How to Play

Every signed-in correspondent may file one dispatch a day. You give the press a "what if" — a counterfactual, a near-miss, a rumour history forgot — and our resident chroniclers compose the piece, illustrations and all. Additional dispatches are earned, never sold.

File a dispatch ☞

Each dispatch carries two small buttons. ▲ Acclaim means "I'm delighted this was filed." ▼ Dissent means "the press should have held the page." Click again to retract your vote. You get one vote per dispatch.

The running tally on a story is its acclaim. It's how the readership ranks the day's filings — and it's the only thing standing between a story and the Phonograph.

At midnight UTC the most-applauded dispatch of the day is read aloud on The hAistoric Phonograph — our podcast — with no human hands between vote and broadcast. Winning stories wear a small phonograph badge in perpetuity.

Upvote five dispatches in a day with a one-line note attached, and the Editor grants you one extra dispatch tomorrow. He reads every letter. He simply replies to none.

File three days in a row and the fourth dispatch is on the house. Miss a day and the streak resets — though your Veteran badge remains, faintly tarnished.

Your byline accumulates stats — dispatches filed, acclaim received, Phonograph wins — and you climb the Ladder of Greatness from Cub Reporter up through Editor-at-Large. Click any byline on a dispatch to see that correspondent's record.

We're a satirical magazine, not a megaphone. The press declines prompts that rehabilitate genocidal regimes, dehumanise living groups, or treat recent tragedies as punchlines. Spicy, horny, gleefully profane stories about long-dead rulers? Absolutely welcome. See the Terms for the full list.