Day: December 28, 2016

         “Why don’t you two have a nice chat while I call my divorce lawyer.”

                                              (by Anonymous)

 

My original caption: “Oh, it’s you, dear. Can I have a divorce?”

 

First of all, I suspect “Anonymous” is really Cary Antebi being a little careless in how he submitted the set of five captions that included the winning caption. I’ll try to find out for certain, and will post any information I get as soon as possible.

 

Anyway, congratulations to Anonymous for this victory — it’s a first! Whoever you are, you are now officially one of the funniest people around.

(Update: I heard from Cary Antebi and he is indeed “Anonymous”. So this is actually his 25th victory — but in the record books this victory will always have an asterisk next to it. Don’t be so careless, Cary!)

Here are the other submissions that were under serious consideration:

“I’ve traded you in for a newer model.” (by kelasher)

“It’s more of a portfolio adjustment.” (by Richartd Wolf)

“Don’t blame me, I didn’t make the seating arrangements.” (by Cary Antebi)

 

And I thought you might be interested in Bob Mankoff’s advice on how to win The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest (he’s the Cartoon Editor of The New Yorker). Here it is:

In a nutshell, be brief. As the immortal Bard said, “Brevity is the soul of wit / And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes.” I know there are reasons to doubt that advice; for one thing, the Bard could drone on a bit himself, and for another he wasn’t immortal.

Nevertheless, data gathered from our Caption Contest illustrate the point. Each week, there are about five thousand entries to the contest. However, there are by no means five thousand different entries. Below are some entries, from a recent contest, that all used the same joke. They appear alongside the ranking they received from our crowdsourcing algorithm.

“Sir, please take one small step out of the vehicle.” (5th)

“I’m going to need you to take one small step for man out of the vehicle, sir.” (14th)

“Sir, I’m going to need you to take one small step and one giant leap out of the car.” (109th)

“I need you to step out of the vehicle for a field sobriety test. Please take one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.” (697th)

So, to sum up, when you come up with your caption, look for the essence of the joke and then remove the tedious outward flourishes.

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Now that sounds like some pretty good advice.

My next contest will be up in just a couple of weeks. Good luck to all of you in the New Year — hope you have a happy and healthy one!