In the CartoonStock Caption Contest number 207, two fish are sitting in a bar. The bartender takes a phone call and looks at them. The fish nearer the bartender speaks. The cartoonist is Tim Hamilton.
The monthly cash prize contest has new rules: Five dollars will still buy up to three entries but now three additional dollars optionally can buy a fourth entry, and so forth ad infinitum. Real cash prizes are fifty percent of the total prize pool (previously $500) for first place and ten percent of the prize pool (previously $100) for each of five runners up. As of this writing, I've put $260 into the first fifty-two pay-to-play contests and this fifty-third challenge brings my total cash outlay up to $265. Having achieved runner-up status with three previous cash prize entries, I've collected $300 from CartoonStock, so I'm still playing with the house's money, at least for the time being. Because the contest is no longer subsidized by cash from the vast coffers of CartoonStock, the contest's odds should now be just a little less favorable. Yet the prize pool, just before I entered near the contest's close, already exceeded the old thousand dollar contest. Enough people must have felt inclined to pay $3 for additional entries.
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| The prize pool on June 22 at the 10:00 PM hour |
My entries at 11:20 PM on June 22 raised the prize pool even higher:
I found this contest to be especialy difficult, at least when sober. My three captions are listed below, above the break. In my head, I can hear the contest judge Lawrence Wood groaning—or worse. I did not pay for additional entries, essentially throwing the last two captions back in the water.
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| "Can't you see I'm a fish out of lager?" "Say we had to go back to the Hudson." "Just tell them some fish story." * * * "Hey, bartender, do you serve fish here?" "We're not taking calls from fishmongers." |
July 4, 2026 Update: The Winner
The Judges Deliberate
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