The 2021 Lyttle Lytton Contest#
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The 2021 Winners
Welcome to the twenty-first edition of the Lyttle Lytton Contest. Even back when I first started this competition, I had a number of colleagues in the interactive fiction world who never used their real names online. At the time I thought that was like wearing a Halloween mask to a summer cookout, but with each year that goes by it feels more like wearing a gas mask to a mustard gas bombardment, and there have been times that I’ve found myself wishing I’d had their foresight. It looks like many of you out there are of the same mind. This contest has long had a “no pseudonyms” rule; obviously I can’t stop people out there from pulling a David Dennison, but at least I can weed out entrants like LavenderNinja86. However, there is a box on the entry form that allows people to request that their submissions be anonymous. Anonymous entrants have even won some side contests: the Paul Clifford contest in ’03, the political speech in ’04, and the Found division in ’08, ’10, and ’17. But an anonymous entrant has never won the main contest. This year came down to two contenders: one signed with a first name and last initial only, and the other fully anonymous. To what extent did any subconscious bias against anonymity lead me to pick the former over the latter? No idea. But I did go with the partially signed entry as the winner of the 2021 Lyttle Lytton Contest, and here it is:
“Clang! Clang!” protested the knights’ swords, as they were each stopped by the metal wall of the other.
She tucked her bra-length hair away from her eyes.
Anna Molenaar
John craved Stella’s lips like an infant rhesus monkey craved cloth mother.
Sofie Z.
My man has a voice like a lion eating dark chocolate.
Rachel Spitler and Andy Holloway
Here are some more that run with the food theme:
The sun set over the southern Italian hillside like a meatball rolling off a plate of spaghetti.
Jessica
She was fair and young, like a ball of fresh mozzarella cheese.
Stephanie Byers
But these two are the similes that really jumped out at me this year:
I awoke to find sunlight shining through my bedroom window, like it was the middle of the night and thousands of flashlights were outside my window.
Joe V.
The comedic trick of comparing a natural phenomenon to a less impressive artificial one dates back at least to Mark Twain having Huckleberry Finn compare the sound of thunder to that of rolling barrels down a flight of stairs. But it’s a good one, and it works here too.
Maria’s love pricked me, like an EpiPen pricking an enchanting diabetic woman.
Casey
I slapped open the door with the haste of a black mamba.
Hugo Orrantia
McGreer smirked at his stunned opponent on the floor. His hands that would be for helping are for hurting now.
Eli Macker
Warren softly wept over the tender brests that contained the now unbeating heart of his wife.
Ann Menkova
Thog stretched luxuriously, the morning light brushing hungrily over her luscious prehistoric breasts.
Dorian Moreland
There was a dramatic uptick in the number of sex-themed entries last year, and while this year saw a bit of a regression to the mean, that still left enough such entries among the honorable mentions to warrant a section of their own:
“Yum, oof, argh!” My friend was having sex, as I could tell from the noises.
Jake Scott
Jennie’s heart was pounding, her hymen trembling, and Mike was shy to infiltrate both.
Dominikus
I tried to fix the you-shaped lacuna in my heart with a cadre of vacuous women and vacuous pussy.
Greg Lee
When he first saw her, blood rushed into his head, and not only his head, but also his pants, and then there was this wonderful explosion, not of blood, but of the juice of life.
Jonas S.
But the nod for this category goes to this entry, which almost won the entire contest:
As I walked briskly into the crowded and steamy room, I could feel the vagina inside my head dripping in anxiety.
anonymous
Madilyn Jenson’s blood type was O-positive (the tastiest for vampires), but to the dismay of Jake and his vampire friends, she guarded it like a prized possession.
Damien Snyder
Continuing in a supernatural vein:
Richard was haunted by the ghosts of his past, and unlike Slimer or Vigo the Carpathian, these were not so easily busted.
David Otto
Another formidable foe:
Though his half-ape, half-android DNA made him immune to dying and poison, there was one thing Number 2229 wasn’t immune to—fire.
Florence Boggs
Number 2229 isn’t the only one who lacks such immunity:
“KRAKOW!” went the bolt of lightning as it struck my 3 bedroom 2.5 bathroom house, burning it down.
Daniel
As seen above, “too many details” is a time-honored trope in this contest; here are some other examples among this year’s honorable mentions:
“Dammit! The perp’s getting away!” shouted Officer O’Malley as he revved his 2015 Ford Transit Connect Wagon LWB XL into gear.
Benoit Brekker
Little Jessica pondered how to seat her ten playmates around the table, but none of the 181,440 arrangements (ignoring rotations and reflections) seemed quite right.
Josh Hinman
Try as he might’ve to resist (Nxg7+), Birgitte castled and captured (Kd8 Qf6+! Rde1!! Nxa2+ Qc1) her way to checkmate John’s king; but not his heart.
Jonah Simon
I see that the last five entries have all included numbers, so why break the streak?
The human body is over 95% water, and so too is the human family.
Diane Heaton
I suppose that the mention of water brings us to this entry:
The little mermaid went on land to kiss a prince, but everyone was wearing masks, because (and she didn’t know this) it was COVID times, and so her fantasy quest begins.
Asher Stuhlman
Though pestilence descended upon the land about three months before last year’s deadline, this was the first year that the entire contest took place amid a pandemic. It is therefore no surprise that the above was one of several covid-themed entries. Here are a couple of others:
Though his science lab had vanquished many a bacterium, Doctor Edgar knew not a vaccine for the heart of woman.
anonymous
In an already trying year, we were forced to take our work home—even the murderers.
Piotr Cymbalski
After sex/romance, crime/mystery is probably the most popular genre for entries in this contest:
“I guess it’s just Bell Biv now,” murmured Special Agent Lance Bass, squatting over the lifeless DeVoe.
Terry Thompson
Hey, a pop culture reference I actually recognize! I confess that I’m not familiar with any of the cited people’s work, but at least I recognize the names, which puts me way ahead of where I usually am when it comes to submissions that name-check celebrities. I’m sure that there have been plenty of entries over the past several years that might well have delighted many readers, but which left me stumped: “Who is ‘Logan Paul’?” “What’s a ‘Macklemore’?” Sometimes I even have to check whether an entry is making a pop culture reference or just inventing a name for its protagonist:
Hope Wolfwood… If women were men, she was Superman.
Connor Cavanaugh
Shawn Hardwick stood anxiously in his room, disassembling and reassembling his gun like he learned how to in Seal Team Six training.
Ziva Travers
The entry above is what in 2018 I called a “perennial”: it uses a trope that has become familiar over the years this contest has been running (in this case, military fiction, like 2015’s winner and 2011’s runner-up) and still finds a way to make it work. Here are some others. This one vaguely reminds me of 2013’s winner, in that it seems to think it’s describing a larger set of people than it actually is:
Jennifer gawked in awe. Every last one of the three men was more handsome than the last.
Ben Weston
Amusing overuse of a word, or in this case a word root, reminiscent of 2012’s “skim milk” entry:
The farmer sprayed his crops with neonicotinoid pesticides as he filled his lungs with the paleonicotinoid nicotine.
Zemyla
Hair color again, with the suggestion that some are better than others:
The children flowed through the class door as my mind registered them—brown, black, brown and golden haired Luci.
Kalpit
And let’s wrap up the original entries with some miscellaneous honorable mentions:
The moon shone her pock-marked visage earthwards, casting her imperfect luminescence on the frolicking youth below.
Madeline Manning
A father washes the dishes. His hands tighten with the tightness of someone who had lost grip of something precious years ago, maybe his wife.
anonymous
“The time is nigh!” The words zoomed from synapse to synapse as Seth clutched the baton from his teammate, determination oozing from his sweat glands.
George Perlman
Kendra knew in her heart that her struggles were first-world problems, but she tackled them with third-world tenacity.
Luke Fowler
Finally, the Found division. Entries from last year were rolled over this year, so what follows are entries from both 2021 and 2020. The winner, submitted—you guessed it—anonymously, is:
I used to be a detective, with my hat and my desk, until the war.
a writing prompt generator
quoted anonymously
From prose generated by computers to prose written for them:
Priscilla, the greatest friend of my heart… has stabbed me in it.
World of Warcraft
quoted by Cam Wright
Sticking with computers—I haven’t really been involved in the interactive fiction community in years, but it appears that a significant proportion of the audience for this contest still hails from the IF world, because quite a few of the submissions over the past couple of years were drawn either from actual IF works or from commentary on those works. Here are some examples:
The surface of ale in your mug reflected stars through the windows of the dark tavern.
Who Are You, Mr. Cooper? (choice game)
quoted by Adam Thompson
I’m a Joe Blow who works in a mine or a coal plant or, fucking, you know, a coal energy plant or a metal factory, you know, a metal refinery or a metal shop, and I’m sort of interested in text adventures.
Classic Text Adventures podcast
quoted anonymously
As you can see above, some Found division entries are from works of fiction (sometimes actual first lines!), while others, fitting the original intent of the division, repurpose non-fiction and ask readers to imagine how these lines might read as the start of a novel. Here are a couple of examples of the former:
When he parked at the casino a half hour later, Jimmy had no idea that he was being watched and filmed by a shadowy man with a heart as empty as a cave.
The Way of the Shadow Wolves (Steven Seagal / Tom Morrissey novel)
quoted by Alexander Rose
Craig vaguely stared at his ceiling while wave after wave of Post-Traumatic Stress washed over him. This is what mental illness feels like, he mused.
unspecified fanfic
adapted anonymously
And then a few of the latter:
In this Los Angeles neighborhood, police helicopters are common, but traditional bank loans are not.
CNN broadcast, 2020.0422
quoted by Ryan S.
She was living in Kyoto, studying indigenous Japanese religion. She was supposed to be working on a scholarly book about her research, but started writing intensely erotic Batman fan fiction instead.
“A Feud in Wolf-Kink Erotica Raises a Deep Legal Question”
New York Times, 2020.0523; quoted by William Li
The boy swallowed milk and kisses.
cited as a “good” example of zeugma on Wikipedia; originally coined by Yeshayahu Shen
quoted by Anneka Sontroem
The focus on sex and reproduction that has been a hallmark of the main contest for the past couple of years has also made its way into the Found division:
The shaft of the penis is familiar to many.
Come as You Are (Emily Nagoski self-help book)
quoted by [a presumably different] Emily
Forty may be the new thirty, but try telling that to your ovaries.
“Are You as Fertile as You Look?”, New York Times, 2011.0831
quoted by Dakota Killpack
And to complete this year’s installment of the Lyttle Lytton Contest:
Any time you’re going through a door, you don’t know what’s on the other side.
I (Almost) Got Away With It (TV show), 2012.0613
quoted by Michael Cortese
And so as I walk out my front door to find myself utterly bewildered by my own patio, let me quickly make the usual concluding remarks. First, thanks to all the entrants, as well as to all those who help to spread the word about this contest, which these days happens mostly on platforms I haven’t heard of. Sorry if you were one of the entrants who wound up falling just outside the top 50; the strength of the entries has improved over the years, and what is #51 today might well have been something like #3 in some of those ’00s installments. If you enjoy Lyttle Lytton, please consider supporting it by tossing a few cents at my Patreon account, the proceeds from which pay for my annual spike in hosting fees and allow me to devote some time to this and other projects. I’m actually planning to take a sabbatical from my day job this year in order to focus on some of those neglected projects, so you may stand a better chance of actually seeing a return on your investment. Or maybe I’ll just end up spending the year writing intensely erotic Batman fan fiction. I guess we’ll see!
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