“Hello old friend,” I whispered.

April 16, 2012 6:38 AM

Writer and Interactive Fiction author Adam Cadre (previously) runs the Lyttle Lytton contest. A variation on the Bulwer-Lytton contest, the current incarnation of Cadre's contest has a 200-character limit per entry. Here are this year's winners.
posted by griphus (29 comments total)

I just checked this today and was pleasantly surprised that the winners had been posted.
posted by lumensimus at 6:41 AM on April 16, 2012

These are almost infinitely better than the Bulwer-Lytton contest winners, which, almost invariably, read like parodies. It is a far greater feat to write bad prose that someone, somewhere might have imagined was good or, at the least, serviceable.

My clauses and I will see ourselves out....
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:51 AM on April 16, 2012 [4 favorites]

I have to save this for when a friend is in the room; I can't usually handle all the laughter this contest induces on my own.
posted by LSK at 6:54 AM on April 16, 2012

Ooh yes, these are much more convincing and entertaining then the long-form contest. This one totally feels like it came out of book I read in my middle-shool years:

Dolly looked upon her paper expeditiously then elevated up her pencil. She had now commenced not only a race against the clock, but a race to get the best mark ever in the class.
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:33 AM on April 16, 2012

“I’m a winner,” thought Seabiscuit, galloping across the finish line."

Seabiscuit sentence, you may be just a runner up, but you're the winner to me.
posted by troika at 7:56 AM on April 16, 2012 [8 favorites]

Who else read the Seabiscuit one and immediately thought of the Craig Ferguson version?
posted by Madamina at 7:58 AM on April 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

There's a Craig Ferguson version?! Tell me everything.
posted by troika at 8:14 AM on April 16, 2012

These reminded me a lot of Dave Langford's old "Thog's Masterclass"
posted by crocomancer at 8:39 AM on April 16, 2012

The runner-ups are incredible.

“There was to be boxing,” Steve muttered. “Punch, punch, punch.”
posted by eugenen at 9:19 AM on April 16, 2012 [3 favorites]

I have probably been reading too many low-quality novels from the 19th century, because this one struck me as particularly good:

“Do you still love me, John?” I asked. “I don’t love you, Marie,” came the reply from the letter I held in my shaking hands.

posted by muddgirl at 9:25 AM on April 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Dolly looked upon her paper expeditiously then elevated up her pencil.

Upon observing this, I too, elevated up my pencil, and commenced, to pretend it was a penis, fap fap fapping with vigor.
posted by Skygazer at 9:42 AM on April 16, 2012

"There was to be fapping," Skygazer muttered, "Fap, fap, fap."
posted by e1c at 9:58 AM on April 16, 2012 [6 favorites]

I parted her legs with great solemnity. “Hello old friend,” I whispered.

"Hello, Big Guy" it purred back at me...
posted by Skygazer at 10:25 AM on April 16, 2012

I always find Adam Cadre's decisions about these things slightly mysterious.
posted by kenko at 10:26 AM on April 16, 2012

(Not solely because he ignored my sterling entry last year.)
posted by kenko at 10:27 AM on April 16, 2012

From 2010: “You are in pain; both physical and emotional,” my heart informed me.

Curiously, my heart informed me of this in 2010 also, but it did so in clearer prose.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:32 AM on April 16, 2012

Gramlax the Mighty raised his broadsword overhead and swung it mightily, roaring, “You fellows will certainly pay!”

I like to imagine Gramlax as Bertie Wooster. "I say, the battlefield will turn red with your blood and innards and things!"
posted by JHarris at 10:45 AM on April 16, 2012

I am pretty confident that these are all lifted from Robert Jordan novels.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:52 AM on April 16, 2012

I see the Lyttle as a kind of genetic algorithm at work, where the winning entries from year n inform the crop of new entries for year n + 1. The contest started in 2001 with a collection of generic gags. In the next few years the entries became more diverse. By this point, the contestants have identified the things that make Adam Cadre laugh, and those seem to be gratuitous clarification, dysfunctional metaphors, and metanarrative asides. Still makes me break down with laughter like a diesel car that has run out of petrol.
posted by Nomyte at 10:58 AM on April 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

kenko: (Not solely because he ignored my sterling entry last year.)

WELL...?!
posted by eugenen at 11:45 AM on April 16, 2012

We should have a 'worst possible metafilter fpp' contest.
posted by empath at 11:59 AM on April 16, 2012

We should have a 'worst possible metafilter fpp' contest.

Here's my self-link: it does just what it says on the tin. Special snowflake details after the fold.
posted by IjonTichy at 12:08 PM on April 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

By this point, the contestants have identified the things that make Adam Cadre laugh...

I wonder if this is an emergent quality or if Cadre just set out at some point (not necessarily at the inception point) to create a process that generates jokes he will find funny. Sow and reap, sow and reap.
posted by griphus at 12:19 PM on April 16, 2012

We should have a 'worst possible metafilter fpp' contest.

Please see my posting history for all previous winners.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:22 PM on April 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

If you like this post, favorite it and tweet about it!
April 31, 2012 4:00 PM

You may have heard of: "Wikipedia", a great resource for bolstering your posts. But were you aware...that Wikipedia is really a cyber version of something called an Encyclopedia? (From the Greek en ("in") cyclo ("round") pedia (pediatrician)?) More inside! [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 1:59 PM on April 16, 2012 [11 favorites]

Of, Turkey needs to feature in more puns.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:01 PM on April 16, 2012

WELL...?!

"They say that pride, like the summer, goeth before a fall, yet I little suspected, that summer after my high school graduation, how quickly autumn would come."
posted by kenko at 5:43 PM on April 16, 2012 [3 favorites]

My tragically disregarded entry this year was something like "Pass the parcel began, as Adam began to pass the parcel to one another."
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:50 PM on April 16, 2012

I, too, was upset to not be included this year, largely because Cadre no longer takes submissions via email, so I can't remember what I wrote. (I was included in the 2010 winners, though!)
posted by Navelgazer at 10:39 PM on April 16, 2012