Headlines

About & How to Play

What is Headlines?

Headlines is a free daily word game with a newspaper twist. Each day we publish one genuinely odd real-world news story, and your challenge is to write the funniest tabloid headline for it. It is a quick, one-minute game — a new edition every morning — that rewards clever wordplay, sharp puns, and a good eye for the absurd.

Think of it as a comedy writers' room you can drop into for a minute a day. There is no login, no setup, and no cost: just open the page and start writing.

How to play

  1. Read today's story. We give you a short, neutral summary of the day's quirky news item — who, what, where, and the odd detail that makes it funny. You can expand the full article if you want more to work with.
  2. Write your headline. Find the angle that makes you laugh: a pun on a name, a deadpan understatement, an unexpected framing. You get one entry per day, so make it count.
  3. Get the verdict. An AI editor scores your headline from 1 to 10, weighing how funny it is and how well it fits the real story, and explains why.
  4. Compare and vote. Read the headlines other players filed today, vote for your favorites, and see where yours ranks on the community leaderboard.
  5. Come back tomorrow. A fresh story rolls off the presses every morning. Past editions are saved in Back Issues.

How the AI judge works

Every headline is scored by Anthropic's Claude AI, acting as the paper's editor. It rates two things — how funny the headline is and how accurately it captures the real story — and writes a one-line verdict. Reward goes to genuine wordplay tied to the specific facts of the day's article; generic jokes that could caption any story score lower.

Where the stories come from

The daily news stories are drawn from Wikinews, a free-content news source, under Creative Commons licensing. Each story card links to the original article and notes its license. Headlines is an independent game and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Wikinews or the Wikimedia Foundation.

Privacy & contact

Headlines uses an anonymous account and shows ads to support the game. See our Privacy Policy for details. Questions or feedback? Contact us here.

Write today's headline →