How to win The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest
Unless you write like Malcolm Gladwell or Susan Orlean, your best chance at appearing in The New Yorker is probably on its last page, the Cartoon Caption Contest. But even that’s improbable. It took Roger Ebert 107 tries. Yes, that Roger Ebert, the famed film critic, journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner, screenwriter and all-around ass kicker.
To date, more than half a million entrants have submitted over 1,500,000 captions. Past winners have been interviewed, strategies have been devised, research has been conducted. Still, it remains tough as hell to win.
So rather than battling the horde of wordsmiths with wit, we decided to get scientific. We gathered data for each winning entry, fed them into a visualization tool, and got this: a beautiful, interactive map that shows how many people won in each city. Enjoy.
Our advice on winning the The New Yorker Caption Contest? Move to New York.
Have a go at the XML file here.