There are four geckos in Dave Borchart’s cartoon. Three are blending into their drab surroundings, while the fourth stands out because he’s wearing a pink-and-white-striped shirt and matching bobble hat. The other geckos look alarmed, and one of them is saying something to the lizard in the sweater.
The drawing seems to be a pretty obvious reference to the “Where’s Waldo?” puzzles, where the challenge is to find a man who’s wearing a red-and-white-striped shirt and matching bobble hat. Like a gecko, Waldo blends into his surroundings, but only because they’re full of red-and-white objects. In Borchart’s drawing, of course, the gecko who’s dressed like Waldo isn’t blending in at all, so my first caption was, “There’s Waldo!”
I then abandoned specific references to Waldo while noting that the lizard’s get-up could be both annoying (“Why can’t you just blend in?”) and dangerous (“The snakes are going to love you.”)
Now let’s see how you did.
Of the many “Where’s Waldo” entries, the following two note that, while a gecko and Waldo both try to blend in, only Waldo can do it while wearing a colorful shirt and hat:
- “I thought this was going to be more difficult.”
- “Found him!”
Others highlight the fact that a gecko in a red-and-white outfit would be an easy target for predators:
- “Don’t believe everything you read.”
- “But we don’t want to be found!”
- “Where’s your survival instinct?”
- “Where’s your brain?”
- “Nice knowing you, Waldo.”
While this caption alludes to the mascot for a certain insurance company—“I guess we know how you spent the 15% you saved.”—several of you combined references to both the GEICO mascot and Waldo:
- “Do you have copyright infringement insurance?”
- “Pick a lane: children’s books or insurance.”
- “This is one endorsement deal you are going to regret.”
- “One endorsement deal wasn’t enough for you?”
The next four entries give common phrases a different and fitting meaning within the context of the cartoon:
- “You make the rest of us feel invisible.”
- “Are you afraid of being spotted?”
- “Why can’t you just blend in?”
- “You’re not blending in.”
Another entry puts a clever spin on a frustrated appeal one might make to a neurotic friend: “Stop being maladaptive.”
These captions highlight the geckos’ chameleonic qualities:
- “That only works when we’re on a barber’s pole.”
- “We need to find you some peppermint bark.“
Like some of the Waldo entries, this next set of captions note that the gecko in the colorful clothes is not long for this world:
- “We don’t mean outstanding in a good way.”
- “Prepare to be caught dead in that outfit.”
- “I’m starting to think you want to get eaten.”
- “That is not how we avoid predators.”
This caption notes that geckos are cold-blooded reptiles: “Still trying to regulate your body temperature?”
I like the way this entry suggests that the gecko who’s speaking cannot see the other two well-camouflaged geckos: “You can tell me, it’s just the two of us.”
Finally, here’s a caption I like because it’s just one word: “Subtle.”
This week’s winner is a “Where’s Waldo” reference: “Where’s your survival instinct?”
Lawrence Wood has won The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest a record-setting seven times and been a finalist four other times. He has collaborated with New Yorker cartoonists Peter Kuper, Lila Ash, Felipe Galindo Gomez, and Harry Bliss (until Bliss tossed him aside, as anyone would, to collaborate with Steve Martin). Nine of his collaborations have appeared in The New Yorker, and one is included in The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons.