This month’s contest featured a drawing by New Yorker cartoonist Glen Le Lievre. It’s set in a dingy apartment, where a princess who’s wearing a hennin—a headdress in the shape of a cone—is sitting on a couch next to a fat unicorn who’s smoking. They’re watching TV. The end table next to the unicorn, and the floor around the end table, are strewn with empty beer cans and cigarette butts. The apartment door is secured from the inside with a metal bar, indicating that they live in a rough neighborhood. The unicorn is looking at his phone, and the princess, who’s visibly annoyed, is speaking.
Le Lievre’s original caption emphasized the princess’s disappointment: “‘A life of enchantment, wonder and bareback riding,’ you said…’”
A few of you went after the same joke:
- “‘Ever after’ is so much longer than I ever imagined.”
- “The End.”
- “The magic is gone.”
- “The glitter is gone.”
There’s a connection between unicorns and glitter—I’m not sure where it originated—and a couple of you highlighted it:
- “I don’t care how sparkly it is—scoop it up.”
- “Glitter doesn’t vacuum itself.”
Unicorns are also associated with rainbows—the association is apparently a Victorian invention—and that is why unicorns are now a symbol of the LCBT movement. One of you combined a reference to this association with a joke about women who criticize their husbands for doing a bad job of replacing rolls of toilet paper: “And the rainbow in the bathroom should hang over, not under.”
Several of you alluded to the unicorn’s status as a mythical creature:
- “I can see why no one believes in you.”
- “I wish you never existed.”
- “I no longer believe in us.
- “You’re unbelievable.”
- “The real myth was your Tinder profile.”
And one of you alluded to another mythical creature: “At least the dragon had fire in his belly.”
Unicorns are the stuff of legends and folk takes, which are essentially fairytales, so a few of you alluded to two other fairytales:
- “I didn’t ‘let him kiss me.’ I was asleep.”
- “My evil stepmother was right.”
- “My ex was charming.”
- “I wonder if that frog is still single.”
- “At least the frog had potential.”
That last caption is especially clever because it acknowledges the frog’s untapped ability to transform into a prince.
One of you went a step further by alluding to a nursery rhyme: “If I wanted to live like this, I would have married one of the three little pigs.”
There were many sex jokes, one of which I won’t mention here because it made me flinch, and these were the two best:
- “Tell Godiva to stop sexting and send chocolates.”
- “You destroyed another headboard, Romeo.”
I would like that first caption better if the reference to “Godiva” included her title.
One of you noted that most unicorns are notoriously difficult to find and subdue: “You were easier t catch than I expected.”
The following caption suggests that the princess is responding to an accusation that she used false pretenses to entrap the unicorn: “You knew I wasn’t a virgin when we met.”
Bob Mankoff loved this next entry because it came completely out of left field and focused on the similar shapes of the unicorn’s horn and the princess’s hennin: “If you would just wear it, we could go out as ordinary woman and horse with a hat.”
Finally, here are two entries that allude to the television:
- “To get better reception, raise your head.”
- “Whoever holds the remote should have opposable thumbs.”
The only problem with that last caption is it’s not specific to unicorns. It would work with any hoofed animal.
Congratulations to ELIZABETH THORNLEY, who won the contest with, “You were easier to catch than I expected.” The five runners-up were:
- “If you would just wear it, we could go out as an ordinary woman and horse with a hat.”
- “I can see why no one believes in you.”
- “I wonder if that frog is still single.”
- “Glitter doesn’t vacuum itself.”
- “I wish you never existed.”
If you want to see how we made our selections, we recorded the process and is posted on our Youtube channel.
THIS MONTH’S SHAMELESS PROMOTION: I just received hardback copies of my book on the caption contest, and St. Martin’s Press did a beautiful job with it—they used good heavy paper, and the cartoons look terrific. The book won’t hit the shelves until June 4, but you can preorder it here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250333407 Kirkus Reviews wrote: “Wood has a great time here, mixing the bizarre, the jocular, and the wise into a clever package.”