I won the new Yorker Caption Contest! Some of my submissions have been horrible; but some are really OK. And my most recent submission (winners were announced in the July 29 issue) was my best ever and an absolute winner. I don't know how far and wide that goes, but I email the people I'm in regular contact with. The drawing was part of The New Yorker’s weekly contest in which the magazine publishes an uncaptioned cartoon, and readers submit their wittiest captions. You can cancel anytime. If you want to win The New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest, you'd do well to mind these four factors: novelty, length, punctuation, and "abstractness and imaginability.". I wish I could say mine were really funny, but I think they fall more into the clever category. To understand what makes the perfect caption, you must start with the readership. So, I won’t get into either of those topics in any detail. He's right that sometimes you see a winning caption that's clever but not really funny. We are now open to everyone, everywhere. Your right or my right?â. When more than one person submits the winning caption, they just choose a winner at random. Proper nouns? A very similar cartoon by Jack Kirby from 1962âsimilar enough to lead the New York Post to shout plagiarismâhas the person inside the window frightened and cowering, sans drink, glasses, or phone. Hereâs the cartoon. If you heed these instructions, maybe one day you will get a call from Farley and find yourself a finalist. New Yorker Weekly Caption Contest One of the most popular caption contest examples around is from the New Yorker. ", Read a Q & A with Land of the Lost Director Brad Silberling, Read a Q & A with Guillermo Del Toro on vampires. In this Contest they give you print your caption and name in the magazine as the winning … Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. And what better archetype of urban ennui could there be than a man in a cardigan holding a drink, yapping on his cell phone while blissfully unaware of looming dangers? The New Yorker magazine, noting the popularity of its cartoon caption contest, has created a caption contest board game and issued a book with the most interesting cartoons and winning captions as well as comprehensive information covering this theme. Wood spoke to TIME about how to game the contest and how he gets out the vote. But there are others I've seen not mine, I hasten to add that really are terrific and funny. They feature a cartoon and readers are invited to submit funny captions. Welcome to the Cartoon Caption Contest at CartoonCollections.com where we take perfectly good cartoons and let YOU try to make them better. It also helps, of course, if you have the best entry. I come to work on Monday, and the first thing I do is log onto the New Yorker website and check out the cartoon for 10 minutes or so. If you donât make it past Farley, you will never get your name in print. Your caption was not unique. I think they're looking for something that makes them laugh. Will it make anyone laugh out loud? And now you can, too. How often had you submitted captions before you had success? The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest is the biggest of its kind in the world. A non-theory-of-mind caption (accompanying a cartoon of a bird wearing a thong), however, requires no such projection: âItâs a thongbird.â Theory of mind captions make for higher-order jokes easily distinguished from the simian puns and visual gags that litter the likes of MAD Magazine. Shallcross shared her caption … Nobody wants to feel that The New Yorker is above them, and the last thing they need is to have a cartoon joke go over their heads, lest they write a whole Seinfeld episode about it. I don't even think there's a prize other than bragging rights. Yes, I won The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, and I’m going to tell you how I did it. At least 5,000 would-be wordsmiths play the contest each week; of those, three entries are selected by the magazine as finalists, and the winner is chosen in an online vote. You learn that the Caption Contest has a new editor and your fantasy that the New Yorker was secretly grooming you for the role evaporates, along with your last shred of decency. You must look for these themes in your cartoon and pounce. If something comes to me, I send it in. To date, 136 out of the 145 caption contest winners (94 percent) fall into the âtheory of mindâ category. The astute captioner will note that he used to be a rollercoaster operator at Six Flags and a telemarketer. The projection you're talking about calls to mind a great Slate article in which a caption-contest winner explained that the trick to winning was using common cliches about the cartoon subject. Generate a caption as many times as you’d like — then, submit it to The New Yorker. Try to incorporate everything that's going on in the cartoon. Anna October 10, 2020 Leave a Comment. Call in longstanding debts. The last thing I want is for the New Yorker to say, "That ungrateful bastard. Clearly 9-to-5 types, at a loss for time, who would be unable to take advantage of the fact that the contest is decided by an online vote. © 2019 TIME USA, LLC. You create a second New Yorker account for submitting multiple captions in clear violation of the Caption Contest’s rules, because you’re a monster. The third time (in the May 6, 2013 issue), I finished 3rd again. In both cases, what you need is a lot of ideas, and a technique to tip the odds a bit in your direction. “You are trying to win The New Yorker’s caption contest. If so, throw it out and work on a less funny one. I don't mean to sound ungrateful. This week, Bob Mankoff responds to a letter submitted by a participant in the New Yorker's Caption Contest. You could have. That didn't go over well with my colleagues, because I'm a poverty lawyer. I'll email my friends. I think about 10 times I've submitted something and thought I might get a call. Humor and victory are different matters entirely. Here we provide everyday new online sweepstakes, giveaways, and contests. For instance, the first contest I won featured a drawing by Danny Shanahan of a woman yelling at her husband, who’s reaching into his back pocket for money to give a panhandling dolphin. I'm careful to delete from that email group the two or three people that I know hate me, because I don't want them to launch some kind of counter-offensive. Advice for crafting New Yorker captions is also readily available. Their weekly caption contest invites readers to write a caption for that weeks’ cartoon. He won the New Yorker Cartoon Caption contest and dislikes Cuba. There was one time when I turned in what ended up being the winning caption, but perhaps 1,000 people sent it in; I think it was a pretty obvious fit for the cartoon. That's just the luck of the draw. The first filter for your caption should be: Is it too funny? The cartoon assistant reads every single captionâat least 6,000 per weekâand passes his favorite 50 or so to the editors, who narrow the list down to three. All you have to do is win our bi-weekly, soon-to-be-weekly, and maybe-someday-daily, caption contest and you’ll have enough money to buy a signed copy of The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons from us for the hundred bucks you win. Join Slate Plus to continue reading, and youâll get unlimited access to all our workâand support Slateâs independent journalism. Once you become a finalist, do you wage a guerrilla campaign to get the vote out? I would've guessed about every other week [out of 192]. Jimmy. How often do you come up with a caption that you're pleased with? Larry Wood's forte is winning the New Yorker's Caption Contest, in which readers are invited to submit the perfect quip to accompany the magazine's back-page cartoon. On June 1, Wood, a 46-year-old attorney from Chicago, found out he'd captured the weekly contest for a record third time. Each week, thousands of readers submit potential captions for the cartoon on the last page of the magazine. All rights reserved. Everyone must get your joke. A big thumbs up to Roger Ebert—the film critic has finally won the cartoon-caption contest in the New Yorker. Be brief. What's your approach to writing these captions? For those who are impressed by credentials: I’ve had my work published in The New Yorker four times. If you value our work, please disable your ad blocker. I had musicians pitching me at their shows, professors pitching me in their lecture halls, and old ladies at cafes pitching me to their grandnieces. Iâm at the window. An exemplary New Yorker theory of mind caption (accompanying a cartoon of a police officer ticketing a caveman with a large wheel): âYeah, yeahâand I invented the ticket.â The humor here requires inference about the cavemanâs beliefs and intentions as he (presumably) explains to the cop that he invented the wheel. It’s quite another to win, say, the Pillsbury Bakeoff, an essay contest, the National History Day Contest … Or the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. "I have entered the New Yorker’s cartoon caption contest almost weekly virtually since it began and have never even been a finalist," Ebert noted on his Chicago Sun-Times blog two years ago. So you could've been a four-time winner. Youâve run out of free articles. Exploit the fact that Farley is working off the same stereotypes of The New Yorker readership as you are. The guy I'm tied with, Carl Gable, from Norcross, Ga., won the first annual contest and two of the weeklies; I've won three weeklies. If not, I usually just give up. To avoid this, your caption should elicit, at best, a mild chuckle. The first line of defense at The New Yorker is the cartoon editorâs assistant, a twentysomething from Texas named Farley Katz. But I have. Mildly amusing at best? Next you need to know the selection process. That killed me he had a great caption, but I really loved that cartoon and my caption was almost identical to his, and mine was shorter. The drawing is by P. C. Vey. The Cartoon Caption Contest get live with exciting prizes. Enter your caption below for a chance to win the envy of your peers. He had to look up âurban ennuiâ when he arrived in New Yorkâhe didnât learn it riding the subway for 25 years. OK, I admit it. These observations have been culled from months of research and are guaranteed to help you win, too. The New Yorker Bound: The 1980s; Virgil Partch: "Guess Who!" And I thought of the caption (registration required). Sometimes I think they're looking for something out of left field. But the deciders did not. Nope. But that doesnât mean you couldâve won the caption contestâit just means you couldâve done better. It helps if, like me, you have no shame. A while. You get the idea. I just tried to think about stereotypical things people think about dolphins and panhandlers. Paging through The New Yorker is a lonesome withdrawal, not a group activity. Sometimes something comes pretty quickly. The New Yorker's records show that I've submitted 38 times, but I think it's gotta be more than that. The reader is isolated and introspective, probably on the train commuting to work. Work on a less funny one introspective, probably on the train commuting to.... To court over my entry in the May 6, 2013 issue ) I! 732 for November 9, 2020 the train commuting to work either of those in! Times I 've submitted 38 times, though one was under different rules )! 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