The CartoonStock Caption Contest number 211 brings us to a restaurant table at which a couple is seated, surrounded by hellfire. The waiter, a devil, is taking the couple's order and it is he who speaks. The cartoonist is Isabella Bannerman.
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The monthly cash prize contest has fairly new rules which I seem compelled to repeat until this cartoon's setting freezes over: Five dollars will buy up to three entries as it always has, but now three additional dollars can be used to optionally purchase a fourth entry, and so on and so forth. Real cash prizes are fifty percent of the total prize pool (usually in the ballpark of $500) for first place and ten percent of the prize pool (typically about $100) for each of five runners up. As of this writing, I've put $280 into the first fifty-six pay-to-play contests and this fifty-seventh challenge brings my total cash outlay up to $285. So far I haven't purchased any of the new $3 entries, but this month I'm starting to feel, shall we say, some temptation.
Anyway, having achieved runner-up status with three previous cash prize entries, I've collected $300 from CartoonStock, so I'm still nominally playing with the house's money, at least for the time being. Because the contest is no longer subsidized by the treasury of CartoonStock, the contest's odds might now be just a little less favorable, or possibly more favorable if the $3 entries are being purchased in bulk by the caption-impaired. The prize pool, as I prepared my captions in the 10:00 hour just before the deadline, was at the highest level so far:
I'm happy to report that crowdsourcing ranked one of my captions eighth in the Top Ten, even though it appeared on not one of the judges's lists. It is discussed in the judging video at 28:20 where Trevor comes close to admiring it and Lawrence Wood dismisses it as an inferior pun.
Here then is another chance to save my captioning soul. My three entries are shown below, above the break:
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| "If you ask me, it's all to die for." "Everything here is good—just not literally." "We don't have wings." * * * "Don't ask for medium rare." "May I suggest marshmallows on a stick." "What would you be willing to sell for all eternity in exchange for table settings?" "The appetizers alone are worth your eternal souls." "Oh, I see what you mean. I should have said 'spicy.'" "Everything comes with Fra Diavolo sauce." |
October 17, 2026 Update: The total prize pool for this contest confirms that I was one of the last to enter. It is the biggest prize pool to date.
November 1, 2026 Update: The Winner
The Judges Deliberate
Larry does mention it in his Caption Contest Commentary:
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| https://www.cartoonstock.com/blog/hells-kitchen-caption-contest-commentary-with-lawrence-wood/ |
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