The Envelope, Please

If there is one thing the judges learned in choosing the winner for our Can You Put the Wit in Twitter Contest, it is that wit can be a very subjective thing, indeed.

While the entries were quickly narrowed down to the final contenders, choosing the winner took some discussion and compromise as different tastes in humour came into play.

In the end, though, one entry did emerge as wittier, cleverer, and more original than the rest, and that one will take home the main prize today.

I have also decided to give out Second and Third Place prizes to two other contenders I felt were deserving of recognition.

Before announcing the winners, I want to extend a sincere thank you to the judges, James Chartrand from Men with Pens and Dustin Wax at dustinwax.com (click here to read more about them and visit their other excellent sites.)

I also want to point out that entries were judges completely blind, meaning the judges knew neither the names or affiliations of any of the entrants, in order to prevent any biases.

The Winner

And so, without further ado, the winner of the Smithereens TwitWit competition is...

*drumroll*

RhodesTer, aka Dave from rhodester.net, for this witty quip:

The lady at The Coffee Bean laughed at my joke when I ordered a "Synonym Roll", and asked her if there was another word to describe it.

Dave's excellent entry managed to cram two double entendres and a compelling visual narrative into just 140 characters. Congratulations, you are officially the wittiest twit on Twitter (that we know of.)

He will be taking home this sweet prize package:

1. A copy of The Collected Short Stories, by bestselling author Jeffrey Archer (he's my all-time favourite author and he should be yours, too!) This special edition is a combination of all the best mini-stories from his three most popular anthologies: "12 Red Herrings", "A Twist in the Tale", and "A Quiver Full of Arrows")


2. For the tea-lovers among you (and who among you isn't?), a complimentary basket of exotic teas from Alexis at the my tea cups blog.


3. An autographed copy of Mark David Gerson's The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, graciously provided by Gerson, who also runs a great writing tips blog by the same name: check it out. (Value: $20 sans autograph)


4. A free Online Press kit to help promote you business, your blog or your own personal brand, courtesy of Donna at PressKitTemplates.com. (Value: $75)
   
   


5. Let yourself be pampered by the poetic prowess of How Not To Write's Jamie Grove, who has kindly offered to write an Ode to the winner and post it on his blog (along with a link to your blog if you have one.) Take a look at the one he wrote recently for James Chartrand at the Men With Pens blog, and let me know if this should remain filed here under awards or if I should create another category for cruel and unusual punishment. At Smithereens, the readers decide! (Value: Priceless?)


6. Bob Younce, author of the popular and high-traffic blog The Writing Journey, has graciously added to the lot a FREE 125X125 Banner ad on his site, above the fold, for the month of July. This can be used to promote your blog, your company, your LinkedIn profile, whatever you want. [But no flash or animated GIFs - static ads only.] Don't have a button to use for this? I (Daniel from Smithereens) will create one for you, too. (Value $65)
   
   


7. Now that Smithereens has been redesigned, complete with three sponsor slots, I am happy to offer up the middle block (where you see the TwitWit promo right now) to the winner for the month of July as well. Same rules apply as for Bob's prize above. (Value: $50)


8. As if that wasn't enough free advertising for you, James and Harry at Men with Pens, an excellent blog that will teach you how to write better, guaranteed, are offering up a banner ad on their site for one month, too. You may also want to check out the guys' other sites where creative fiction writing meets online gaming:Capturing Fantasy and Escaping Reality. (Prize Value $65.)


9. Rob at the Home Biz Blogger blog, who also runs a really great blog directory and forum called Bloggeries, has kindly offered a FREE review of your blog, product or business (minimum 200 words) on his site. Rob's site is a PR4, so you'll get lots of link juice from this! (Value $50)


10. Carolyn Bahm runs two great blogs: Drops of Blood, which is full of great tips and articles on writing, and CarolynBahm.com, a fun general interest read. She has decided to throw in 3000 EntreCard Credits from EACH of her blogs for a total prize of 6000 credits! EntreCard is a really cool program that allows you to accumulate credits and then buy ads on other sites to promote your own. That 6K will go a long way! (ie: I'm quite jealous.) (Value: $60)

Dave, I know it's not quite an Apple II ... but hopefully an enjoyable prize package for you just the same.





By the way, if you're on Twitter, you can send Dave a congratulatory Tweet here.





Second Place





The following little care package will soon be the new property of our lucky Second Place finisher:

1. A copy of Archer's most recently published collection of short stories, "Cat O'Nine Tails: And Other Stories."
   
   


2. A complimentary guest post on the winner's own blog, on the subject of their choice from experienced web writer Dustin Wax, who blogs at The Writer's Technical Companion, Lifehack and a few other places, too (he is also one of our intrepid judges.)


3. A Free 125X125 Ad on Smithereens for the month of July, including creation of the banner by yours truly if desired.


4. 500 EntreCard Credits courtesy of Carolyn Bahm at the Drops of Blood writing blog.

And the winner of this great prize, and the honour of our second place slot is...

Ezra Butler, whose blog on strategic marketing and advertising can be found here and whose very worthy witticism was:

The price of living large can be calculated by the cost of broken scales.

We felt that this entry blended a clever (even wise, says Dustin) saying with a nice bit of parallelism to create a sardonic, bite-sized piece of twitter wit. Congratulations, Ezra!

Ezra can be reached (and followed) on Twitter here.

Third Place

And finally, we wanted to give a well-deserved honourable mention to a third entry that caught our eye. This lucky entrant will take home bragging rights, along with 1) a 125X125 spot here on Smithereens for the month of July, and 2) 200 EntreCard Credits donated by Carolyn Bahm.

And the third-wittiest piece of wordplay is...

Jonathan Crossfield, from the CopyWrite blog, who penned this award-winning, knee-slapping limerick in exactly 140 characters:

There was a Twitter from Nantucket Who's Tweets could never quite cut it He'd try to be brief Causing some grief But ran out of letters. Oh F

We thought Jonathan's entry was clever and original - no one else submitted a limerick (or haiku, or any other type of poetic wordplay, for that matter.) It also made great use of the character limit, turning it into an asset instead of a curse. And it made us laugh. That's important!

Before you all call me a grammar hypocrite, yes I know he accidentally used "who's" where it should have been "whose" (and trust me, if you read Jonathan's work, you would know that it was a typo and not an error of ignorance) , but I didn't feel this was grounds for disqualification because a) I don't think it was done on purpose, and b) he could have conveyed the same point with the correct word, by substituting "Tweep" for "Twitter" for example, or myriad other tweaks. The important thing was the funny narrative and the clever twist at the end that demonstrated Jonathan's sharp wit. That's what the contest was about, after all.

Congrats Jonathan! You can find him and congratulate him on Twitter too, of course.

So, there you have it: the three most wittiest Twitterers in the Twitterverse, according to us! Congratulations to the winners and thank you to all who participated.

Owing to my practice aggregating all the entries to the Copyblogger contest that inspired this one, you can of course view all the TwitWit entries in a nice little slideshow at the end of this post as well.

I would like to sincerely thank every single person who helped make this contest such a success- all those who so graciously donated prizes, submitted entries, told their friends, Tweeted the contest and linked to it on their own blogs. Your help and support hasn't gone unnoticed and I hereby write you all a giant IOU!*

By the way, I apologize that the results are being announced a day later than planned, but I got caught up yesterday and was unable to complete this post. Stay tuned for a couple great posts coming up tomorrow and Monday that have been in the works throughout this week...

Oh, and whether your favourite TwitWit entries were different from our choices, or you agree wholeheartedly with our selections, let us know in the comments! 

Winners, drop me a line using the contact link on the right and give me all your info (including mailing address for 1st and 2nd) and I will arrange to get your prizes sorted.

*Redeemable at participating retailers only. Not valid for the purchase of lottery, tobacco or alcoholic products. Not valid in conjunction with any other offers. Not valid in the province of Quebec (sorry James.)

The Entries: