??? | Text PrintPDF | Christine Jackson | 0162: Text PrintPDF |
| 0158 | 03/24/1996 | SO SUE US | Come up with frivolous lawsuits. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Sue Lin Chong | 0161: Text PrintPDF |
| 0157 | 03/17/1996 | WARNING SIGNS | Complete any of these "you might be about to" warning sentences. | BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Breton | 0160: Text PrintPDF |
| 0156 | 03/10/1996 | 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. | HYP WAS NEO | Text PrintPDF | Jean Sorensen | 0159: Text PrintPDF |
| 0155 | 03/03/1996 | COMPARISON SHOPPING | Explain the difference between any two of the above items. | DIF | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0158: Text PrintPDF |
| 0154 | 02/25/1996 | ENTER LAUGHING | Make up a knock-knock joke. The subject of the third line must be something crude, silly, or profound. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Cuddihy | 0157: Text PrintPDF |
| 0153 | 02/18/1996 | STUMP US | Complete this sentence, "I should be elected President of the United States because. . ." and launch your campaign. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Dan Kravitz | 0156: Text PrintPDF |
| 0152 | 02/11/1996 | 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. | HEA WAS CUL | Text PrintPDF | Mike Hammer | 0155: Text PrintPDF |
| 0151 | 02/04/1996 | STRIP MINING | Come up with a concept for a new, controversial strip to replace an existing one in The Post. | COM WAS | Text PrintPDF | Fred Dawson | 0154: Text PrintPDF |
| 0150 | 01/28/1996 | TRIAL BALLOONS | What are the people saying? | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Rahul Simha | 0153: Text PrintPDF |
| 0149 | 01/21/1996 | O, NO! | Come up with a palindrome, a line that reads the same backward and forward, and then use it as a punchline to a joke. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Dave Ferry | 0152: Text PrintPDF |
| 0148 | 01/14/1996 | RORSCHACH OF THE CROWD IV | Interpret these ink blots. | ROR | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0151: Text PrintPDF |
| 0147 | 01/07/1996 | 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. | WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Dave Harstad | 0150: Text PrintPDF |
| 0146 | 12/31/1995 | IT'S LIKE THIS | Produce an A and B to complete the expression "A makes about as much sense as B. | WOR ANL | Text PrintPDF | Alan Evans | 0149: Text PrintPDF |
| 0145 | 12/24/1995 | LOOIE, LOOIE | Come up with paired, themed ladies' room and men's room signs for various types of public places. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Susan Reese | 0148: Text PrintPDF |
| 0144 | 12/17/1995 | JUST REBUS ALONE | Come up with a rebus, a phrase or sentence composed of letters, pictures, and symbols. Your entry must contain at least two pictures or illustrations from today's Washington Post. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Jonathan Paul | 0147: Text PrintPDF |
| 0143 | 12/10/1995 | IT'S MY PARODY (& I'LL TRY IF I WANT TO) | Rewrite any common jingle or theme song in the style of famous writer. | POE MUS | Text PrintPDF | David "Stockton" Smith | 0146: Text PrintPDF |
| 0142 | 12/03/1995 | 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. | ART | Text PrintPDF | Fred Dawson | 0145: Text PrintPDF |
| 0141 | 11/26/1995 | ASK BACKWARD VII | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Mark Goldenberg | 0144: Text PrintPDF |
| 0140 | 11/19/1995 | WHAT IF YOU GIVE IT A TRY? | Come up with "What-If" scenarios and logical outcomes. | HIS | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0143: Text PrintPDF |
| 0139 | 11/12/1995 | EMPLOYMENT LINES | Come up with jobs that make even your crummy job seem good. | BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF | Virginia Maggi | 0142: Text PrintPDF |
| 0138 | 11/05/1995 | LIST BUT NOT LEAST | Come up with Top-10-style lists for any of the above four subjects. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Fred Dawson | 0141: Text PrintPDF |
| 0137 | 10/29/1995 | VELVIS LIVES | Come up with a title and/or art gallery blurb for this velvet Elvis painting. | ART | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | John Rather | 0140: Text PrintPDF |
| 0136 | 10/22/1995 | NEW END IN SIGHT | Come up with new endings to make literary classics more suitable for Hollywood in the 1990s. | MOV | Text PrintPDF | Jerry Podlesak | 0139: Text PrintPDF |
| 0135 | 10/15/1995 | JERRY-BUILT SOLUTIONS | Come up with Seinfeld-isms: whiny, quirky musings on little questions of life. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0138: Text PrintPDF |
| 0134 | 10/08/1995 | 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. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Jerry Belenker | 0137: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0133 | 10/01/1995 | LIKE, WOW. | Come up with funny analogies. | ANL | Text PrintPDF | Michael Connaghan | 0136: Text PrintPDF |
| 0132 | 09/24/1995 | GIVE US THE BACKS OFF OUR SHIRTS. | What should our loser's T-shirt say on the back? Your goal is to somehow capture the spirit of the contest. | TSH STY | Text PrintPDF | George C. Montgomery | 0135: Text PrintPDF |
| 0131 | 09/17/1995 | DROODLEYSQUAT | Come up with "droodles," simple geometric drawings with funny explanations. | ART | Text PrintPDF | Sally Booher | 0134: Text PrintPDF |
| 0130 | 09/10/1995 | NICELY STATED | Create a fictional city to be humorously paired with a real state abbreviation. | LOC | Text PrintPDF | Tommy Litz | 0133: Text PrintPDF |
| 0129 | 09/03/1995 | REMAKE US HAPPY | Come up with alternative story lines to movie titles, new or old. | MOV | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith, Tom Witte, Sarah Worcester |
0132: Text PrintPDF |
| 0128 | 08/27/1995 | LIKE, DUH | Come up with snappy answers to stupid questions. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Phil Plait | 0131: Text PrintPDF |
| 0127 | 08/20/1995 | GADGET IF YOU CAN | Choose one or more of these devices and describe their use. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Kevin P. Riley | 0130: Text PrintPDF |
| 0126 | 08/13/1995 | EVERYBODY'S TALKIN' | What are these people, etc., saying or thinking? | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Peyton Coyner | 0129: Text PrintPDF |
| 0125 | 08/06/1995 | ASK BACKWARD VI | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0128: Text PrintPDF |
| 0124 | 07/30/1995 | SPOON-FEED US. | Come up with spoonerisms, expressions based on the transposition of the initial sounds of two paired words. | LET | Text PrintPDF | Steven Papier | 0127: Text PrintPDF |
| 0123 | 07/23/1995 | 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. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Jill Gross | 0126: Text PrintPDF |
| 0122 | 07/16/1995 | THE UNKINDEST CUTE OF ALL | Come up with a new story line for "Peanuts", some plot development or new character that will put the strip back on the road to relevance. | COM | Text PrintPDF | Sarah Worcester | 0125: Text PrintPDF |
| 0121 | 07/09/1995 | IT'S NO USE | Come up with useless products. | BUS ADV | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland | 0124: Text PrintPDF |
| 0120 | 07/02/1995 | SIMILE OUTRAGEOUS | Come up with inept analogies, rotten comparisons as a literary device. | ANL | Text PrintPDF | Jeffrey Carl | 0123: Text PrintPDF |
| 0119 | 06/25/1995 | MUZAK TO OUR EAR | Come up with unfortunate Muzak songs to hear on the phone while on hold. You can use either a song title or a lyric. | MUS POE | Text PrintPDF | Howard Tenenbaum | 0122: Text PrintPDF |
| 0118 | 06/18/1995 | WEAK 118 | Take any photo caption or headline appearing anywhere in today's Post and alter its meaning by adding, deleting, or changing one letter. | CAP HEA WAS | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0121: Text PrintPDF |
| 0117 | 06/11/1995 | GIVE 'EM HELOISE | Come up with a tribute to Heloise, that queen of inanely creative recycling. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Gene Van Pelt, Peyton Coyner |
0120: Text PrintPDF |
| 0116 | 06/04/1995 | WRITE PURE POETRY | Write a complete sentence using only the letters contained on the top row of a typewriter. Alternatively, you can use the letters of the first four lines of the standard eye chart. | LET | Text PrintPDF | Jennifer Hart | 0119: Text PrintPDF |
| 0115 | 05/28/1995 | THE MNEMONIC PLAGUE | Come up with new mnemonic devices to remember complicated lists. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Jacob Weinstein | 0118: Text PrintPDF |
| 0114 | 05/21/1995 | THE JOKE'S ON YOU | Come up with jokes to culminate in any of these six punch lines. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Russell Beland, Jerry Pannullo, Greg Arnold |
0117: Text PrintPDF |
| 0113 | 05/14/1995 | 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. | HOR | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0116: Text PrintPDF |
| 0112 | 05/07/1995 | POOP FICTION | Come up with the opening lines of a book so bad it will compel you to stop reading immediately; maximum 50 words. | LIT | Text PrintPDF | Kevin Mellema | 0115: Text PrintPDF |
| 0111 | 04/30/1995 | ASK BACKWARDS V | Here are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Witte | 0114: Text PrintPDF |
| 0110 | 04/23/1995 | DO NOT INHALE THIS PAGE | Come up with absurd warning labels that might be found on common products. | CUL BUS | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0113: Text PrintPDF |
| 0109 | 04/16/1995 | SEND US YOUR MAIL PARTS | We're looking for funny examples of pidgin English that try to say one thing, but actually say something quite different. | LAN | Text PrintPDF | Cissie Owen | 0112: Text PrintPDF |
| 0108 | 04/09/1995 | NEAR MISSES | Come up with the first drafts of great lines in history, entertainment or literature. | HIS CUL LIT | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0111: Text PrintPDF |
| 0107 | 04/02/1995 | CLUSTERS' LAST STAND | Take an actual star cluster, redraw the lines into a different image, and give it a new name. | SCI | Text PrintPDF | David "Stockton" Smith, Joseph Romm |
0110: Text PrintPDF |
| 0106 | 03/26/1995 | DRAWING CONCLUSIONS | Who are these people, and what are they doing? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Pete Clime | 0109: Text PrintPDF |
| 0105 | 03/19/1995 | WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA? | Come up with Good Ideas and then convert them to Bad Ideas through slight changes in wording. | WOR ADV | Text PrintPDF | Ira Moskowitz | 0108: Text PrintPDF |
| 0104 | 03/12/1995 | 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. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Jessica Mathews | 0107: Text PrintPDF |
| 0103 | 03/05/1995 | SEND HELP. | Come up with ways to raise some badly needed cash for the District of Columbia. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Jim Martin | 0106: Text PrintPDF |
| 0102 | 02/26/1995 | HELP! I'M A PRISONER IN THIS CONTEST | Come up with fortune cookie messages that you would love to see, but never will. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Jon Patrick Smith | 0105: Text PrintPDF |
| 0101 | 02/19/1995 | [deliberately left blank] | [deliberately left blank] | Text PrintPDF | Allan Grady | 0104: Text PrintPDF | |
| 0100 | 02/12/1995 | THE JOKE'S ON YOU | Retell any of these jokes as they would be told by some celebrity, living or dead. | JOK CUL | Text PrintPDF | Paul Kondis | 0103: Text PrintPDF |
| 0099 | 02/05/1995 | WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE PICTURES? | What's wrong with these pictures? | CAR | Text PrintPDF | George Wills | 0102: Text PrintPDF |
| 0098 | 01/29/1995 | 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. | MUS | Text PrintPDF | Anthony Roisman, Lois Roisman |
0101: Text PrintPDF |
| 0097 | 01/22/1995 | NEWTONIAN PHILOSOPHY | Come up with more Newt Gingrich philosophy to explain the differences between men and women, Democrats and Republicans, dogs and cats, whatever needs explaining. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Greg Arnold | 0100: Text PrintPDF |
| 0096 | 01/15/1995 | STICK IT IN YOUR ERA | Come up with a catch phrase for the 1990s. | CUL SLO | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0099: Text PrintPDF |
| 0095 | 01/08/1995 | 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. | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0098: Text PrintPDF |
| 0094 | 01/01/1995 | 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. | PRE | Text PrintPDF | Gary McKethan | 0097: Text PrintPDF |
| 0093 | 12/25/1994 | 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. | STY ART | Text PrintPDF | Judith Daniel | 0096: Text PrintPDF |
| 0092 | 12/18/1994 | PLOTBOILERS | Tell us what excerpts from celebrities' novels might look like. | LIT | Text PrintPDF | Robert Pack | 0095: Text PrintPDF |
| 0091 | 12/11/1994 | ASK BACKWARD IV | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0094: Text PrintPDF |
| 0090 | 12/04/1994 | BILL US NOW | Come up with funny legislation based on the names of the 102 freshman congresspersons. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF | Jerry Pohl | 0093: Text PrintPDF |
| 0089 | 11/27/1994 | CHILD'S PLAY | Come up with bad ideas for new toys for the Christmas season. | CUL ADV | Text PrintPDF | Paul A. Alter | 0092: Text PrintPDF |
| 0088 | 11/20/1994 | GIVE US SOME GOOD NEWS | Come up with ways things are going to be different now that Republicans have ascended to power. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Arthur Adams | 0091: Text PrintPDF |
| 0087 | 11/13/1994 | WEST EASY, ANN | Come up with good things about West Virginia, in 50 words or fewer. | LOC | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Dave Zarrow | 0090: Text PrintPDF |
| 0086 | 11/06/1994 | EXCUSES, EXCUSES | Come up with funny excuses for various malfeasances. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0089: Text PrintPDF |
| 0085 | 10/30/1994 | PLAY MYTHTY FOR ME | Come up with new urban myths, those vaguely believable, wildly paranoid stories that circulate by word of mouth until they are generally accepted as true. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Ben Lea | 0088: Text PrintPDF |
| 0084 | 10/23/1994 | THE WASHINGTON IRVINGS | Come up with creative names for the high school football teams of real towns in America. | ATH LOC | Text PrintPDF | Karla J. Dickinson | 0087: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0083 | 10/16/1994 | BEDROOM FARCE | What questions were left out of the Great American Sex Survey? | CUL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Robb Mathews | 0086: Text PrintPDF |
| 0082 | 10/09/1994 | PICTURE THIS | Who are these people, and what are they doing? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0085: Text PrintPDF |
| 0081 | 10/02/1994 | HEADS, YOU LOSE | Take any two or more headlines anywhere in today's Washington Post, and combine them to make a funnier headline. | HEA WAS | Text PrintPDF | Dave Zarrow | 0084: Text PrintPDF |
| 0080 | 09/25/1994 | NICK KNACKS | Come up with a great nickname for any contemporary celebrity. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0083: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0079 | 09/18/1994 | TERROR-DACTYL | Send us a double dactyl. The first line must be a nonsense phrase of five to seven syllables containing exactly two downbeats. The second line must be a name, in five to seven syllables but only two downbeats. The remaining six lines must contain four to seven syllables and two downbeats each, with Lines 4 and 8 rhyming. Somewhere in the poem, one line must consist of only one word. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Kitty Thuermer | 0082: Text PrintPDF |
| 0078 | 09/11/1994 | SEEKING SMART MORONS | Come up with an oxymoron for our times, an expression made bogus by the fact that it combines incompatible, contradictory ideas. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Jessica Mathews, L. Woodall |
0081: Text PrintPDF |
| 0077 | 09/04/1994 | THE RORSCHACH OF THE CROWD II | What do these ink blots mean? | ROR | Text PrintPDF | Dennis Goris | 0080: Text PrintPDF |
| 0076 | 08/07/1994 | ADIOS. | Tell us, in 40 words or fewer, what is great about August in Washington. It's August, and we're out of here. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Sue Witner | 0079: Text PrintPDF |
| 0075 | 07/31/1994 | CURSES! | Come up with modern maledictions in the wise and entertaining Yiddish tradition. | LAN | Text PrintPDF | Joseph Romm | 0078: Text PrintPDF |
| 0074 | 07/24/1994 | SHIRT HAPPENS | In 10 words or fewer, what should the back of the "Year 2" T-shirt say? | TSH STY | Text PrintPDF | Cindi Rae Caron | 0077: Text PrintPDF |
| 0073 | 07/17/1994 | 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. | HIS | Text PrintPDF | Stuart Segal | 0076: Text PrintPDF |
| 0072 | 07/10/1994 | OH, HELL | Come up with the perfect vision of Hell for a famous person, living or dead. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Jackson Bross | 0075: Text PrintPDF |
| 0071 | 07/03/1994 | CAPTION CRUNCH III | Come up with a new, funnier caption for any picture or illustration anywhere in today's newspaper. | CAP WAS | Text PrintPDF | Richard E. Brock, Ellen Meyerson |
0074: Text PrintPDF |
| 0070 | 06/26/1994 | SOUNDS LIKE A BAD IDEA | Come up with jokes based on noises. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0073: Text PrintPDF |
| 0069 | 06/19/1994 | LAYING DOWN THE LAW | Send us some exciting new principles that explain why things happen they way they happen. | SCI | Text PrintPDF | Pat Scully | 0072: Text PrintPDF |
| 0068 | 06/12/1994 | GIVE US A SIGN | Come up with new astrological signs for the 1990s, together with one day's horoscope. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Christie Houser | 0071: Text PrintPDF |
| 0067 | 06/05/1994 | FAMOUS LAST WORDS | Make up the last words of famous dead people whose last words are unknown. | EPI CUL POL | Text PrintPDF WebPDF | Peyton Coyner | 0070: Text PrintPDF |
| 0066 | 05/29/1994 | THE SON-OF-SMITH LAW | In 50 words or fewer, what do we do about the Chuck Smith problem? | STY | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0069: Text PrintPDF |
| 0065 | 05/22/1994 | DESPERATELY SEEKING HUMOR | Write a personal ad. It may be for a celebrity or for anyone in need of adroit euphemism. | WOR CUL | Text PrintPDF | Nick Dierman | 0068: Text PrintPDF |
| 0063 | 05/15/1994 | BAD ABOUT YOU | Come up with a lame idea for a Style Invitational contest, an idea destined to create unfunny results. | STY | Text PrintPDF | Elden Carnahan | 0067: Text PrintPDF WebPDF |
| 0062 | 05/08/1994 | BAD NEWS BEARERS | Come up with statements one would not want to hear from friends, relatives, service personnel, etc. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Sarah Worcester | 0066: Text PrintPDF |
| 0061 | 05/01/1994 | NO HARD FEELINGS | Fill in the balloons in these cheerful farewell panels drawn by Marc Rosenthal, the Style Invitational artist who is being replaced by Bob Staake. | CAR | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0065: Text PrintPDF |
| 0060 | 04/24/1994 | ASK BACKWARDS III | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Bruce Evans | 0063: Text PrintPDF |
| 0059 | 04/17/1994 | A GRAVE AFFAIR | Write appropriate epitaphs for the not-yet-dead. | EPI | Text PrintPDF | Ira P. Robbins | 0062: Text PrintPDF |
| 0058 | 04/10/1994 | PLAY IT AGAIN, DENZEL | Bring Casablanca into the 1990s. Write the opening of a plot outline, in 120 words or fewer. | MOV | Text PrintPDF | David Laughton | 0061: Text PrintPDF |
| 0057 | 04/03/1994 | CALLING THE TOON | Who are these people, and what are they doing? | CAR CAP | Text PrintPDF | Peyton Coyner | 0060: Text PrintPDF |
| 0056 | 03/27/1994 | DO THE HOOKY POKEY | Come up with inventive ways to call in sick or otherwise persuade your employer you must miss a day. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | E.J. Wassmer | 0059: Text PrintPDF |
| 0055 | 03/20/1994 | ESCAPE CLAUSES | Send us self-serving moral loopholes through which the enterprising 1990s transgressor can crawl. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Helen Sheingorn | 0058: Text PrintPDF |
| 0054 | 03/13/1994 | ODD COUPLING | Write comical combinations of famous names, by marriage or other conceit. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Paul Sabourin | 0057: Text PrintPDF |
| 0053 | 03/06/1994 | CRUEL FETE | Tell us how the Invitational has changed America. | STY | Text PrintPDF | Paul Kondis | 0056: Text PrintPDF |
| 0052 | 02/27/1994 | PERJURED TESTIMONIALS | Come up with inappropriate celebrity endorsements for real products. | BUS CUL | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0055: Text PrintPDF |
| 0051 | 02/20/1994 | CAPTION CRUNCH, VOL. II | Supply captions for any of these pictures. | CAP | Text PrintPDF | Paul Kondis | 0054: Text PrintPDF |
| 0050 | 02/13/1994 | GIVE US THIS DAY | There are no holidays between Presidents' Day and Memorial Day, a cheerless run of more than three months. Let's stick one in there, somewhere. The holiday should celebrate something or someone uniquely American. Tell us the date, the name of the holiday and how it should be observed. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Laura M. Clairmont | 0053: Text PrintPDF |
| 0049 | 02/06/1994 | A SLALOM OCCASION | Come up with events for a Washington Olympics. They can be winter or summer sports, based on bureaucracy or other themes peculiar to Washington, and must include a brief description of the event. | WAS ATH | Text PrintPDF | Paul Styrene | 0052: Text PrintPDF |
| 0048 | 01/30/1994 | SNIVEL WAR | Beg for the coveted Style Invitational T-shirts. | TSH STY | Text PrintPDF | Daniel Riley | 0051: Text PrintPDF |
| 0047 | 01/23/1994 | CAN YOU DO VERSE? | Bad Valentine's Day poetry. Any rhyme scheme, any form of literary dysfunction. | POE | Text PrintPDF | Michael Paulkovich | 0050: Text PrintPDF |
| 0046 | 01/16/1994 | WE WANT STUPID ENTRIES ONLY | Make up a sentence that, were it not for this contest, would never be uttered. | STY LAN | Text PrintPDF | Thomas Edward Knibb | 0049: Text PrintPDF |
| 0045 | 01/09/1994 | INVITATION TO A DUAL, II. | Deliver us a Good News-Bad News scenario. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Linda K. Malcolm | 0048: Text PrintPDF |
| 0044 | 01/02/1994 | ADVERB PUBLICITY | Write us a Tom Swiftly or two, updated for the '90s. Each must include a reference to a famous person or institution. | WOR CUL | Text PrintPDF | Mrs. Airey's English class | 0047: Text PrintPDF |
| 0043 | 12/26/1993 | GOOD LORD! | What does God look like? | REL | Text PrintPDF | Tom Gearty | 0046: Text PrintPDF |
| 0042 | 12/19/1993 | HEY, IT COULD BE WORSE | There are worse things in life than the Washington Redskins. Just tell us what they are. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Mike Thring | 0045: Text PrintPDF |
| 0041 | 12/12/1993 | READ-END COLLUSION | Design a Style Invitational bumper sticker to be awarded to all Honorable Mentions. | BUM STY | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Dudzik | 0044: Text PrintPDF |
| 0040 | 12/05/1993 | NOT WRONG. JUST INCORRECT. | What's next on the political correctness agenda? | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Steven King | 0043: Text PrintPDF |
| 0039 | 11/28/1993 | WAY OUTSIDE THE LINES | Name a new crayon color for the 1990s, with a description. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Paul Styrene | 0042: Text PrintPDF |
| 0038 | 11/21/1993 | ASK BACKWARDS II | You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Meyer | 0041: Text PrintPDF |
| 0037 | 11/14/1993 | A STATE OF DISGRACE? | Propose any of the following for D.C.: A State Name, A State Flower, A State Bird, A State Slogan, A State Capital, A Governor, An Insulting State Joke. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Peggy Hyde, Gene Lawhun |
0040: Text PrintPDF |
| 0036 | 11/07/1993 | SCAM ON WRY | Come up with a prank you can play, for fun, profit, or deliverance of a well-needed comeuppance. | ADV | Text PrintPDF | Kirby Lamb | 0039: Text PrintPDF |
| 0035 | 10/31/1993 | 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. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Michael Sweet | 0038: Text PrintPDF |
| 0034 | 10/24/1993 | INSPECT A GADGET | What do these machines do? | CAR BUS | Text PrintPDF | Reef family | 0037: Text PrintPDF |
| 0033 | 10/17/1993 | POST IMPRESSIONISM | Give us the opening lines of a big story from American history as it might have been written by someone whose work appears in The Washington Post. Maximum 100 words. You must choose one of three news stories: "Lincoln Assassinated," "Stock Market Crashes" or "Man Walks on Moon. | HIS WAS | Text PrintPDF | Stephen Licht | 0036: Text PrintPDF |
| 0032 | 10/10/1993 | 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. | ART | Text PrintPDF | Tom Gearty | 0035: Text PrintPDF |
| 0031 | 10/03/1993 | INVITATION TO A DUAL | Divide the world into two types of people. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Chris Rooney | 0034: Text PrintPDF |
| 0030 | 09/26/1993 | THE RORSCHACH OF THE CROWD | Interpret any of the provided ink blots. | ROR | Text PrintPDF | Steven King | 0033: Text PrintPDF |
| 0029 | 09/19/1993 | AD NAUSEAM | Come up with an unfortunate slogan for any real product, service, or organization. | SLO | Text PrintPDF | Tom Gearty | 0032: Text PrintPDF |
| 0028 | 09/12/1993 | MOTHERS-IN-LAW OF INVENTION | Propose some drastic change in government to help the economy or otherwise improve the quality of life in America. | POL | Text PrintPDF | E. Gaston | 0031: Text PrintPDF |
| 0027 | 09/05/1993 | IT'S THE EPONYMY, STUPID | Coin an eponym, a word or figure of speech based on the name of a famous person. You must define the word, and, if you wish, use it in a sentence. | CUL WOR NEO | Text PrintPDF | Sharon Kuykendall | 0030: Text PrintPDF |
| 0026 | 08/29/1993 | CASTING ABOUT FOR AN IDEA | Name a political person (past or present) and the TV or movie role in which he or she could have been cast. | MOV POL TEL | Text PrintPDF | John Mazza | 0029: Text PrintPDF |
| 0025 | 08/22/1993 | CAPTION CRUNCH | Write a caption for any of these photos. | CAP | Text PrintPDF | Fritz Stolzenback | 0028: Text PrintPDF |
| 0024 | 08/15/1993 | ASK BACKWARDS | You are on "Jeopardy!" Those are the answers. What are the questions? | JEO | Text PrintPDF | Jacob Weinstein | 0027: Text PrintPDF |
| 0023 | 08/08/1993 | HAPPY ENDINGS | Modernize an old quote or expression by altering its ending. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Pamela Zilly | 0026: Text PrintPDF |
| 0022 | 08/01/1993 | STUMP US | Come up with slogans for the 1996 presidential campaign. | POL SLO | Text PrintPDF | R. Sharp | 0025: Text PrintPDF |
| 0021 | 07/25/1993 | A SO-SO CONTEST | Describe somebody--or something--through exaggerated comparison. | ANL | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0024: Text PrintPDF |
| 0020 | 07/18/1993 | COMIC RELIEF | Rewrite 60-year-old cartoons, filling in your own balloons, to make them funnier and more timely. | CAR COM | Text PrintPDF | Tom Gearty | 0023: Text PrintPDF |
| 0019 | 07/11/1993 | A RECYCLED IDEA THAT WAS NONE TOO GOOD TO BEGIN WITH | Alter a well-known phrase or name by deleting, adding or changing only one letter, and then supply a definition for what results. | LET WOR CAL NEO | Text PrintPDF | Joseph H. Engel, David J. Zvijac |
0022: Text PrintPDF |
| 0018 | 07/04/1993 | PUNCH US IN THE EAR | Give us a motto for The Washington Post. | WAS | Text PrintPDF | Susan Wenger | 0021: Text PrintPDF |
| 0017 | 06/27/1993 | REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM | Come up with an easy way to reduce the federal deficit, in 20 words or fewer. | POL | Text PrintPDF | Steven King | 0020: Text PrintPDF |
| 0016 | 06/20/1993 | I AM ADDICTED TO AN ASININE CONTEST. . . | Come up with sleazy new topics for the daytime talks. | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Kitty Thuermer, Mike Tidwell |
0019: Text PrintPDF |
| 0015 | 06/13/1993 | PUNCH US | Complete any of the provided jokes in 75 words or fewer. | JOK | Text PrintPDF | Dan Thomas | 0018: Text PrintPDF |
| 0014 | 06/06/1993 | COLLECTIVE INSANITY | Modernize collective nouns (as in a "pride" of lions or an "exaltation" of larks), inventing snide new names for groups of things. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Stuart Segal | 0017: Text PrintPDF |
| 0013 | 05/30/1993 | ANAGRAMS = A MAN'S RAG | Come up with a funny anagram for the name of a famous person or institution. All letters in the name must be used, and no letters may be left over. | ANA POL | Text PrintPDF | John Hughes-Hasle, Donna Hughes-Hasle |
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| 0012 | 05/23/1993 | HERE, DOGGEREL . . . | Write a limerick. It must contain one of the following names: "Hillary Rodham Clinton," "Jack Kevorkian," "George Stephanopoulos" or "Bosnia-Herzegovina. | LIM POE | Text PrintPDF | Jimmy Nguyen | 0015: Text PrintPDF |
| 0011 | 05/16/1993 | 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. | TSH STY SLO | Text PrintPDF | Mary Pat Jones, Mary Pat Jones |
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| 0010 | 05/09/1993 | A WEEK THAT WILL LIVE IN EUPHEMY | Write us a funny euphemism. | WOR | Text PrintPDF | Erik Johnson | 0013: Text PrintPDF |
| 0009 | 05/02/1993 | VANITY UNFAIR | Create vanity license plates for famous people. | CUL POL | Text PrintPDF | Don Beale | 0012: Text PrintPDF |
| 0008 | 04/25/1993 | I AM SPURIOUS (YELLOW) | Write a headline for the Weekly World News (Maximum length, 10 words) | HEA | Text PrintPDF | Byron Baker | 0011: Text PrintPDF |
| 0007 | 04/18/1993 | BEAT THE BANDS | Come up with a name for rock bands. | CUL MUS | Text PrintPDF | Beverley Brown | 0010: Text PrintPDF |
| 0006 | 04/11/1993 | PUTTING WORDS IN THEIR MOUTHS | In 40 words or less, write a caption for either of these two generic cartoons drawn by famed Style Invitational artist Marc Rosenthal. | CAP CAR | Text PrintPDF | Chuck Smith | 0009: Text PrintPDF |
| 0005 | 04/04/1993 | THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW | Invent a creative piece of legislation based on skillfully juxtaposed names of actual U.S. senators and representatives. | LEG POL | Text PrintPDF | Carol Vance, Jacki Drucker |
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| 0004 | 03/28/1993 | [untitled] | This week, a gripe-fest about modernity and other irritations. Complete this sentence: "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we ... | CUL | Text PrintPDF | Geri Klitsch, Tom Klitsch, Heidi Klitsch |
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| 0003 | 03/21/1993 | A STATUE OF LIMITATIONS | Come up with a concept for a statue of someone -- anyone, dead or alive -- who doesn't currently have one. | POL CUL | Text PrintPDF | Bob Zane | 0005: Text PrintPDF |
| 0002 | 03/14/1993 | WRITE A MOTTO. WIN A MONSTROSITY. | Maryland needs a new motto, a multi-purpose slogan suitable for placement on a state seal or a license plate. Something grand, something that embodies the full bodacious majesty of the state. | SLO LOC | Text PrintPDF | Oslo | 0004: Text PrintPDF |
| 0001 | 03/07/1993 | SHEDDING THE SKINS? | Come up with a new name for the Redskins. | WAS ATH | Text PrintPDF | Douglas R. Miller | 0003: Text PrintPDF |