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Pun Competition Set For Saturday

Pun champions from a previous competition.
Photo by PflugerPfotos http://www.flickr.com/photos/pflugerphotos/
Pun champions from a previous competition.

Are you that person in the office who has your coworkers constantly laughing – or more likely, groaning – over your attempts at humorous wordsmithing? You may be delighted to know about this group of like-minded people who won’t go after you with pitchforks for the one about the cross-eyed teacher who couldn’t control his pupils.

The O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships have been running for 33 years straight. It’s hard to believe their legs aren’t tired! Sorry. 

The 34th edition of the competition is this Saturday inBrush Square Parkdowntown. It runs from 11 am to 6 pm. A pre-competition dinner is planned for Friday night.

A group calling itself the Austin Documentary Collaborative produced this short, behind the scenes look at the annual event.

“Folks tend to not like people who pun,” one unnamed participant says in that video, “but once a year, we all gather together in solidarity, and it’s really cool.”

Here are last year’s winners of the Punniest of Show award.

Nathan Bernier is the transportation reporter at KUT. He covers the big projects that are reshaping how we get around Austin, like the I-35 overhaul, the airport's rapid growth and the multibillion dollar transit expansion Project Connect. He also focuses on the daily changes that affect how we walk, bike and drive around the city. Got a tip? Email him at nbernier@kut.org. Follow him on Twitter @KUTnathan.