Caption Contest Guide
By: Razz (gmg_trading_cards)

How Do I Enter?
Each week Neopets will put up an unusual picture. It is then up to you to think of the best, wittiest, cheesiest and funniest caption that fits the picture. The captions will be voted on by other players and the winners get neopoints, a rare item, a trophy and if you're really lucky an avatar.

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How Many Captions Are Accepted?
Neopets randomly selects 25 enteries to be voted upon.

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What Do I Win?
The top 15 winners of the Caption Contest receive 5,000-10,000 Neopoints, a rare item, and a cool trophy:

Top 3 Receive 10K:

4th - 8th Receive 5K:

9th - 15th Receive 2-3K:

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I Won The Caption Contest, When Do I Get My Trophy?
Theories:
-The trophies are awarded up to three weeks after the ending of the competition.
-Trophies are given out at the end of the month.
-They are given out on a Monday.

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What Kind Of Rare Prize Can You Win?
The prizes range in value from 12k to 2mil. Prizes are random and based on rarity.

Basically, there is a prize list that has quite a few things on it. Most of these are items ranging in price from 5 - 10k (like codestones), but there are also paint brushes and really rare items. When you win a competition that gives a prize from that list, our program randomly selects an item and gives it to the winner. It may seem a bit unfair that one person could win a codestone while another might win a Snowickle, but everyone has the same odds of getting something nice from a single win. If you want to improve your odds of winning something extraordinary, simply participate as much as you can and hope to win!
Editoral #302

Neopoint winnings from any competition will be credited to what you have out, or "on-hand."
Item prizes will go directly into your inventory."
Editoral #240

Past Prizes:




Guardian Of Life Magic

Mirgle

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What Are Bad Captions?
These are some captions that will NEVER win again, as neopets get hundreds of them for every competition:

How Do I Get The Avatar?
Win any 100th Caption Contest (400th, 500th, etc). Available when a 100th contest occurs.

The original image came from Caption Contest #321
Editoral #328

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Does Punctuation, Spelling, and Grammar Count?
YES! If you have many problems writing your caption people will not understand what you are trying to say. Chatspeak is a definite, NO!! There are some exceptions such as: there and their.

EXAMPLE:
Hi! Plz kan i burrow ur chickaot tgc?
Hi! Please can I borrow your Chokato (TCG)?

Which example is a person more likely to vote for?

Hey, TNT. I live in Singapore and we use UK English here. When we submit stuff like captions and articles, is there any sort of bias between UK and US English? ~jin024
The only English we have a bias against in the Caption Contest (and other writing contests) is the kind used by people who tipe lyke dis and Capitalize Every Word For Some Unknown Reason. Other than that, both US and UK English are fine by us!
Oh, and people who don't capitalise their "I"'s. We really hate that!
Editoral #368

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Can I Enter More Than Once?
You may submit more than one, but please do not spam a single one by entering it multiple times in a row. If you think yours is just the funniest thing ever and planets will collide if it doesn't get chosen, you may send the same one every 12 hours or so.
Editoral #261

Submitting a few well-thought-out and witty captions will increase your odds of winning. Sending in the same caption repeatedly, though, just annoys the judge and makes us less likely to pick your caption.
Editoral #388

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Why Isn't My Caption Showing Up?
Captions must be approved before they will show up on the site. Every time you hit submit your caption is entered into the contest (entering more than once will not increase your chance of winning). Neopets then sort through and select the best ones to appear on the site. This is done all the time so if you don't see your caption within 24 hours it probably didn't get picked. Neopets have to filter the captions as we get literally thousands of entries and need to make sure nothing unsuitable goes on the site.
Copied From Caption Contest Help

Neopets receives almost 30,000 entries for each caption competition and cannot possibly post them all. Instead, they post the most original and amusing ones. To increase your chances of having your caption posted on the Web site, please send your entry in as soon as possible after the picture is put on the site.
Copied From Neopets FAQ's

Our resident Caption Contest judge extraordinaire starts by reading through as many captions as humanly possible out of the tens of thousands that are entered. As he goes through, he marks the ones he thinks are the best of the bunch into a holding area. Once there are enough in the holding area, he chooses the best of the best ("best" being extremely relative some weeks x_X) and places them on the voting page for y'all to decide on who should win!
Editoral #301

Spamming would GREATLY annoy the judge of the Caption Contest, who already has thousands of entries to look through and does not want to read your entry hundreds of times. In short, your caption would be completely ignored because you spammed the form. It is alright, however, to think up a few different captions and submit them once each if you like.
Editoral #222

In absolute honesty we cannot read every single caption submitted, there just isnt enough time between contests. For a typical contest we read between 3-4,000 entries and post the best ones from those. That is why you should not be disheartened if your caption is not chosen the first time you submit it. Keep trying each contest and you will be chosen.
Editoral #154

Ummm... however many you can cram into your busy schedules. We'd love to be able to read them all, but the Editorial and Caption Contest just have more entries than can be read through given our work hours and other duties.
Editoral #385

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How Do I Know If I Made It Into The Caption Contest?
You don't! Neopets doesn't neomail you letting you know. You need to check for yourself. Most people don't even know they made it into the caption contest until it's over. Sometimes if you don't realize, other neopians might neomail you saying how funny your caption is.

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How Often Can A Person Vote?
Every 4 hours.

After you find out your in the caption contest:
* Vote for yourself
* Take a note of the time you entered
* Come back 4 hours later to vote for yourself again
* REPEAT

Voting for your own caption is fine as long as you do not attempt to abuse the system.
This means no logging on to side accounts to vote!
Editoral #371

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How Often Is The Caption Contest?
A new Caption Contest is announced every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The winners are announced when the new contest starts. For example if you entered Monday's contest, the winners will be awarded their prizes on Wednesday.

Note - During holidays the Caption Contest may be a day late.
Copied From Caption Contest Help

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What Are The Do's & Don't Of Voting?

Where Can I Advertise?

How Will I Know If I Have Won The Caption Contest?
If you have won the Caption Contest TNT will send you a neomail congratulating you. In the neomail they do NOT say what item or how many neopoints you have won. Your username will be displayed in the caption archive. You will also notice a trophy is now shown in your user lookup (Type your username in the search box at the bottom of the yellow bar to check). As well as the trophy you will be awarded 5,000 - 10,000 NP and a rare item. The item varies, but it is always something interesting and hard to get hold of :)
Copied From Caption Contest Help

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Can I Win More Than Once?
Yes, it is possible to win more than once.
Yes, you have just as much chance as anybody else to win a second time. Although the odds of two captions being chosen by the same person are very slim considering how many different entries we get each week.
Editoral #128

The 1,000th Caption Contest is coming up, but I want to enter both this one and the 1,000th contest. My question is: can you win in more than one Caption Contest? ~waterglide
Yep. You can even win twice in the same week. There is no max number of times you can win the Caption Contest.
Editoral #381

It is also possible to get entered into the same caption contest and win more than once.

Examples:
geneames1
munica

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Who Draws The Caption Contests?
Actually it isn't just one person. The Neopets artists take turns drawing the captions so it really depends who has inspiration on the day.
Editoral #126

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Interesting Facts:
Did you know that the Caption Contest is the contest that is entered the most?? Editoral #310
Neopets has had over 100,000 entries for a single contest! Editoral #193

I found this amusing:

I was just wondering how you pick who we will vote for in the Caption Contest. I have entered so many times and have never gotten picked. And I have come up with some really good stuff. ~ kimmymay03

Alas, though we do try our best, we simply don't have the man/woman/Neopet power to carefully read over the 10 to 20 thousand entries that rush in for each new caption contest. Yes everyone, we're talking FIVE digits here. *shudders* Of those, it's estimated 45% are something like this: (These are ACTUAL contest submissions. Usernames removed for privacy.)

Nhjhjfnbfknmmvkkfmmgvkymbmmn

What is a breads favorite type of shoe??? Answer;Loafers

hey! what's up!

yode la he yode la he yo de la he
hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Alice

give me money

the world is big

And there are always more than a few that completely miss the concept, and write a *very* detailed paragraph about what's happening in the image. x_X

So, please, please forgive us if, while searching through the thousands we *are* able to read, your caption, which you believe to be particularly funny, doesn't make it to the finals. But see? Now you can be just that much more proud if you DO actually make it! :D

Editoral #216

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In Conclusion:
- I've you've entered the contest, make sure to check back to see if you made it in because otherwise you won't know.
- Be original and creative with your captions.
- Advertise your heart out!
- Remember to obey neopets rules and that this is a children's site.

If you have any ideas/suggestions/comments feel free to neomail me.
This guide is still under construction and any feedback would help lots!!

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Other Guides:
Winning the Caption Contest by sylviau
I lost a link lol

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