The 2005 Winners

"What? Those are the winners?! Where is my glorious entry? Dammit, you wouldn't know funny if it bit you on the ass!"

No doubt. This sort of thing is enormously subjective. On a different day I might well have picked a slightly different group of winners, and a different judge would almost certainly have come up with a very different list. It's hard to draw a line between those that just barely make it in and those which are just barely left out. So if your sentence doesn't appear below, that doesn't necessarily mean it was no good — it just didn't jump out at me the way these did. And of course, I wouldn't know funny if it bit me on the ass.

As noted on the main Lyttle Lytton page, the Byg Lytton contest had many fewer entries than the regular contest, and there was no clear winner among those I did get, so I'm adding another year to the deadline for that division. If you've already entered, your entry will be considered again in '06, but feel free to submit a new entry if you'd like.

As for the short contest, here's this year's winner:

John, surfing, said to his mother, surfing beside him, "How do you like surfing?"

Eric Davis

I keep trying to think of something insightful to say about this year's winner, but then I reread it and just start laughing again.

Second place and a Montfort Medal goes to:

Man oh man, you're gonna like this book; boy howdy.

Duncan Stevens

The semicolon makes that one. A second Montfort Medal goes to:

Before I drop this narrative shit, here's a quick shout-out to that old Classics professor who said I couldn't write for jack: yo, suck me!

Mark Silcox

Two Comrade Todd Awards this year:

Get ready to take a virtual tour of sydney australia through the backyards of a kangaroo who will punch you in the head fifty times!

Simon Vertigo

Braille haiku on the gravestone served to excite some while sighted visitors needed only touch the smoothly polished shapes.

Perry Hamilton

I'm not entirely sure what's going on with that second one but there's something oddly compelling about it.

This year's Berman Prize winner is:

Dr. Metzger turned to greet his new patient, blithely unaware he would soon become a member of a secret brotherhood as old as urology itself.

Alec Kyras

And then we have some honorable mentions:

"Joy is contagious," he said, peering into the microscope.

Morgan Shinstine

(Normally I don't go for puns, but that one was well done.)

Her ovine familiar baaahed angrily.

Curt Long

The spaceship was crashing, but, more importantly, John and Greta were having sex in it.

Ben Waldorf

I wonder whether this is the same John who was surfing earlier. What a full, rich life he leads!

(Definitions: the Montfort Medal is awarded to entries that refer to the book itself or the process of writing it; the Comrade Todd Award is given to uniquely mangled prose; the Berman Prize is for entries that seem innocuous yet suggest truly appalling books.)

Return to the Lyttle Lytton page!