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The 2024 Winners
Welcome to the 2024 edition of the Lyttle Lytton Contest. This is
the first year that entries generated by programs such as ChatGPT
have been separated out into their own division; I was surprised to
find that the increase in such entries from previous years, when
computer-generated entries were included with the found entries,
was negligible. We'll get to those spinoff divisions in a bit, but
let's start with the main event. The winner of the 2024 Lyttle
Lytton Contest is:
*
He slammed the door in my face, loud and sharp, like an acoustic
lemon.
Erin McCourt
As I explain almost every year, this is not just a "write a funny
sentence" contest: one of my criteria in deciding which entries
will make it onto this page is my sense that some author out there
could plausibly have tried starting a novel this way, and not as a
joke. I'm not quite as concerned about that for the honorable
mentions, but for the winner, it's very important. And this year's
winner... I have to admit that when I was sixteen, I could have
written this, and I would have thought that it was great. That was
the year I wrote a story in which a character's voice "sparkled
with strawberry overtones", after all. So here we go: what's
sharp? A lemon! A lemon tastes sharp! So the sound of the door
is like a lemon! But it will be confusing to the reader if I don't
specify that it's the sound that I'm comparing to a lemon! So it's
an acoustic lemon! And... I mean, the phrase "acoustic lemon" is
completely ridiculous, but I can absolutely see how an aspiring
writer could get there. So there was no agonizing over choosing a
winner this year: this entry arrived quite early in the 2024
submission window, I flagged it as the current leader, and even the
best entries to arrive over the course of the next eleven months
never challenged it.
So, no other finalists this year, no second place... let's get
straight to the honorable mentions!
*
When the Egyptians first discovered a method to preserve bodies
(known as mummification), he knew this was what he wanted for
himself when his time came.
Neil Gunther
This sentence plays with time in a puzzling way. The word "first"
prompts readers to expect that this is historical background. But
then, with "he knew", we're in the thick of the novel's action! So
was our protagonist on hand when mummification was initially
developed, as if that were a singular event, and immediately decide
it was for him? If so, why does the sentence refer to "the
Egyptians" as though they were an outside group?
The subtle wrongess of the language of the sentence above is the
sort of thing this contest has showcased over the years. The
contest rules advise that "significant butchering of the language
(as opposed to subtle butchering)" rarely places an entry among the
winners. But there are always exceptions. This is about as far as
you can go in that direction and still wind up on this page:
*
Once upon a time there was two princesses named Jenna and Martha
they were twins with blue eyes each and brown locks that makes
everyone falls in love with them.
Jessilynn Kate
This is a run-on sentence with multiple subject-verb agreement
errors, but I couldn't resist "twins with blue eyes each", much as
everyone in the story couldn't resist those brown locks. Here's
another one that piles up errors of punctuation, capitalization,
and idiom but still managed to make the cut:
*
She was tired after her birth but this did not stop her to ask her
Mother, why she was Born. "well, Child, a prophecy said it".
Deva R.
I guess most people would say that the orthographical problems pale
in comparison to the talking newborn. But sadly, sometimes if you
want to have a conversation like the one above, you can't afford to
wait:
*
Unfortunately, my mother was stolen away from me by death on the
day I was born.
Sofie
See, that's the more subtle butchery I was talking about, with its
awkwardly passive construction. But "subtle" is probably not the
word that many would use to describe this one:
*
"Waaaah" cried the infant as the very bad murderer murdered the
ever loving shit out of its mother.
Aaron Hilton
That might seem like the end of this ill-fated mother's story--but
maybe not!
*
"Jessica, before I let thou into Heaven, thou must solve thine own
Murder," said God.
anonymous
I've tried to remain optimistic after thirty years of teaching
grammar for a living, but if even God Almighty can't get pronoun
case right, maybe it's time to give up.
Many editions of this contest have featured sizeable crime/mystery
sections, but this year saw the number of such entries rise a bit
above the norm. Jessica was far from the only one busy
investigating a case of foul play:
*
As P. I. Mento gazed out at the corpses strewn atop the tub, he
understood at once. They had drowned themselves--to death.
John D
There's a lot going on in that one. The main joke is that drowning
implies death, so the sting at the end is redundant, but consider:
* "P. I. Mento" is a silly pun
* He's gazing out at a tub
* The tub is large enough to be "strewn" with corpses, like a
battlefield
* The corpses are atop the tub
* The people drowned themselves deliberately, yet were still able
to float to the surface, which sounds difficult
Normally I advise entrants not to mix and match different sources
of humor, but as we can see, sometimes it works!
*
The large and beefy Detective Scott was hunched over his desk like
an overcooked shrimp, pink and coiled with a rubbery toughness I
couldn't wait to taste in the courtroom.
Nicole Conoyer
That Detective Scott, he's a one-man surf and turf platter, I tell
ya what.
This genre was also popular among the computer-generated entries:
*
Detective Joe found the body slumped against the alley wall like a
deflated bouncy castle, its limp limbs a sad parody of childhood
joy.
ChatGPT
submitted by Matthew R.
*
Carl, the bumbling detective with a penchant for chaos, stared at
the fish, contemplating its mysterious role in the crime.
ChatGPT
submitted by William Ferguson
And this, apparently, was actually published:
*
"Edgar Allan Poe couldn't make this up," the detective said.
"You mean my great-great-great grandfather?" Poe asked.
Holmes, Marple, and Poe (James Patterson / Brian Sitts novel)
quoted by Ryan
For the love of God, Patterson.
Of course, these days enthusiasts of crime and mystery tend not to
restrict themselves to reading stories:
*
Sarah had enjoyed true crime podcasts, until the day that crime
became true for herself.
Matthew R.
And, as we've seen, this year crime was everywhere (crime, crime!),
whether it be assault:
*
My paramour had struck me, that harsh slap of damp skin demolishing
my domestic life as the fall of an ironed curtain.
Edward O.
Or gun violence:
*
The bullet pierced her heart like a Claire's employee piercing a
12-year-old girl's ears.
Hannah Murphy
And if that's how much damage a single firearm inflicts, imagine
what happens when war breaks out:
*
The bombs fell at night, so we could only hear them until they lit
up by exploding on the ground.
Matt Terry
But dropping a bomb is not just a matter of a flash and a
bang--each one has a dreadful cost:
*
Boom! The orphanage blew up as the blood of all the orphans flew
across the street and into the river as if Jesus turned the water
into wine.
Jamie
Well, surely that's the biggest boom we're likely to encounter
among this year's entries, right?
*
Brian watched the Sun explode and he screamed louder than it as his
body was rapidly incinerated.
Zackary S.
What I like about this one is that at first the error seems to be
scientific--"You can't hear a supernova! Even if you could, you'd
be dead from the neutrino pulse before the blast hit!"--but then,
wait, there's a more basic error than any of that: the sentence
seems to indicate that the sun is also screaming.
Though crime and mystery entries were up a bit this year, sentences
about sex and romance were noticeably down even from a normal year,
let alone from their peak in 2020. I suppose that's not too
surprising in a year when our cast of imaginary authors couldn't
make a love interest sound any more appealing than this:
*
She had a face like a chair, in all the best ways.
Eric Nolle
In their quest to get a romance off the ground, some imaginary
authors turned to pharmaceutical enhancement:
*
My father always believed that vaccines caused autism; but what he
did not tell me, I realised, as I stared into Dr. Fenton's eyes,
was that they also caused love.
anonymous
And we all know where this sort of thing tends to lead:
*
He pressed down on her like a clothes iron, as if she was an
iron-on label and the duvet was a school uniform.
Enda Mc Cabe
Speaking of school uniforms, let's turn to the classroom for our
next honorable mention:
*
"In medias res," Ms. James said aloud as she wrote it on the board.
"Who can tell me what this means?" But when she turned back to the
class, they were all staring out the window at something outside.
Stephanie Schollen
The entry above reminded me of the ninth episode of the Cloak &
Dagger TV series, in which a teacher lays out the formula of "the
hero's journey" a la Joseph Campbell in tandem with the title
characters undertaking it. Excruciating.
And now that I've brought up superheroics:
*
I was running at Mach cheetah through the streets, faster than me
or my enemies could even fathom.
Bianca M
For the record, it appears that a cheetah's top speed is almost
exactly Mach 0.1.
*
"You're not cut out for Wall Street, pal," Billy said, leaning back
in his chair and cracking his knuckles like crack cocaine, before
the man before him broke into big American tears.
Anna Bogdan
Some characters have more resilience than the guy whose dreams
Billy just shattered:
*
Anne was unaffected by the tall man's glare. His gaze just caromed
off her smiling teeth.
Sofie
Here's a character with some physiological resilience:
*
Pete could party--grain alcohol to his liver was like normal grain
to a thresher.
Chris Romano
Comparisons such as this one are very popular among Lyttle Lytton
entrants; in recent years I have tended to group together
submissions that revolve around metaphors, similes, and the like,
and those sections have been sizeable. Many of the entries above,
including this year's winner, would be candidates to be included in
such a group. Here's a sentence that seems to want to constitute a
group of comparisons all by itself:
*
His eyes were the color of the ocean, and deep also like the ocean,
and also full of surprises like the ocean.
Ross
And different entrants deploy comparisons to achieve amusing
badness in different ways. The winner works because there's no
such thing as an "acoustic lemon"; the sentence featuring Party
Pete works because it raises the question of what it even means:
what is his liver doing? (And also because the phrase "normal
grain" is funny.) The ocean sentence works because of its
overkill. But, on rare occasions, the comparisons work just
because they're crass enough to function as cringe humor:
*
The suburban mom flaunted her unseasoned chicken breast white
boobs, tucked away in her Lululemon breast prison. This was the
last time the world will see her creamy casserole-like flesh orbs.
Luke McCutchin
Another food comparison:
*
The blaze of the fire went snap, crackle, pop, as if imitating my
favourite cereal.
Molly Arnell
You might say, aha, I understood that reference! "Snap, crackle,
pop" is the classic slogan of Rice Krispies! But no--this entry
was submitted from a .au email address, and as Masterchef Australia
has taught me, Down Under they don't have Rice Krispies. They have
Rice Bubbles.
(Also, I just noticed that I wrote "a .au email address" rather
than "an .au email address". Why? Because, clearly, ".au" is
pronounced "dot ay you", and thus does not start with a vowel
sound.)
*
"Good morning, Herr Professor," said Inge, her hands clasped over
her shirt-clad breasts.
Sofie Z.
I've seen a number of sources declaring that in Germany, Rice
Krispies go "knisper, knasper, knusper" instead of "snap, crackle,
pop", but I can't find any evidence to support this. On the
contrary, I've found a picture of a Rice Krispies box with German
text, but the little dudes' costumes still say "Snap", "Crackle",
and "Pop" on them.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Limes Germanicus:
*
Bella was a peaceful girl; which is surprising, as "Bella" means
"Wars" in Latin.
Darren Kao
And as long as we're dipping into other languages:
*
The great sn'dar1 Khei'an surveyed her riptos2 from all nine
ceutriei3, and sighed--her kuro'on4; were faring poorly this ytho5.
Cameron Kazimour
Again, bonus points here for plausibility: this reminded me a bit
too much of the last book I read for my visitor recommendation
series. At least this imaginary author is offering footnotes; the
same cannot be said for our next one:
*
Mother was enjoying a glass, and her son gamed on, telling teens
over the mic to get schwifty.
Jaime Gallego
Though I do work with teens, I am not completely up to date with
the parlance of our times. So I looked up "schwifty" on Urban
Dictionary, and the definition I found there explained that it "is
akin to getting 'crunk'". I tell ya, one day you wake up and
everyone sounds like the Orz.
Here's one that avoids sending readers like me to Urban Dictionary
by being circumspect:
*
Elliot was an effeminate man, often called a term which the author
is in no position to use or reclaim.
Jordie Hamilton
From an imaginary author who thinks that some terms are off-limits
to some writers, we turn to one who thinks that some entire books
are off-limits to some readers:
*
If you are a right-handed person, you are my oppressor and you do
not have my permission to read this book. It is not for you.
Samantha Luckett
One thing I find interesting about this one is that I gather that
it's supposed to be funny because the imaginary author is so
strident about something as innocuous as right-handedness. But I
would argue that even if you were to swap in a more serious issue,
the stridency itself would keep this amusingly bad, because
everything after the comma has crossed the event horizon into
self-parody no matter what prompted it.
Here's another case of humor that derives at least in part from
stridency:
*
I said to the dealer, "I am on the spectrum. I am on the spectrum,
and I need to leave this boring casino."
Sarah Totton
I said "in part" because I think there's another aspect of language
that this entry highlights as amusingly bad, as the repeated
reference to "the spectrum" showcases an example of euphemism by
omission. Historically, "the spectrum" by default meant the light
spectrum. The term is one of many that derive from the Latin
specere, meaning "to look at", and the use of "spectrum" to denote
the band of colors that emerges from a prism dates to the 1670s.
The figurative sense of a continuum of anything dates to 1936. In
the 1980s, psychiatrist Lorna Wing introduced the world to the
notion of an "autism spectrum" which included people with more or
less severe examples of a condition she termed "Asperger's
syndrome", and it wasn't until 2013 that the DSM-5 followed her
lead and combined several previously distinct diagnoses into
"autism spectrum disorder". And almost immediately, it became com
monplace for people to refer to "the autism spectrum" as simply
"the spectrum"--i.e., removing the term that carries the most
semantic information! "I am on the spectrum"... what, the political
spectrum? The socioeconomic spectrum? The electromagnetic spectrum?
To try to get the phrase "the spectrum" to default to "the autism
spectrum" so that you don't have to use the word "autism" suggests
that you consider "autism" a pejorative that you have to tiptoe
around. And now I need to leave this boring paragraph.
So let's turn to the remaining computer-generated entries. What
did the computers of 2023-2024 think would be good entries for this
contest? Well, they liked their sentences overwrought, for one:
*
Like a solitary lighthouse standing defiant against the tumultuous
waves, Eleanor navigated the storm of adolescent cruelty that was
high school.
ChatGPT-3.5
submitted by Blayne Downer
*
Within the cubicles of conformity, Jake stapled papers, binding
fragments of his ambition into the paperwork of routine.
GPT 3.5
submitted by Jacob H
This one is similar to the above, with some bonus wincing due to
its focus on excretory functions:
*
I held my pee in like it was a secret--clandestine and slippery,
jealously guarded by my clenched thighs like a pearl in an oyster.
OpenAI Playground
submitted by Lu Zwanziger
I liked this one for its off-kilter phrasing, vaguely reminiscent
of the interactive fiction story For a Change:
*
Beneath the sun, he matched socks, serenity in the mundane union of
cotton.
GPT 3.5
submitted by Jacob H
Poor Brian from a few entries ago certainly didn't find serenity
beneath the sun!
I will award a second-place finish in this division, as I quite
liked the understatement here:
*
The tornado arrived, causing an impact on my house.
ChatGPT-3.5
submitted by Leo Harkins
I know that sentence was computer generated, but I dunno--there's
just something about it that tells me that the entrant must have
had a top-notch education in world literature back in the day.
But here's the winner of the computer-generated division:
*
Nestled between a whimsical forest and a babbling brook, the
hospice center stood like a quirky haven for souls on the cusp of
their next adventure.
ChatGPT 3.5
submitted by M. Dorsey
The euphemism of portraying a stay in a hospice as the cusp of an
exciting new adventure is bad enough, but to describe a hospice as
"quirky" (and the nearby forest as "whimsical") is the cherry on
top. And yet it's not hard for me to imagine this as a TV series
circa 1988 or so, with jaunty theme music, that wound up canceled
after filming seven episodes (four unaired) due to its
tone-deafness.
So, on to the remaining entries that repurposed pre-existing text
of various sorts. Though this one is sort of an edge case, in that
it wasn't ordered up in a large language model but apparently
emerged as a series of smartphone autocompletes:
*
One day a month go there was a huge accident on the left side of
town involving some people and some stuff.
iPhone predictive text
quoted by Michelle Vondette
The vagueness is the heart of this entry, of course, but I also
liked the reference to "the left side of town".
Here's one that looks like it could have been generated by a large
language model trained on Elon-era Twitter:
*
Long ago, there were only a few white people in this country.
Santa Claus Funnies (1950 comic book)
quoted by Thomas Snowden and Troy Wood
One reason I like having the found division around is that it
serves as a yardstick for what's plausible. Consider some of the
overwrought entries above and from years past, and then look at
this, which was actually published:
*
The house was no humble abode but a thriving underground casino
married to the unlawful sale of drugs, brandishing the added
illicitness of illegal firearms.
hoodline.com, 2023.1204
quoted by Adam Williams
From start to finish, that looks as though it were written
expressly for this contest. From "no humble abode" to "married" to
"brandishing the added illicitness", it's just a string of oofs, as
the kids say. Do the kids still say that? Is my word choice
sufficiently schwifty?
Well, here's someone for whom no word choice would do:
*
Jefferson could not speak; he was too overwhelmed by the beauty of
the ninth dimension. He grabbed his guitar and improvised a new
solo to express his emotions.
The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna (video game)
quoted by James Waterhouse
And here's an instance of a new word being coined? I guess?:
*
September 11th, 2001, started like any other day--but by the end of
it, it would also be known as 9/11.
a local news ad the entrant saw on 2021.0911
quoted by Patrick
This next one is just about perfect for this contest, but that
stands to reason--it's deliberately bad writing, part of a parody
of romance novels:
*
This really cool guy named Gabe walked at a completely medium pace
into the coffee shop, his popular brand of shoes not yet broken in.
Engorged Loins ("Jeremy Pimples" novel)
quoted by Ryan James
While this one, the winner of the found division for 2024, seems to
have been written in all earnestness:
*
It was hot--the kind of heat that makes you long for the weather to
cool down.
Nineteen Steps (Millie Bobby Brown novel)
quoted by Ziva Travers
*
As bad opening sentences go, if one is "not so bad" and ten is
"really bad", this clearly rates an eleven.
And that wraps it up for Lyttle Lytton 2024! Many thanks to all
the entrants and to all who help spread the word about this
contest, and in particular to those who help support it by sending
a few cents (or more, in some cases!) to my Patreon account. The
contest reopens as soon as I post this, so whether you find
yourself among the winners above, missed the cut this year, or are
discovering Lyttle Lytton for the first time, you have not only my
permission but my encouragement to enter the 2025 edition. It is
for you!
And this is the part where I tend to plug some of my own work; last
year, for instance, it was my then-new names site. But this year
I'd like to give a shout-out to a couple of fun Lyttle Lytton fan
sites. One is by 2022 winner Elle Spohrer, who has put together a
set of book covers based on past Lyttle Lytton entries. And then
there's this project, billed as "A list by merton", that pairs
record albums with Lyttle Lytton winners dating back to the
beginning of the contest, and it's pretty astonishing. So check
'em out! I fully expect the creator of the album site to somehow
dig up a short-lived indie folk trio called the Acoustic Lemons.
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