CartoonStock's caption contest is held once a month. The dates are announced on their website and you can sign up for contest notifications.
Use the links above to view the contest page and the judging video on YouTube.
Contest #1 - #154: a first, second, and third place caption were selected.
Contest #155 - #156: also selected first, second, and third place captions. But, first place received $1000.
Contest #157 - 205: first place received $500. Plus, five runner-ups, in no order, each received $100.
Contest #206 - ?: first place wins half the Prize Pool and five Runner-ups share the other half. Prize Pool is dependent on number of entries.
Contest #1 - #156, in HumorOramaLOL, are designated the Classic era.
For more information on the CartoonStock caption contest, see the "Best Deal in Town" section in:
TNYCCC Leaderboard Explained
Use the pagination controls, column sorting, and search box to navigate results.
Current through Contest #206
| Finalist |
Contests |
Wins |
Runner-Ups |
🥇
Classic |
🥈
Classic |
🥉
Classic |
Total
Winnings |
Most Recent
Contest |
Behind the Menu: The Leaderboard Quantization Methodology
The Leaderboards index serves as a statistical archive designed to track, aggregate, and rank performance metrics across historical CartoonStock captioning cycles. While comedic evaluation is widely considered a qualitative and highly subjective discipline, this portal applies a rigorous data-driven framework to isolate consistency, longevity, and elite placement trends within the cartooning community. By converting scattered historical contest placements into structured, filterable leaderboards, the system establishes an empirical baseline for analyzing what types of comedic authorship reliably resonate with voting audiences and editorial panels over time.
The data layers are processed through relational database structures that capture multiple distinct vectors of contest success. Rather than tracking isolated wins, the scoring matrix emphasizes cumulative performance to highlight individuals who have mastered the structural mechanics of sequential humor.
Scoring Parameters & Data Normalization
To maintain analytical integrity across shifting historical datasets, the ranking tracking framework distinguishes between different tiers of placement achievement.
-
Placement Stratification: The records differentiate between primary historical benchmarks—specifically isolating first-place victories, runner-up finishes, and third-place finalist milestones. By cataloging these distinctions systematically, the system allows researchers to look past random anomalies and map true statistical consistency.
-
Dynamic Table Operations: The front-end interface utilizes an optimized script framework to handle heavy data filtration smoothly on the client side. Users can dynamically sort rows by frequency, search for specific creator profiles, and isolate records via pagination controls without triggering intensive server queries, ensuring rapid data manipulation.
The Philosophy of Quantifying Comedy
Why apply statistical analytics to a creative pursuit? In the realm of single-panel cartooning, a winning caption requires an exact intersection of brevity, syntax, and spatial awareness. By measuring who consistently achieves these milestones, these leaderboards reveal the underlying craftsmanship behind the humor. It proves that sustained success in caption writing isn't merely a byproduct of luck, but a repeatable skill set governed by structural patterns that can be tracked, measured, and archived for the entire community to study.
Plus, because humor is so subjective, it's nice to deal with 1 + 1 = 2.