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Thread: Kylae's Guide to WINNING the Caption Contest!

  1. #1
    Mama Tiger Kylae's Avatar
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    Kylae's Guide to WINNING the Caption Contest!

    The Caption Contest is in itself a test of many things. It tests your skill and wit, your ability to advertise if you get nominated, and your luck to get nominated in the first place. This guide is to help cut down on the amount of luck you need to get nominated, and to ease your way into that first place trophy.

    I decided to test my theories out first by helping a friend get her first Caption Contest nomination, which she indeed did. So now that I know my strategies can work for anyone, I know this guide will work.


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    Thinking Up Captions




    Your captions have to be something that catches the judge's eye. They either need to be witty, corny/puns, or have a spot of humor towards a current event. I'll give examples of each.

    ******

    Witty

    Witty is a catagory that basically deals with strokes of pure comic genius. Look at the picture and think of the funniest thing that one of the characters would say. Is there a conflict, a struggle? Does one pet look dejected while another is smiling? Although your caption needs to be upbeat, you can light poke at the strife of one of the characters. Also, make sure you study the entire picture. You can involve elements that wouldn't normally talk or be included in conversation, like inanimate objects or the general scene overall.

    Captions that placed high that were witty:



    1.Snowbunny: Eww, there's a Slorg on me!
    Babaa: Believe me, it could be worse....

    2. Kadoatie: I told you, I'm not going back to the Kadoatery!

    3 .Faellie: For once, being fashionably late wasn't such a bad thing!




    1. Far, far away in the land of Meridell, a certain pair of bouncing Hasees are upset that their balloons are missing.

    2. Dunk Tank Koi: I'm not worried at all... I've seen you play Ultimate Bullseye.

    3. Dunk Tank Koi: Hit the target already! I can't hold my breath much longer!!!

    ******

    Corny and Puns

    This is the widest category in the Caption Contest. The judges tend to lean towards these due to the easy nature of understanding the captions and the general kiddy content that these imply. Try to examine the scene to see what words you can associate with the scene that you could spin around to mean something else. Wordplay is key in pun entries. Corny is key in.. corny. They don't all have to be gems of brilliant wisdom, even the simplest joke have gotten in every contest.


    Captions that placed high that were corny:



    1. Grarrl: I couldn’t figure out why this ice cream tasted funny... but then it hit me.

    2. Kacheek: Look on the bright side!
    Grarrl: What bright side? I'm covered in ice cream.
    Kacheek: *snicker* No, I mean literally look on the bright side! It'll melt faster that way.

    3. Kacheek: When trying to think of an April Fools' Day prank, this was the only thing that sprang to mind!




    1. Moehog: Your eyes would be red, too, if you couldn't blink.

    2. Moehog: My allergies are acting up!
    Kougra: Is it all this pollen?
    Moehog: No, I'm allergic to cotton!

    3. Kougra: Ahhh, spring is in the air.
    Moehog: *sniffle* Yeah, so is the pollen.

    ******

    Current Events

    Another easy way to throw in a few captions is to comment on recent events. They must be within the past week, or possibly even some sort of famous internet meme. Please note that outside Neopets references have a lot harder time to get in, plus they are very plentiful entries, so if you use one, it's a lot less likely to be chosen. Try to stick to in game references. They can be about big events, regularly scheduled events like other contests, captions or news, or random occurrences that happened in the game.

    Captions that placed high that dealt with current events:

    (One Trillion Pageviews Event)



    1. Quiggle: At long last, rags to riches!
    Yellow Nimmo: Don't tell me you won an MSPP at the auction, too.
    Quiggle: Huh? No, I found 34 Neopoints on the floor....

    2. Gold Nimmo: I'm as excited for a trillion page views as you are, but can't the celebration wait until after we finish the laundry?

    3. Unfortunately, laundry facilities for the Altador Cup teams are still rather primitive....


    ---

    (The Wheel of Extravagance was released)



    1. Shoyru: Why are you crying so hard?
    Lutari: I just lost 100,000 Neopoints at the new wheel.

    2. Shoyru: I'm sorry I couldn't buy you roses. I spent all of my Neopoints at the The Wheel of Extravagance!

    3. Shoyru: I know that Neopians were upset about not meeting the Negg Festival Community Challenge, but crying? Really?

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    Submitting Your Captions





    Got your captions? Wracked your brain for hours and thought up some real gems? Awesome! Submit them and you're done right?! Wrong! The most important part of the Caption Contest is to ensure that the judges actually read your captions! The judges get many, many captions. They don't have time to read them all, so they pick out bunches of captions to choose their favorites from. You need to make sure you show up in one of those bunches.

    Once you've decided on what your captions would be, and to be clear, don't rely on one or two, you need to have a whole slew of captions at your disposal. Write down all your captions in a notepad file. When you're ready to submit them, enter them one by one into the caption entry box. Make sure to only submit one caption at a time. Submit all your captions twice a day. Once before TNT opens, and at some point around the middle of the afternoon. So around 8am NST (or whenever you wake up), then around 2-3pm NST, or whenever you get out of school or whatever else might conflict with the middle of the day. Your captions will certainly be noticed, especially over those that submit only once and walk away. It is not spam, and the judge will not get angry at you for entering so often. It will almost always guarantee you that your captions will fairly get noticed and have a better then average chance of getting nominated. Captions that are chosen generally show up at the end of the NST day Friday evening/Saturday morning.

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    My Caption Got Picked! Now What?



    Getting nominated is only the first half of the Caption Contest. The second half is up to you... well, you and the entire Neopets community. Just like the Beauty Contest, your win is determined on the amount of votes your caption gets. Unlike the Beauty Contest though, you can vote for a caption every four hours. So you have a chance to get six votes a day from one person. You can also vote for yourself every four hours, so don't forget to do that.

    If you know how to advertise already and you're rather comfortable with it, go nuts. Edit your Neo Signature to promote your Caption Contest entry and head to the boards. Hit the Pound Chat and wish all those pet traders good luck. Hit the Beauty Contest board and trade your BC votes for some Caption Contest votes. Hit up the NC Mall board and tell someone how adorable their item for trade is. Head to the Avatar Chat and offer to loan out some cheap avatar items. If you've had Premium for three months, the Charter Board always loves to help other Charter members with votes. Anywhere you go, so long as the inkling to your caption is in your Neo Signature, people will notice, and a lot will vote.

    Make sure to tell your friends, your guild, anyone you know. Since they can vote every four hours, votes tend to add up very quickly. After you vote on your own caption, you can note the direct link to your caption in the website address bar. I don't really want to use the phrase "trap", but you can use that address everywhere to get people to automatically vote for you as soon as they touch the page. It works well for people that don't know how to navigate Neopets very well, or are too lazy to go looking for your caption. It also makes sure they vote for you and no one else. Especially helpful if you happened to have two captions nominated and you decide to promote just one to get a gold/high up trophy.

    Another great way to manipulate the votes is to use all those shells you have laying around. So long as you switch up your proxies and don't spam all the votes at once, using shells for extra votes is a great way to plump up your numbers. Use your mains and your semi mains liberally, they look like legit votes. Use shells for quick fixes and to put yourself ahead of a cluster of captions you might have the same amount of votes of. Since you can vote every four hours, you don't need to use as many shells as you think. Also be sure to keep within a sensible number of votes if you're using shells to go for gold.

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    I Have A Lot Of Votes! Where's My Trophy?!



    You will see a distinct difference in the amount of votes on the captions you're competing against. There will be captions way out ahead of the pack, and others that only have one or two votes. Even those low voted for ones have a chance at the trophy, as some people just flat out vote for their favorite captions regardless of the advertisements for others. They'll just squeak into the silver or bronze spot.

    Going for gold? You'll need approximately 200-300 votes to reach gold, depending on how active that week's competition is. Due to the Caption Contest only releasing once a week now, instead of twice, they've increased the amount of wins at each tier now.

    Gold - 5 Winners
    Silver - 9 Winners
    Bronze - 11 Winners

    The top voted entry might have upwards of 400 votes, but the fifth one may only have 150-200. There are some that pull out of the pack early and stay there, but you don't have to worry about beating them, just beat out number five. Make sure to watch the votes if you're just trying to skirt into that fifth spot. Someone could race up behind you at the last minute.

    Voting ends around the middle of the NST day Tuesday, when the next Caption Contest begins. Again, be careful of last minute voting, or get a few extra votes in there yourself!

    Other then your fancy new trophy, the Caption Contest awards you an NP prize and a random item from the Creative Contests prize pool that could include paint brushes, PetPets, codestones or other random items.

    Every '00 Caption Contest



    Every '00 Caption Contest (IE. 1500, 1600, etc), you have a chance at getting the Caption Contest avatar. It is an extremely difficult contest, in both getting in your caption, and the excessive amount of votes needed to even place during that particular contest. This guide should help a lot in that aspect, but it's both luck getting nominated, and a lot of votes that will keep you in the game.

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    I hope this guide helps you get your first, or one of many, Caption Contest trophies! If you have any further questions, just PM me and I'd be happy to give my input.

  2. The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to Kylae For This Useful Post:

    Acey (12-26-2011),GTO (12-23-2011),IndigoSunset (12-23-2011),Jehuty (12-23-2011),Zane (01-19-2012)

  3. #2
    zlolekim's Avatar
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    Pretty thorough guide Kylae, oh and btw, thanks for the prepaid card tip, i now have premium.

  4. #3
    Mama Tiger Kylae's Avatar
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    Awesome, glad it worked

  5. #4
    IndigoSunset's Avatar
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    Having won the CC gold 5 times myself, this guide sums up pretty much exactly what to do to get in and win. Good job The Beauty Contest is a particularly good place to pick up votes, especially if you're slightly duplicitous in saying you've voted for people's pets when you haven't. You can mislead about voting in the BC since those votes can't be seen but CC voting is public so you can see that people have voted for you.

  6. #5
    Mama Tiger Kylae's Avatar
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    I actually have a BC guide coming up too, hehe.

  7. #6
    kopiko's Avatar
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    Thanks for the thoroughly written guide =D
    I'll try it soon, hehe

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