Sure, it’s been answered before. But has it been answered with decimal points? When I was reading John’s interview with brand-new contest winner Richard Hine (whose girlfriend is the novelist Amanda Filipacchi, whom I met many moons ago in my other lifetime; I’ll never stop being startled by these coincidences), I wondered anew how many people send in caption entries every week. I’ve heard a few numbers batted around, and I knew it was a few thousand.
Being a Nation-trained fact checker and print journalist packed to the brim with integrity, however, I couldn’t let that kind of imprecision stand. So I went right to the source: cartoon editor Bob Mankoff. His reply was satisfyingly complex: “Through the first 100 caption contests there have been 672,361 entries. So that comes out to an average of 6,723.61 entries per contest. I always find that .61 entry quite funny but incomplete.”
So there you have it: Richard Hine had a lot of competition, and so do you, brave caption-contest entrant. Good luck! If you’re feeling stung by weeks of rejection, soothe yourself by putting a few new spins on a 1933 Thurber cartoon with the irrepressible Radosh gang. I actually think Thurber would have enjoyed reading these.