“And also,” she added, “try to make it funny. Shallcross also has some advice for caption writers: “I would say trust your instincts and keep it simple.” “If you try to solve this like you would answer an SAT question, you will fail. “Humor is essentially a type of play,” he said. Robert Mankoff, the former longtime cartoon editor of The New Yorker, once told The New York Times that free thinking is key to writing good captions. When asked why Shallcross’ caption won, New Yorker Cartoon Editor Emma Allen wrote in an email that winners are chosen by an online vote. (Winning caption: Do you take last requests Kurt Rossetti, San. My mentor from undergraduate reached out to me.” My loser entry: New Yorker caption contest 850. Thanks to the publicized win, Shallcross said she has been hearing from people she lost touch with, “people that I haven’t spoken to in years, literally over a decade. “It’s amazing to have the caption be a finalist and win.” Some New Yorker cartoons already hang on the door of her office, and “I think I’ll be adding this one, too,” she noted. “Now we go back and forth as a family giving each other subscriptions,” she said. Shallcross is a longtime subscriber to the magazine, first gifted to her by her mother. “I have cut it probably every month, but I am going through a Hugh Grant-circa-1990s phase where I’m cutting just the side over my ears so it is longer.” She has been cutting it herself “probably to my barber’s dismay,” she said. At the start of the pandemic, Shallcross had short hair. “I think it was probably in the back of my mind that a lot of people are cutting their children’s hair” during the pandemic, she explained. The cartoon looked like a parent and child to her. “I have to be completely honest: It is literally the first thing that came to my mind.” “But I hadn’t done it in a while,” she said. She’s something of a frequent submitter to the caption contest, estimating that she has entered it about 30 times before. Shallcross actually moved from Northampton to Easthampton this summer, though she works as a lawyer in Northampton at the Committee for Public Counsel Services. “I’m just saying, after this haircut, it’s difficult to trust you,” it reads. Sure enough, she did win the weekly contest, and her caption is printed underneath the cartoon by illustrator Lars Kenseth in the Oct. As she recalled, “I showed it to her, and she said, completely deadpan, ‘You’re going to win.’ I was like, ‘That’s very kind of you.’” Shallcross shared her caption idea with her partner. The drawing was part of The New Yorker’s weekly contest in which the magazine publishes an uncaptioned cartoon, and readers submit their wittiest captions. EASTHAMPTON - Something about the cartoon - a black-and-white drawing of Swiss folk hero William Tell aiming at a cherry, instead of an apple, on his son’s head - spoke to Emily Shallcross.
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