| WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1568 | Nextra! Nextra! | Tell us the funny news events from 2024 | H |
| 1522 | Questionable Journalism | Find a sentence published in the next week and tell us what question it could answer | H |
| 1520 | Nextra! Nextra! | Read All About it. Predict the big news events of 2023 | H H H |
| 1496 | 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. | H |
| 1489 | Let's movie things around | Rearrange the words of a movie title to create a new movie, then describe it | H |
| 1487 | Colt following -- now it's the grandfoals | Breed" any of the "foal" names provided in today's results (including the intro) and give the "grandfoal" a name that reflects both names. | H |
| 1486 | No can do: Signs of incompetence | Give us a clue that someone was incompetent in a given field. | H |
| 1482 | The Tile Invitational IX | Rearrange the letters of any of the letter sets provided to create a new term, then define or describe; you may use all seven letters, but also just six or five. | 4 |
| 1481 | Mess with our heads | Reinterpret some actual headline (or a major part of it), from any publication, print or online. | H |
| 1477 | Thinking outside the big box | Send us a humorous "review" for any of the provided items listed on walmart.com<\em>. | H |
| 1472 | Phony money -- tell us fake financial trivia | Tell us some fake trivia about money or the financial system. | H 2 |
| 1468 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1440 through 1464. | H H |
| 1464 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided cartoons. | H |
| 1462 | Time for a new career? | Tell what would happen if any two people switched professions or other roles. | H |
| 1457 | What is Ask Backwards XL? | You are on "Jeopardy!"; various answers are provided. You provide the questions. | H 2 |
| 1455 | Good idea! Or not. | Cite a "good idea' and, with a small change of wording, a "bad idea". | H |
| 1451 | Could have said it worse ourselves | Give us a humorously bad "first draft" of a famous line from history, literature or entertainment. | H |
| 1446 | 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. | H H 2 |
| 1445 | 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. | H |
| 1444 | It's a whole new all-game | Slightly change the name of a sport, sports event or similar pastime to create a new one, and briefly describe it. | 4 |
| 1442 | Same difference, or missing links | Choose any two (or more) items from the utterly random list above and say how they're different, alike or otherwise linked. | H |
| 1414 | Divining comedy: 2021 predictions | Name some humorous news event to happen in 2021. | H H |
| 1408 | Re-Organization | Slightly change the name of a nonprofit organization and describe it. | 3 |
| 1405 | Okay, once more around the track | Breed" any two of the provided foal names that got ink in Week 1400 and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names. | H |
| 1404 | Ask Backwards XXXIX | The answers are provided. You supply the questions. | H |
| 1400 | Back on track with our classic 'foal' contest | Breed" any two of the provided names of the 100 horses nominated for the 2020 Triple Crown races and name the "foal" to humorously reflect the parents' names. | H |
| 1395 | Add nauseam: A plus-one contest | Add a "plus one" to some familiar numerical grouping, true or fictional | H |
| 1392 | Picture this -- caption these cartoons | Write a caption, either descriptive or in dialogue, for any of the provided Bob Staake cartoons. | H |
| 1383 | Questionable Journalism | Choose any sentence (not a headline) in an article or ad in The Washington Post or another publication dated May 7 through May 18, and write a question it might humorously answer. | H H |
| 1382 | For us, it's still Post Time | Breed" any two names from the provided list of 100 of the 145 previous Kentucky Derby winners, from 1875 to 2019, and name the foal to humorously reflect the parents' names. | H |
| 1376 | Get thee to a funnery | Add a character (or more) to a Shakespeare play and supply some resulting dialogue. | H H |
| 1375 | Mess With Our Heads | Reinterpret an actual headline (or a major part of it) by adding a bank head, or subtitle. | 3 |
| 1371 | The Tile Invitational VII | Create a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or phrase) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | 2 |
| 1363 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1334 through Week 1359. | H |
| 1362 | The Year in Redo, Part 1 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1307 through 1333, except for Weeks 1309-1311. | H H |
| 1358 | What to your wondering eyes will appear? | Write a humorous passage -- a "quote", an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything -- using only words that appear in "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (a.k.a "The Night Before Christmas"). | H |
| 1356 | Ask Backwards 38 | Sixteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. | H H |
| 1342 | MRGRS: Mash 2 abbrevs. | Combine two acronyms or other abbreviations, whether of entities or expressions, into one big one, and describe it, offer a slogan for the new organization, etc. | H |
| 1338 | Picture This -- cartoon captions | Supply a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | H H |
| 1336 | Two ways about it | What's something (printable) you could say in two -- or more -- of the provided situations. | H |
| 1330 | Spinoff x Time Is Now = Grandfoals Week! | Breed" any two of the 65 foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names. | H 2 |
| 1326 | Foaling around | Breed" any two names from the provided list of 100 horses and name the foal to reflect both names. | H H 2 |
| 1325 | Stand up and jeer | Give us some original standup jokes that would have been good at this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner. | H |
| 1322 | Back to the drawing board | Come up with an idea for an invention that still needs a bug ironed out. | H H |
| 1320 | Questionable journalism | Find any sentence (or a substantive part of a sentence) that appears in the Post or another publication, in print or online, dated Feb. 21-March 4, and pair it with a question it might answer. | H |
| 1319 | The Tile Invitational VI | Create a five-, six-, or seven-letter word (or phrase) by scrambling the letters of any of the provided sets and define it. | H |
| 1315 | 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. | H |
| 1314 | 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 | H |
| 1311 | Nextra! Nextra! The year in preview | Name some humorous event to happen in 2019. | 3 |
| 1310 | The Year in Redo, Part 2 | Enter (or reenter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1282 through Week 1306. | H |
| 1308 | Picture this -- or these | This week you have two choices: (1) Write a caption for one or more of these pictures, or (2) explain what is wrong with the picture. You might also combine two pictures into one -- or all four into one. | H |
| 1302 | Ask Backwards 37 | Fifteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. Do one or more, up to a total of 25 A&Q's. | H |
| 1297 | A different type o' headline contest | Change a letter in an article or ad in the Post or another publication dated Sept. 13-24 by adding or subtracting one letter; substituting a letter; transposing two letters; or changing spacing or punctuation; and then add a "bank head. | H 2 |
| 1284 | Same difference | Explain how any two of the items in the provided list are similar, different or otherwise linked. | H H |
| 1282 | Picture This | Write a caption for one or more of the provided pictures. | H |
| 1280 | A la'ugh' a minute with 'air quotes' | Highlight part of a word, name or short phrase in "air quotes" to give it a new meaning or description. | H H |
| 1278 | Colt following: The 'grandfoals' | Breed" any two of the 68 foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect both parents' names, in the style of today's inking entries. | H |
| 1274 | Heading for a foal -- our horse name 'breeding' contest | Your job is to "breed" any two names of the 360 horses nominated for this year's Triple Crown races and name the "foal" to reflect both names. | H |
| 1269 | 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. | H |
| 1268 | Playing pinocchio | Tell us some humorously bogus trivia about the news media or the publishing or broadcasting industries. | H |
| 1266 | 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. | H |
| 1263 | 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. | H H |
| 1262 | 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. | H H |
| 1260 | What lies (are) ahead for 2018 | Jokingly predict some news event to happen in 2018. | H 3 |
| 1257 | The year in redo, Part 1 | Enter (or re-enter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1203 through Week 1229, except for Weeks 1205 and 1206. | H |
| 1256 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Provide a funny caption for any of the provided cartoons. | H |
| 1254 | 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. | H |
| 1253 | Fashion x fiction: More fake trivia | Tell us some totally bogus trivia about clothing or fashion. | H H |
| 1249 | Ask Backwards 36 | Choose any of the 15 provided items and follow it with a question that it could humorously answer. | H |
| 1247 | Script tease | Offer a quote from a script whose title you've given a different plot. | H |
| 1246 | 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. | H H 3 |
| 1245 | 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. | 2 |
| 1241 | Less taste, more fill-in | Give us a novel clue for any word or phrase in which the remaining letters in the provided crossword puzzle fit, across or down. | H H |
| 1239 | MASH 3 | Combine two movie titles and describe the result. | H H |
| 1238 | D-E-F Comedy Jam (or E-D-F, etc.) | Coin a threeword phrase (you may add an insignificant word or two) whose words begin with D, E and F — in any order — and describe it. | H |
| 1234 | 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. | H |
| 1233 | Not | The Loser Community gets a week off (actually two) from writing contest entries and will have to find something else to do during staff meetings, sermons, romantic breakups, etc. | H H |
| 1232 | Picture this -- a caption contest | Write a caption for one or more of the provided cartoons. | H H |
| 1228 | That movie is SO about you | Name someone who was the "secret inspiration" for a certain movie. | H H |
| 1227 | Celebrate ortho-diversity! | Name and describe a new life form -- and no letter in the term may be used twice. | P |
| 1226 | Colt following: The 'grandfoals' | Breed" any two of the 61 foal names that got ink this week, and name the offspring to reflect both parents names. | H |
| 1222 | Foaling around | Breed" any two of the provided racehorses nominated for this year's Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont; and name the foal to reflect both of them. | H H |
| 1220 | O pedantry, O pedantry | Give us some humorous pedantry. | H |
| 1218 | 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. | H |
| 1215 | A so-so contest (How so-so is it?) | Write a humorous exaggeration in the form "x is so y that . . . | H |
| 1214 | The alternaugural address | Write a humorous passage — a “quote,” an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything — using only words that appear in Trump’s inaugural address. | 4 |
| 1212 | 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. | H |
| 1211 | The best tweets in history | Write a stupidly disparaging tweet (140 characters or fewer, including spaces) about some laudable figure of past or present, true or fictional. | H |
| 1210 | Send us the bill: Our 'joint legislation' game | Combine two or more names from the provided list of members of Congress to “co-sponsor” a bill based on their combined last names, and state its purpose. | H |
| 1209 | Invented facts: A fictoid contest | Tell us a humorously untrue account of how a product or invention came to be, or got its name. | H H 4 |
| 1207 | 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. | H |
| 1206 | Do-over the do-over -- enter any of the year's contests | Enter (or re-enter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1149 to 1202, except for Week 1152, last year's do-over. | H 2 |
| 1205 | Could we just have a do-over? Yes, we could. | Enter (or re-enter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1149 to 1201, except for Week 1152, last year's do-over. | H H |
| 1203 | You've got the powers | Tell us what you would do if you had one or more of the six magical powers provided. | 3 |
| 1200 | The definitive dozen | Supply a word, name or multi-word term along with a wry definition or description; together, the term and description must total exactly 12 words. | H |
| 1197 | Picture This -- It's a Bob Staake caption contest | Write a caption for any of the cartoons provided. | H H H |
| 1196 | 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. | H H H H |
| 1192 | Ask Backwards | The 15 provided phrases above are the answers. You provide the questions to as many as you’d like (up to 25 entries total). | H H |
| 1191 | 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 | H H |
| 1185 | The Rorschach of the crowd | Interpret one of more of the provided genuine inkblots. You may look at them upside down or sideways. | 4 |
| 1184 | Plan C -- a third candidate? | Explain why some novel person (or thing) should be president; you could also suggest a president-veep ticket. | H |
| 1183 | C'mon, be honest with us | Write something in roughly the form "If X were more honest, (then) Y. | H H |
| 1182 | 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. | H |
| 1180 | 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. | H H |
| 1179 | Blasted alphabetical contests . . . | Coin a three-word phrase whose words begin with A, B and C -- in any order -- and describe it. | H H |
| 1178 | A ______ of collective nouns | Propose one or more funny new names for groups of things. | H H |
| 1176 | Let 'er RIP: Write an obit line | Write a humorous line or two for someone's obituary -- either for a particular person (dead or not) or for a fictional or generic one. | T I H H H |
| 1175 | Good luck with 13 | Make up a word whose Scrabble letter values add up to exactly 13, and define it. | H |
| 1173 | Tinker with the recipe | Slightly change the name of a food or brand of food (or something else in the food industry) and describe it, or write a slogan, jingle, etc. | H H |
| 1172 | 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". | H |
| 1171 | 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. | H |
| 1170 | Derby or not Derby | Breed" any two of the provided racehorses nominated for this year's Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont; and name the foal to reflect both names. | H |
| 1169 | Be caustic by acrostic | Review or otherwise describe a movie, book, play or TV show (or Internet equivalent) with words whose first letters spell out the name of the work. | H |
| 1167 | 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. | H H |
| 1166 | Questionable journalism | Take a sentence (or most of a sentence) that appears in text (not a headline) in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com dated March 10-21 and make up a question that the sentence could answer | W |
| 1165 | B all you can B | Change a word, phrase or name by adding one or more B's, and/or by replacing one or more letters with B's, and define your new term. | H |
| 1162 | An 8-year Re-Onion | Write a fictional Onion-type headline. | H |