The December 2006 Challenge
Submit a caption for each drawing in the New Yorker Caption Contest throughout the month of December. This will involve writing maybe one sentence (or sentence fragment) per week, so make it good. Each should be brilliant and original; shoot to make yours the winning entry, or at least one the top three chosen out of the thousands upon thousands of submissions each week. Submit online each week, and also forward the text of your submission for posting on the Commuter Challenge website.
New cartoons are posted each Monday. You have until the following Sunday to submit a caption. The first contest for this Commuter Challenge will open December 4th.
Hint: don’t go for the easiest gag – if a seemingly good caption immediately jumps to your brain, ask yourself whether or not it’s likely that dozens or hundreds of others had the same thought. If so, then you should probably consider trying something different.
The Results
December 4th
| Brian Raiter | “Granted it’s inexpensive, but next summer I’m in charge of hotel reservations.” |
| Ryan Finholm | “I hope your bitch doesn’t find out.” |
December 11th
| Brian Raiter | “Yeah, those apartments are hard to sell … though that guy from Krakow seems comfortable enough.” |
| Ryan Finholm | “All the tenants moved here from the equator.” |
December 18th
| Brian Raiter | “No, kids, this is Uncle Victor’s present. Uncle Victor arrives tomorrow.” |
| Ryan Finholm | “But you can’t unstrap him until Christmas; I want you to be surprised.” |
I still wish I’d used: “Huh. That wasn’t like either Oz.” as my caption for the first cartoon instead of the ‘bitch’ caption. Of course Brian had the best caption of all time for that one, but he didn’t come up with it until after the submission deadline.
by RyanF — 30 January 2008 @ 01:10
My late caption that Ryan referred to was “Next time, let’s just take the non-smoking room.” I came up with it hours after the deadline, making me wonder if my brain secretly hates me.
Other than that, I found it hard to come up with anything interesting. My captions always feel like half-hearted attempts at humor. I would make a terrible stand-up comic.
One thing I couldn’t help noticing is that the three captions selected by the New Yorker are often, well, a bit weak. It’s an odd feeling to see the three finalists and know that they received at least one caption that was better than those. I think the process of reading thousands of captions unavoidably affects your judgement.
by breadbox — 12 February 2008 @ 04:12